headhunter

head hunter

1. Someone who recruits employees for a business or corporation. I'm not actively looking for a new job, but this head hunter for a big firm keeps calling me, so I might as well hear her pitch.
2. A member of a tribe who decapitates other people and preserves their heads as souvenirs. Be careful exploring that part of the rainforest—it's home to a tribe of head hunters!
See also: head, hunter
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

headhunter

n. someone who recruits executives for employment. (Head means boss here.) The board of directors hired a headhunter to get a new manager.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • head hunter
  • hunter
  • on the prowl
  • on the watch
  • on the watch (for someone or something)
  • on watch for (someone or something)
  • in the swim
  • in the swim of things
  • in(to) the swim (of things)
  • be in the swim (of things)
References in periodicals archive
The best part about developing relationships with headhunters is that they can bring you career opportunities at times when you aren't necessarily thinking about the job market.
The headhunter urged him to come for the interview, regardless of his final decision.
Ross builds the Headhunter on a machined aluminum reflex riser that is home to several features.
Like the country's Troll Hunter movie last year, Headhunters is a terrific attempt at making us completely forget that the film is subtitled.
HEADHUNTERS Jo Nesbo (Harvill Secker, pounds 11.99) * NORWEGIAN Jo Nesbo, lauded as the new Stieg Larsson, delivered the goods with previous novels The Leopard and The Snowman, and in Headhunters serves up a new hero, Roger Brown.
But the spokeswoman declined to confirm claims that a headhunter had been instructed to find a recruit who could be groomed to take over from chief executive Willie Walsh.
According to one headhunter: "They are growing in confidence.
One telecommunications professional told us that he approached a headhunter after spending five years at the same company, "it cut down a lot of the work in terms of scouring the market and I don't think I would be on the salary I am now if it wasn't for the agency pushing me into a higher bracket than I had previously felt approachable." It is probably the case that the higher up the ladder a candidate is, the less of a need they have for a recruiter but it certainly wouldn't harm anyone's chances, and may well save them some work, if they did use one.
"We're not trying to do the classic Italian pizza," says the former corporate headhunter, who traded in his downtown office for the rigors of the oven.
It seems that, if you become a headhunter in Merseyside, it is money for old rope.
The Rolodex-spinning headhunter is out: Recruiters must be organizational consultants to their clients, researchers during the search, and patient teachers and enthusiastic salespeople in describing opportunities to candidates who don't know the insurance industry.
The base's entire focus is on its two F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter squadrons, the 80th [See "Headhunter Allies," Page 4] and the 35th, which operate 24 hours a day.
Scott, one of the so-called "trouser people" in contrast to the Burmese men who wore sarongs, recorded his forays into headhunter country with his second wife Dora and a horde of unwilling bearers.
All businesses must have income and, for the headhunter, revenue is earned by selling search assignments.
Olson is the managing director of Korn/Ferry International, and, as such, probably Washington's leading corporate headhunter for high-level government officials bound for private practice.