We’ve established—and reiterated more than once—that one of the primary objectives of any company is to fill its important open positions as quickly as it can with the best candidate available. A good headhunter is vital to this process if you’re looking to fill a position quickly with the right candidate.

That objective brings us to our third “‘Dirty Little Secret’ About Headhunters,” which is namely this:

A good headhunter can fill any job, but a niche headhunter will fill it faster and with fewer candidates.

How can you find out if a potential recruiter works within your niche?  There’s a simple way, actually.

After describing your need, ask that recruiter to describe similar searches they’ve conduced during the past 36 months.

There’s no way that somebody can fake their way through answering that question.  Either they can describe such searches, or they can’t.

For specific steps that you can take to find a good niche recruiter or headhunter, I recommend revisiting one of my previous blog posts: “3 Proven Methods for Finding a Specialist Recruiter.”

(For more information about maximizing the benefits of working with a recruiter, download a copy of Dan Simmons’s e-Book, Hunting the Headhunter: Your Guide to Debunking Myths, Cutting Costs, and Changing the Way You Play the Recruitment Game.)