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What is a Headhunter Agency and How Can It Help You Find Remote Assistants?

Hiring reliable remote assistants is tough. Here's how a headhunter agency like Somewhere makes it easy.
The competition to hire virtual assistants from the Philippines has become tougher than ever.

If you're not getting any results from posting on job boards, combing through LinkedIn, or asking your friends for referrals, maybe it's time to try using a headhunter agency like Somewhere.

What is a headhunter agency?

A headhunter agency essentially helps businesses find team members. Here at Somewhere, we use a team of expert talent assessors to scout, screen, and evaluate remote staff on your behalf.

This means that you don’t have to waste time:

  • Slogging through hundreds of resumes
  • Reviewing social media profiles
  • Evaluating candidates,
  • — or posting on various job boards

Just let us know the position you’re hiring for and our team will do the rest of the work for you.

Here’s a quick look at our process

A graphic showing what clients can expect when they work with Somewhere. 1. Get in touch. 2. We' begin our talent search. 3. We'll present candidates to you. 4. Upon successfuil hiring, you pay the fee.
  • You let us know the positions you’re hiring for. If you need help writing a winning job description, we can lend a hand, too.
  • We’ll assign you a project manager and kick off a search.
  • We’ll thoroughly search, screen, and test candidates based on your job description.
  • Once we have a list of vetted candidates, we’ll present them to you with their resumes, salary requirements, and other information.
  • You can schedule a call to interview the candidates.
  • Once you find a candidate you like, you can hire them, and we’ll hand the relationship over to you.

Who should hire a headhunter agency?

Headhunter agencies can work with a wide variety of clients. In our case, we mostly cater to small to medium businesses in the following niches:

  • Real Estate
  • Venture Capital & Private Equity
  • Graphic Design
  • Marketing and Advertising
  • Consumer Goods

Using a headhunter agency is also a great choice if:

You don’t have the time to look for candidates yourself

Scouting and screening candidates is tedious and time-consuming. If you’re a CEO or business owner who’d like to focus on things that need your specific expertise, then using a headhunter agency can help buy your time back.

You’re having difficulty filling a specialized role

A headhunting agency is also a good option if you’re looking to fill a unique or senior role.

In the past, for example, we’ve been able to find an operations manager for a virtual restaurant group and a content migration specialist for a tech company. These roles can take weeks or even months to fill if you’re going the traditional way, so a more proactive approach like using a headhunter agency is a better choice.

You want to build a strong company culture

Hiring people through a managed staffing service is not the best way to build a strong team. In this type of set-up, your dedicated “assistants” technically work for the staffing agency, so you can’t fully integrate them into your company.

If you discontinue your relationship with the agency, you’ll also risk losing the assistants — along with the knowledge base you’ve built with them.

If you’d rather put together an in-house team deeply rooted in your company culture and values, you’re better off hiring full-time virtual assistants through a headhunter agency.

You don’t need an in-house recruiter

Some companies only need to fill a couple of positions every once in a while, so a headhunter agency like Somewhere would make more sense versus hiring an in-house recruiter around the clock.

If this sounds like you, send us a message today and we’ll help you find awesome team members that cost 80% less than US equivalents.

Is Somewhere a business process outsourcing (BPO) company?

Three people wearing headsets, working on their laptops. They look like customer service reps

Nope.

BPOs and other virtual assistant staffing companies manage offshore staff for you. We don’t do that.

We simply find great team members on your company’s behalf. Once you successfully choose a candidate, we hand the relationship off to you.

This means:

  • You’ll have full control over your virtual assistant’s training, benefits, and schedule. You can delegate tasks the way you want to.
  • You can build an in-house team around your company culture and values.
  • You’re nixing the middle man — without a staffing agency’s markup you’ll be able to give your remote team members a more competitive rate.
  • You’ll only pay us a one-time finder’s fee instead of a recurring subscription fee.

What are the advantages of using Somewhere to hire remote staff?

Here’s a closer look at what sets us apart from other hiring methods and how we can help you build an awesome remote team:

We work exclusively with virtual assistants from the Philippines

A testimonial from one of our clients, Codie Sanchez.

Why virtual assistants from the Philippines?

They’ve got great skills, can communicate well in English, and are 80% more affordable than local counterparts.

We’ve hired Filipino virtual assistants for our own businesses, and they’ve been integral to our growth. Based on our experience, working with VAs from the Philippines is the best way to scale fast.

You’re leveraging more than 10 years of experience

Speaking of experience, we’ve been working with Filipino virtual assistants since 2009. With more than 10 years of experience in our belt, we know exactly how and where to attract the best overseas talent for your business.

We’ve also built a massive network of headhunters and have developed a proven system that allows us to scout, screen, and present candidates efficiently.

100% of our headhunting team is based in the Philippines

The Somewhere team during our annual team building. A large group of people in various team tshirts pose in front of an inflatable obstacle course.

