Working with same headhunter when lateraling?

Currently working at a MM PE firm that I’m not totally happy with and considering lateraling around the one year mark. I worked with one of the main recruiting firms (think HSP, CPI, etc.) when recruiting here and they have a lot of other clients that I would be interested in working for. What are the repercussions of reaching out to them? Would they refuse to work with me or is there a chance they’d go back to my firm? Is there a point in time where it’s kosher to work with them again? Not sure what the etiquette is here since they placed me here but it’s also a chance for them to earn another fee. Thanks all. 

5 Comments
 

I'd say there's a relatively high chance they go back to your firm. Not necessarily high in a sense of close to 100% on a scale from 0-100%, but high in the sense of risk/reward and risk tolerance. Most headhunters have clawbacks where if you leave the firm before 1y they lose part of their placement fee. You would be surprised how close headhunters stay to the firms they have ongoing mandates for. At best they tell you no we can't help you, at worst they rat you out. Not worth.

 

Won't work. Had a situation last year where I hadn't updated a HH at my new job, and they happened to get a mandate after-the-fact with my new job's firm. They then reached out with a different opportunity (kind of funny, if anything I would expect them to reach out with my new job's search if anything since clearly there's a match there...) and I let them know I had made the switch, and they told me that we couldn't work together until the mandate/relationship was over pretty much. 

 

It depends on how long you've been at your role. If it's less than the understood two years you're supposed to be there then yeah, I'd not reach out to them. If it's before that then no point in doing so as the optics for them to your current firm are terrible.

 

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