Confessions of a HEAD HUNTER.

Rainforest headhunters decapitate their human prey and preserve the assorted skulls as trophies. Corporate headhunters may cope with crania more compassionately, but their methods still can be pretty ruthless. After all, it's a jungle out there.

We won't say all headhunters are Boy Scouts. Some have been known to double-bill for travel involving two clients. Some are so-called "ratcheters" who try to raise a proposed candidate's salary so they, in turn, will receive a higher commission. Some are "stoppers" or "lobbers," shooting a few resumes over to a corporation when they learn another search firm is up for an assignment, hoping to land the business. Still others are "resume floaters," who just distribute resumes on the off chance that they'll score. It's no wonder, then, that we've also been called body-snatchers and pirates.

So we acknowledge the existence of some bad apples. But most of us are professionals who subscribe to the Association of Executive Search Consultants' code of ethics (visit www.aesc.org for a member list). And we want to come as close to perfection as we can when matching a candidate to a company. That's why we're sharing the benefit of our experience with you.

Part I: If a Headhunter Calls For You

If one day your phone rings and the person on the other end says he's a headhunter, here's your to-do list.

There are two kinds of corporate headhunters: retained and contingency. A retained headhunter usually is paid by a company year-round, regardless of whether the company is searching. Thus, a partnership develops between the headhunter and the client firm. When a client firm needs to fill a particular position, the retained headhunter is the only one working on the search. His or her attitude toward job-seekers is, "Don't call me; I'll call you."

Headhunters who work on contingency are paid on commission, job by job (typically at about one-third of the final candidate's compensation). Like realtors with a multiple listing, they're the ones who cast a wide net in the hope of catching something. They don't have the same in-depth relationship with the hiring firm, so the contact is more impersonal. And since contingency headhunters are all fighting over the same pool of potential candidates, the pace is more frantic.

So make sure you know your caller's position. You can do a little reconnaissance in The Directory of Executive Recruiters (fondly known as the Kennedy Red Book) published by Kennedy Information. It's a...