HEADHUNT

transitive verb Also written head-hunt (Business World) To approach (a manager or other skilled employee who already has a job) with a view to persuading him or her to join another company in which a vacancy has arisen, especially when this approach is made by an agent or agency (a headhunter) specifically employed for this purpose by the company seeking staff. Also as an intransitive verb: to act as a headhunter; to engage in the process of executive recruitment known as headhunting. Etymology: The verb is back-formed from the action noun headhunting; this in turn is a case of a derisive nickname for the practice (also labelled body-snatching or poaching) which eventually became a semi-official term in business circles, losing even its metaphorical association with primitive peoples and the taking of heads as trophies. History and Usage: Headhunting originated in the US (the practice in the fifties, the name in the second half of the sixties), but was not at all widespread in the UK until the eighties, the term headhunter remaining a derisive slang term until then. Headhunt as a verb has a similar history--first used in the sixties, but entering a rather different register of usage after the early eighties. During the eighties it became common for senior executives who were unhappy in their jobs to offer their services to headhunters, so that the agency's job included finding jobs for individuals as well as individuals for jobs. He interviewed several people for the position but he did not find anyone suitable. Head-hunting seemed to be the next move. Jeffrey Archer First Among Equals (1984), p. 223 At 45, Peter Birch brought the average age of building society chiefs down by a good few years. Worse, he had not been born and bred in the 'movement', but was headhunted from outside. Money & Family Wealth Mar. 1989, p. 25 I can't afford an unemployed husband, and there isn't a headhunter in New York who'll talk to Wilder after one look at his curriculum vitae and his job record. Saul Bellow A Theft (1989), p. 6