Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: A Mixed‐method Study on Headhunter‐intermediated Recruitment Practices
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Author | Vesa Peltokorpi |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12607 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 34, 709–726 (2023)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12607
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: A
Mixed-method Study on
Headhunter-intermediated Recruitment
Practices
Vesa Peltokorpi
Graduate School of Social Sciences, Naka-ku, Hiroshima UniversityHiroshima City, 1-1-89
Higashi-Senda-machi, Hiroshima, 730-0053, Japan
Corresponding author email: vesa@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
While organizations increasingly rely on headhunters, little researchhas focused on what
kinds of employees are contacted by headhunters and how these contacts are related to
turnover.This study uses an exploratory sequential mixed-methoddesign to examine what
kinds of employeescontingency headhunters contact andwhy some of them leave. Using
the case of Japan, where foreign subsidiaries use headhunters extensivelyto recruit host
country nationals (HCNs), we rst conducted interviews with 131 clients, headhunters
and HCNs (candidates). The ndings indicated that the contacts made by headhunters
were guided by the HCNs’ age, gender, education level, English prociency, tenure and
prior placement by headhunters. The ndings also showed that headhunter contacts drive
up turnover, and that job alternatives and job embeddedness moderate the relationship
between headhunter contacts and turnover. We used these ndings and research on the
unfolding model and headhunters to develop an abductively derived research model and
hypotheses. In another study, we tested these hypotheses by time-lagged survey data from
456 HCNs in foreign subsidiaries. The survey ndings showedthat headhunter contacts
mediate the relationships between English prociency, tenure and prior placement by
headhunters, and that job alternatives and job embeddedness moderate the positive re-
lationship between headhunter contacts and turnover.
Introduction
Voluntaryturnover, ‘an employee’s decision to ter-
minate the employment relationship’ (Dess and
Shaw, 2001, p. 446), has attracted interest among
scholars and practitioners owing to a range of
negative outcomes,such as reduced organizational
performance, damage to employee morale, di-
minished organizational memory, and associated
replacement costs (Hom et al., 2017, 2019). Volun-
tary turnover has traditionally and predominately
been theorized to be caused by a job search that is
initiated by negative job attitudes (see Hom et al.,
2017, 2019; Ployhart, Schmitt and Tippins, 2017).
Challenging the existing paradigm, the unfolding
model of employee turnover (Lee and Mitchell,
1994) maintains that many employees not actively
searching for jobs or intending to leave their jobs
resign after receiving unsolicited job offers. In line
with this model, research has shown that unso-
licited job offers,which explain approximately25%
of turnover (Holtom et al., 2005; Lee et al., 2008),
create “shocks” – jarring events that initiate exit
cognitions – that can pull employees into the ex-
ternal labour market.
This study focuses on external shocks created
by headhunter contacts and their effect on vol-
untary turnover. Owing to the signicant trans-
formation in the employment relationship and the
increasing reliance on the external labour market
© 2022 British Academy of Management and Wiley Periodicals LLC. Published by JohnWiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Gars-
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710 V. Peltokorpi
since the 1980s, headhunter-assisted recruitment
has become an established practice in organiza-
tions (Bidwell et al., 2013; Bonet, Cappelli and
Hamori, 2013). While providing a more compre-
hensive account of turnover paths than conven-
tional models, including unsolicited contacts that
may lead to turnover (Ployhart, Schmitt and Tip-
pins, 2017), the unfoldingmodel and research have
given scant attention to what kind of employees
headhunters contact and subsequent turnover, re-
sulting in an important gap in turnover research
(Lee et al., 2008). According to Lee et al. (2008,
p. 688), ‘very little academic work has been con-
ducted in the case of those leaving in response to
unsolicited offers’ and has not explained why em-
ployees are the targets of headhunting. Thus, a
study focusing on what kind of employees head-
hunters contact would illuminate turnover paths
and help organizations build mechanisms to re-
tain their key employees. Further more, although
headhunters make a large share of unsolicited job-
related contacts (Coverdill and Finlay, 2018) that
can drive up turnover, little is known about head-
hunter contact–turnover linkage (Bonet, Cappelli
and Hamori, 2013). This is unfortunate because
30% of organizations regularly use headhunters
to recruit employees (Gorn, 2014), and head-
hunting rms account for more than 50% of
executive placements in the United States (Asso-
ciation of Executive Search and Leadership Con-
sultants, 2011). More research on headhunters is
needed also because voluntary turnover is expen-
sive for organizations: hiring and replacement ex-
penses are estimated to be as high as 90–200% of
an employee’s annual salary (Allen, Bryant and
Vardaman, 2010).
This study seeks to partially ll the above re-
search gaps by drawing on the unfolding model
and headhunter research and using interview and
survey data to examine what kind of employees
are contacted by headhunters (henceforth ‘head-
hunter contacts’) and how these contacts are
related to turnover. More specically, by using
an exploratory sequential mixed-method design
(Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2010), we conducted two
studies with independent samples on host coun-
try national (HCN) employees in foreign sub-
sidiaries in Japan. We rst conducted interviews
with 131 expatriates (clients), contingency-based
headhunters and HCN employees (candidates) in
the Tokyo area, since most headhunting rms
(Peltokorpi and Froese, 2016) and foreign sub-
sidiaries in Japan are located there (Toyo Keizai,
2018). Thus, this paper provides a unique three-
party perspective and answersa call for research on
all key actors in headhunter-assisted recruitment
(Bills, Di Stasio and Gerxhani, 2017). We used the
interview study ndings to develop an abductively
derived research model and a set of hypotheses
because the unfolding model does not provide suf-
cient guidance for a deductive study on head-
hunter contacts and turnover (Lee et al., 2008). To
test our hypotheses, we collected time-lagged sur-
vey data from 493 HCNs in foreign subsidiaries
located in the same area. In both studies, we fo-
cused on foreign subsidiaries in Japan because
they rely heavily on headhunters and because
headhunters serving foreign subsidiaries contact
primarily HCNs in Japan (Peltokorpi, 2021; Pel-
tokorpi and Froese, 2016). In Japan, recruiting
is challenging for foreign subsidiaries, because
HCNs are not often willing to give up the em-
ployment security offered in domestic organiza-
tions (Ono, 2007) and there is a shortage of HCNs
with sought-after competencies (Peltokorpi, 2021;
Peltokorpi and Froese, 2016).
This study makes several important contribu-
tions to the literature by examining unsolicited
contacts made by headhunters and how these con-
tacts are related to voluntary turnover. Because
our qualitative and quantitative ndings suggest
that headhunter contacts driveup turnover, the rel-
atively modest job search–turnover linkage in pre-
vious research (Griffeth, Hom and Gaertner, 2000;
Hom and Griffeth, 1995) can in part be explained
by shocks created by headhunter contacts. While
the unfolding model suggests that employees can
resign without an active job search, we are also un-
aware of any previous research that has examined
the headhunter contact–turnover linkage. Indeed,
Bonet, Cappelli and Hamori (2013) explained in
a comprehensive review of labour market inter-
mediaries that whereas headhunters arespeculated
to drive up turnover, ‘the existing literature never
tests that notion’ (p. 377), and they called for re-
search on the headhunter contact–turnover link-
age. Furthermore, this study contributes to the
unfolding model and research on headhunters by
focusing on the demographic and human capi-
tal factors that guide headhunter contacts and
turnover. In addition to providing information
on what kind of employees headhunters contact,
our ndings can help organizations to reduce dys-
functional turnover. This study also integrates the
© 2022 British Academy of Management and Wiley Periodicals LLC.
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