Headhunter Calls Feel Like Flattery. They're a Test.

Most headhunter calls arrive at the worst possible moment — mid-quarter, on the walk between two meetings, from an unknown number with a downtown area code. The instinct is to feel flattered and start talking. That's the mistake. The first conversation isn't an offer and it isn't a chat. It's a screening, and the person on the other end is scoring you against a written brief while you're still working out who they are.

There's a reason the phone is ringing at all. KPMG's survey of financial services leaders in the UK, published in April, found 55 per cent expect to grow headcount this year, and more than eight in ten said they were confident of hiring the skills they needed in the first quarter. Recruiters in that market report the money is going into technology, AI and regulatory change. Canadian banks, insurers and asset managers are competing for the same short list of people.

Your side of the table has numbers too. Goodman Masson's 2026 banking and financial services guide reports that 67 per cent of hiring managers say they will pay above their planned band for a qualified candidate who closes a real skills gap. That is leverage. It drains away in about four minutes if you volunteer your current salary, your notice period and your frustrations before you know what the job is.

Why Headhunter Calls Are Really Screening Calls

Almost every senior approach comes through retained search: a company pays a firm — Korn Ferry, Spencer Stuart, Egon Zehnder and Heidrick & Struggles are the usual names — a fee up front to go find people who aren't applying for anything. That's the entire product, access to candidates who are content where they are. The researcher who calls may not be allowed to name the client yet, and that's normal rather than a warning sign. London search firms describe a typical senior mandate as four to eight weeks from briefing to a signed offer, so the pace after that first call can be unforgiving.

What to Ask Before You Say Anything Useful

Headhunter calls follow a script on their side, so it helps to have one on yours. You don't have to decide anything. You do have to work out whether this is worth an hour of your life and a set of interviews you'll have to hide from your calendar. Ask these, roughly in this order, and write the answers down:

• Is this a retained search with a signed mandate, or are you still building a list?
• What's the real title, who does it report to, and why is the seat open?
• What range has the client approved — base, bonus, equity?
• How many candidates are already in process, and how far along?
• Will you confirm in writing that my résumé goes to no one else?

That last question matters more than people expect. A résumé forwarded without your say-so can surface in front of your current employer, or lock you out of a job you'd genuinely want later because a recruiter has already claimed to represent you for it.

What Ontario's Non-Compete Ban Changes for You

This is where Canadian readers should stop borrowing advice written for the City of London. Since 25 October 2021, section 67.2 of Ontario's Employment Standards Act has prohibited employers from entering into non-compete agreements with employees. Not narrowed, not made harder to enforce — prohibited.

Void for Almost Everyone Below the C-Suite

Two exceptions survive. Genuine C-suite roles — chief executive, president, chief operating officer, chief financial officer — can still be bound, subject to the usual common-law test of reasonableness. So can someone who signs a non-compete while selling a business and then goes to work for the buyer. For everyone else the clause is unenforceable, even though it still appears in new contracts every week. Outside Ontario, the older reasonableness analysis governs, so an Alberta or Quebec agreement needs its own reading.

The Clauses That Still Bite

Non-solicitation is a separate animal and remains enforceable when it's drafted reasonably. So are confidentiality terms and anything covering client lists, pipeline data or taking colleagues with you. If your plan involves two analysts and a book of relationships, that's the paragraph a lawyer needs to see — not the non-compete everybody frets about.

The Deferred Money You'd Be Leaving

Before you fall for a bigger base, price your exit. Unvested share units, deferred bonus tranches and signing amounts inside a clawback window are usually forfeited on resignation, and those terms live in the plan documents rather than your offer letter. Total it up, then ask the new employer to buy it out. Plenty will. None will if you never raise it.

The Call Worth Taking Even When You're Staying

Take it anyway. Twenty minutes with a specialist recruiter is the cheapest market research you will ever get: what your title pays elsewhere this quarter, which desks are actually hiring, which of your skills has quietly gone scarce. Ask to move the conversation to a time when you can speak freely from somewhere that isn't your employer's boardroom, and send a short follow-up email within a day so both sets of notes agree.

Then watch two things over the next few months. Whether the phone keeps ringing — a steady rise in headhunter calls inside your niche is a live read on your market value, and it shows up long before any salary survey does. And whether your own contract still carries a clause the law stopped enforcing back in 2021. If it does, you have more room to move than your paperwork implies.