headhunter
headhunter Lexical Profile
headhunter Game Scores & Validity
• noun
A professional recruiter or employment agent who identifies and approaches highly qualified, often currently employed executives or specialists to fill senior positions at another organization.
"A corporate headhunter contacted her on LinkedIn about a vice president role at a rival tech firm."
A member of a historical or indigenous society that practiced the ritualistic taking and preservation of the severed heads of enemies as trophies.
"Early nineteenth-century ethnographers documented the complex social rituals of headhunters in remote island regions."
Word Origin & Etymology
First recorded in the mid-19th century as a compound of 'head' and 'hunter' to describe tribes that collected the heads of slain foes; the figurative corporate sense of an executive recruiter emerged in American business slang in the 1950s.