Issues in the recruitment world

　　In the competitive world of investment banking, good senior executives are not easy to find. So what should the industry's hard-pressed directors do when they need to find senior staff? Increasingly, they decide to call in the headhunters. These are busy and profitable times for the recruitment agencies that dominate the world of executive search and selection.

　　(0) .....They needed new people to revitalise their operations, and the result has been a boom in the recruitment market. Pinnacle, a leading recruitment agency, has helped various UK investment banks to rebuild their entire senior management teams. It is hard to overstate the significance of this. (8)............

　　But now everything has changed, and Pinnacle is not the only major player in the field. Some analysts believe that rival recruitment specialists ALT Associates has a larger share of the market. However, there is little doubt that over its 13-year history, Pinnacle and its chairman, Matthew Edwards, have built up an impressive reputation.

　　Edwards estimates that his company controls between 10 and 15 per cent of the headhunting market for senior investment banking jobs in the UK. (9)............Rather, it is the high-calibre jobs and people that Pinnacle deals with that define the company's success. For example, the company was recently commissioned to find a new chairman for NBS Bank, a vacancy that was one of the most talked about in the banking world.

　　Most HR directors recognise that headhunters such as Pinnacle play a valuable role in the recruitment process.(10)............Some are concerned that a few companies, including Pinnacle, have too much power over high-level recruitment.(11)............As Tim Davidson, HR Director at Cawfield Bank, explains, They can be kingmakers. These are the people who decide who gets a future and who doesn't. If Edwards forms a view about an individual, it can affect their ability to get a particular job. That view could just have been formed on a bad day.' (12)............ Final decisions in the selection process are always taken by his clients, he says, whoever they are.

　　The role of headhunters should not be exaggerated. Many companies never use them. But as top executives are hard to find, there will always be a role for people like Matthew Edwards.

　　A Although others may put it lower, it is important to remember that the company's reputation is not based on market share alone.

　　B Their chief worry is that the headhunters can now make or break managerial careers.

　　C According to Edwards, this is a further indication that the way Pinnacle searches for a candidate tends to favour a certain type of manager.

　　D But this acceptance does not mean they are universally happy, either with the state of the market or with Pinnacle's role within it.

　　E Until a few years ago, even the biggest companies were unlikely to use headhunters to fill more than one or two jobs a year.