Having a young, dynamic, all-Filipino team of headhunters means we always have our ears on the ground.

Our team knows the latest hiring trends, current work conditions, and employee preferences. This allows them to attract top-notch talent.

They’re also trained to assess and scout talent using different platforms available only in the Philippines. Lastly, having a 100% Filipino headhunting team means we’re also to leverage our team’s existing networks.

This — on top of our experience and training — ultimately helps us find the best candidates for you.

We have a robust database of vetted candidates

We take pride in the database of vetted talents we’ve built over the years. Through this system, we can easily tap candidates if you need to fill a role.

You can use our services to hire for a wide variety of positions in the following departments:

  • Creative
  • Web development
  • Customer Support
  • Sales
  • Executive assistance
  • Operations
  • Finance —
  • — and a whole lot more

Aside from the usual roles businesses outsource to Filipino staff, we’ve been able to find our clients more specialized roles in leadership, accounting, and QA testing. All you have to do is let us know what you’re looking for and we’ll find a match for you.

Thorough screening process

Two women on a video call

Screening candidates is probably the most important part of hiring.

Online profiles and resumes can be easily padded with misleading information. You'll need to be thorough with your screening process to make sure that the candidate is truly fit for the job.

Unfortunately, this step is what employers find the most difficult, so they end up hiring folks that fall short of expectations.

Here at Somewhere, we make sure that this doesn’t happen by screening candidates thoroughly.

Each prospective hire goes through the following process before they even get to hop on an interview call with you:

  • Initial interview - We assess if they meet the basic requirements for the role
  • Behavioral interview - This step helps us evaluate if the person is a good culture fit and embodies the values you're looking for
  • Communication skills assessment - Clear communication is vital in any working relationship. Through a series of standard communication tests, we're able to assess if the candidates can communicate effectively
  • Online grammar assessment - depending on the role, candidates are required to take an additional online grammar test

Again, all of this happens before we present the candidates to our clients. Once the client chooses someone, we'll do an additional background check on the candidate before sending them the final job offer.

According to some founders, screening and selecting candidates would take at least 2-4 weeks of their time. Imagine all the tasks that you could do if you outsource hiring to a headhunter agency like Somewhere instead.

High retention rates from well-matched team members

Employee retention depends on a lot of factors beyond our control, but we’re happy to report that 90% of the assistants hired through Somewhere have stayed with their employers for at least a year.

Most of our hires also end up having great working relationships with their employers. Here’s what a few of them have to say:

A testimonial from one of our successful hires

A testimonial from one of our successful hires

A testimonial from one of our successful hires

No recurring fees

Unlike job boards that ask you to pay every time you post a job, or managed staffing services that ask for steep recurring fees each month, we'll only ask for a one-time finder's fee.

The best part is you'll only pay us if we find you someone that you really like.

If we don't, you never owe us anything. We do take a small project deposit to kick off a search, but that's fully refundable as well.

This way, you'll get the most value for your money without the hassle of screening candidates yourself.

60-day guarantee

One of the biggest disadvantages of hiring through job boards and social media is that they don't offer a lot of guarantees or safeguards for employers.

Onlinejobs — a popular hiring platform for Filipinos, for example — only allows you to hire folks but doesn't mediate between you and the VA in case things don't turn out well.

Somewhere, on the other hand, offers a 60-day guarantee. If the working relationship doesn't turn out to be great for any reason, we'll find you someone else.

Vetted by top startup founders

We’re proud to have worked with some of the best founders in the ecommerce, real estate, and B2B marketing industries.

A testimonial from our client, Nik Sharma
A testimonial from our client, Nick Huber
A testimonial from one of our clients, Andrew Wilkinson

Learn more about what’s possible when you hire with Somewhere through our Success Stories.

A headhunter agency makes hiring easy

Hiring team members through traditional job boards, social media, or even with the help of referrals is tedious and time-consuming. As a leader, your focus should be on growing your business, not wading through hundreds of resumes.

If you’re not getting any results from the usual hiring platforms, a headhunter agency like Somewhere can help. Our team of experts can find you awesome team members that cost 80% less than US equivalents.

If you’re ready to grow your team, send us a message today.

FAQs about working with headhunter agencies

What does a headhunter do?

A headhunter scouts team members on behalf of a company. Unlike BPOs or managed staffing services, headhunter agencies simply find qualified candidates and present them to clients. Once the client hires a vetted candidate, the headhunter agency hands the relationship off to them.

Headhunters may also specialize in finding candidates for specific and unique positions.

How much does a headhunter get paid?

Headhunter agencies get paid a one-time finder’s fee instead of a recurring one. In our case, we charge a percentage of the employee’s annual salary as a finder’s fee. We also only charge a fee if we find you someone you like.

How do you get a headhunter to find you?

Headhunters use their network and skills to find candidates. If you’re interested in being matched to an employer, our talent pool is always open.

Get the hiring guide here

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