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The use of headhunters to fill senior roles in social care is on the increase but, asks Ruth Winchester, do headhunter agencies compound or alleviate the recruitment crisis?

There can't be a much bigger ego boost than having a headhunter call you on a Monday morning to whisper that your services may be urgently required elsewhere. The icing on the cake is that there will probably be a big pay rise in it for you.

Not all of these clandestine approaches are targeting the right person, however, as many are simply casting about for a likely candidate. Yet most senior social services staff will, at one time or another, have been approached by a recruitment consultant with a specific brief. Indeed, the use of headhunters to fill senior vacancies is now an established part of life.

London boroughs are having more than their fair share of recruitment difficulties, including among senior staff. Hence, it seems likely that a significant number of directors in London boroughs are there by dint of the activities of specialist recruitment agencies such as KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

But when you consider that an appointment through a headhunter costs between £20,000 and £30,000 (or about 33 per cent of the postholder's salary) and that an average stay of three to four years is considered "optimum" for a director, you are looking at a surcharge of between £5,000 and £10,000 per year on top of the initial wage bill. So can the service provided by recruitment consultants really be described as value for money?

The consultants, of course, would argue that it is. Headhunters and employers agree that the number of talented, visionary people wanting to become assistant directors and directors of social services, or even to be involved in any senior management, is dwindling. A few years ago a shortlist for a director's post would have five people on it. Now it is three, if you are lucky. Even the traditional route up from assistant director to director is beginning to falter, with many assistant directors opting to stay put and avoid what they see is an increasingly exposed ladder upwards.

Maggie Hennessy is senior manager, executive search and selection, for PwC. She suggests that an already difficult recruitment situation may be compounded by the attractive opportunities being offered by the new regulatory bodies built by the government. The General Social Care Council, National Care Standards Commission, Social Care Institute for Excellence and Best Value inspection teams have all drawn their share of bright, ambitious people away from statutory and voluntary social care teams.

"They either want to focus on the reason they went into social work, or they are moving into the voluntary sector or the new regulatory bodies," says Hennessy.

This migration, she argues, is starting to tell in the number and quality of applicants for senior posts.

Given that the number of fish in the pool is getting smaller, headhunters are probably better at hooking them than councils. Authorities with problems - bad joint reviews or inspections, or appalling publicity following a child's death, for instance - understandably have difficulties in recruitment. Headhunters can act as "salesmen" for a particular job, persuading potential applicants that their mix of skills is exactly what is needed. For ambitious people with determination, turning around a troubled organisation is seen as a real challenge and can set the seal on a high-flying career.

And, if you were wondering where all that commission goes, good headhunters put potential applicants through an exhaustive recruitment process. Initial search and selection will often include a technical evaluation, looking at how well a candidate knows the relevant procedures, legislation and statutory requirements. Their management skills may also be assessed, possibly with psychometric testing. All of this information is then passed on to the employing organisation.

From a candidate's point of view being headhunted has a number of advantages. Anthony Douglas, executive director of community services for Havering, suggests that good headhunting firms can give candidates essential inside information. "They can tell you the real story - or at least the good ones can," he suggests. "You'll get far more than the basic information you get in an application pack, and it'll give you the bigger picture and let you know what you might be letting yourself in for."

But Douglas argues that one of the preconceptions about headhunters - that they can negotiate vastly inflated salaries for the chosen few - is not necessarily the case in social care. "The truth is that employers are desperate for good people. It is a seller's market - people are already negotiating better salaries for themselves."

Headhunters can provide a useful service for those who don't have lofty ambitions. People are contacted as they are plodding along in a regular, routine job without any urgent desire to move on. They may be contemplating the water, but haven't yet stuck a toe in. A call from a recruitment consultant can give them the confidence boost they need to start contemplating new horizons.

And headhunters may also provide the sort of networking, career development advice and hard-nosed attitude that many people within social care lack.

Unfortunately, for every organisation whose £20,000 has just netted them a rare new recruit, another is mourning the loss of a talented staff member and counting the cost of replacing them.

While headhunters' primary hunting ground is among weak, unattractive and sick organisations, as the recruitment crisis deepens ever more in social care it seems possible that most senior posts in social care will involve the recruitment specialists.

But when the cost of recruiting a senior post is at least equivalent to one front-line worker's annual salary, there have to be questions asked about value for money. In an environment in which many front-line staff and first-line managers are facing paltry pay and unpleasant working environments, investing such vast amounts in senior people, who in all likelihood will stay in the position for less than five years, may verge on the distasteful.

Then there is the issue of equal opportunities. Local authorities are under a duty to ensure equality of opportunity in appointments, and the use of headhunters seems inconsistent. As one director puts it: "The use of headhunters allows the organisation to comply with equal opportunities. Basically, they do the non-complying for you."

Hennessy is quick to dispute this view. "We'd strongly reject that," she says. "Headhunting contributes to equal opportunities. We do a lot of capacity-building - we make ourselves visible and give talks to women's groups and black managers' organisations."

While she denies that PwC engages in positive discrimination (actively seeking people from ethnic minorities or women to take up senior posts), she insists that headhunters can be a positive influence for people who don't fit the white male, middle-class stereotype. And, she points out: "If people aren't around at junior level, they are not going to suddenly materialise at assistant director level."

In an increasingly competitive jobs market headhunters may be the only way to attract sufficient high-calibre interest in a post. But, Julia Ross, director of social services at the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, argues that employers should think long and hard about what they want before calling in the sharp-shooters. "We need to understand what they're about, and to think what we need from them to get the best from them. We are too often passive recipients."