CRM for Headhunters: Win Mandates, Beat the Clock, Get Paid on Every Placement

Three firms, one role, one fee

On a contingent mandate you are usually one of three agencies working the same role, and only the firm whose candidate joins gets paid. Everything else you did that month was unbilled. That single fact should shape how the desk is run: speed to a credible shortlist matters more than shortlist size, and a mandate where the client has stopped responding is costing you more than an empty desk would.

Clients rarely announce that a role has been filled elsewhere. The signal is silence, and silence is exactly what a spreadsheet cannot show you. A pipeline that counts days in stage per mandate turns that silence into a visible line: eleven days since the last client response, three CVs submitted, no interviews scheduled.

Your database is the asset; job portals are a rental

Every headhunter who has run a desk for five years is sitting on the best sourcing channel they will ever own, and most of them cannot search it. A candidate you placed three years ago is now a hiring manager. A finalist who lost out on one role is exactly right for the one that opened yesterday. If those people are only findable by scrolling a folder of CVs, you are paying a portal for access to strangers while ignoring people who already trust you.

Sourcing is not usually the problem. The losses cluster in five places, all of them after the CV has been sent. The client stops giving feedback and the mandate ages out. A colleague submits the same candidate and the fee becomes negotiable. The candidate accepts a counteroffer during notice. The candidate accepts, then goes quiet and does not join. Or the placement joins, the invoice goes out, and nobody chases it until the guarantee period has passed and the relationship has cooled.

None of these need better judgement to fix. They need a scheduled action attached to a date: a feedback chaser at day three, a duplicate check before submission, a check-in every week of the notice period, a joining-day confirmation, and an invoice status that somebody on the desk can actually see.

The three options a boutique realistically compares, on the things that decide whether a mandate turns into a paid placement.

Headhunting revenue has an unusual property: the invoice is triggered by an event that happens weeks after the work finishes, at a location you do not control. A candidate can accept in March and join in May, and in the intervening weeks the only thing protecting the fee is contact. Holding the joining date on the placement record, with a reminder before it and a confirmation on it, is the cheapest revenue protection a desk can buy. The replacement guarantee deserves the same treatment: a scheduled check-in at the thirty and sixty day marks catches a wobbling placement while it can still be saved.

Five numbers, reviewed the same way each week. Live mandates by age. Submissions made versus interviews secured, because a healthy ratio there says your shortlists are credible. Offers pending with the notice-period date on each. Placements joining in the next thirty days. And fees invoiced but unpaid. A desk that reviews those five honestly knows its quarter six weeks before it closes, which is enough time to do something about it.

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