For a percentage of your contract, or sometimes a flat fee, your executive recruiter will parade you in front of perspective corporate suitors until one of them parts with some cash to take you back to the company s home base. In a perfect world, the recruiter will also protect your interests in terms of getting the best deal for your professional services. Many executive recruiters will seek to place you with multiple client companies over the course of your career. A pimp recruits a stable of prostitutes and parades them in front of clients. Taking a cut of their fee, he makes sure the end-clients pay up and offers protection for his stable.
Most pimps also place their prostitutes with multiple clients.
Both professions are about taking a piece of the action for basic introduction, negotiation, and protection services. The major difference is where the percentage is picked up. Where a street pimp will pick up his percentage from his prostitute after the deed is done, the executive recruiter, perhaps closer to the Mayflower Madame school of business, will pick up his fee from the client prior to services commencing. Make no mistake about it, from a corporate finance perspective, the recruiter s fee is part of your salary, it s just a part you aren t likely to see. This also brings up the distinct difference in collection problems.