Secretaries and assistants of executives in some of the large multinationals on the market receive clear instructions when they are hired: they are not to give any phone number, email address to someone who phones and uses an argument of the type ”I am a former college mate of your boss, I am getting married and didn’t know how to contact X” or ”I met your boss at a selling presentation, I was supposed to make him an offer but I lost his business card.”

One of the main sources of such a strategy is the companies’ fear of losing their top employees, who might end up in the headhunters’ databases. Indeed, one of the sayings that best define top executive recruitment is ”It doesn’t matter what you know, what matters is who you know.” Any consultant with a few years’ experience on the market has a considerable list of contacts, which is essential when they get a recruitment mission from a client.

”I have 2,000 phone numbers in my agenda - people I have recruited, people for whom I have recruited, or people I have worked with over time. Sometimes they phone me to ask for advice,” says Razvan Soare, who worked for two years for Stanton Chase, one of the largest executive search companies on the Romanian market. Soare set up his own firm, Gerissen Strategic Solutions a few months ago, which also specialises in headhunting.

After the database, the second option when searching for an executive is through personal relations. ”One tries to get to people using an honest approach, by phoning them directly at their office. Secretaries in some companies act as watchdogs, and sometimes it’s very difficult to reach the manager you are looking for, in order to suggest a meeting or an opportunity,” says Radu Manolescu, managing partner of executive search company K.M. Trust & Partners.

Challenged by some, approaching managers directly is considered by consultants to be a guarantee that the clientcompany which does the recruitment will have the best possible candidates to choose from. ”On a market such as the Romanian one, extremely good executives are very rare and in order to serve your client, you need to scan the market as much as possible. Basically all variants and all companies on the targeted market need to be explored,” says Manolescu.