Headhunter Etiquette

Do you respond to all headhunters outreaches? What if it’s an area outside of your search, would you still respond you’re not interested and thank them for reaching out?

For context, I’m from a non-traditional background (non-MBB consulting) looking for MM PE ops roles and have gotten few headhunter inbounds for ops roles that I’ve indicated interest but no fund interviews yet.

I’ve also had some headhunters reach out about other non PE-Ops buyside roles (e.g., VC platform, portco strat, IR, etc.) but I’m not sure if I should try interviewing for those as well.

I do realize most folks on this site are bankers going for deal team roles. Surprisingly, I’ve interviewed for a couple LMM deal team roles (outside of headhunters) but my markets seems to have slowed down massively with the new admin.

5 Comments
 

Lol no. These people will spam you with requests that don't match your preferences on role or location even after you have had extensive conversations with them and then ghost you immediately the second you do something nonstandard in your career because they're "too busy." I get what their incentives are but don't let their largely being pretty, polite girls fool you--your relationship with them is as transactional as it gets.

 

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