From the start I should make clear this blog is about the exec search end of the market.  

I've been thinking a lot lately about what I do, what value I add and how as a headhunter I make money.  Of course one could argue it's a fairly simple model, sell a retained piece of work, find an employee, get paid.  It's elegant and simple, if not always particularly exciting.  Is that it though?  Is that all our business model amounts to?

Actually the bits I enjoy about my job and the bits that interest me the most aren't really the day to day bits of search it's the much more commercial aspects of what I do that turns me on.  I love meeting a Chairman or a CEO who tells me something interesting about what they do or what they're looking to do and then connecting them with other businesses or other individuals who can help them achieve their goal.  It's meeting the entrepreneurs with a great idea who just don't have the contacts or the capital to get it off the ground and then introducing them to the right people or the right organisations who can help.  Those meetings where you have a great idea for a joint venture between disparate companies that later becomes reality with a bit of a push.  

Those are the most interesting aspects of my work but they're not really what you'd call traditional search work.  Ironically though the value of these to what I do is probably the highest of all, they build my credibility often pay better than a simple search if it leads somewhere and best of all actually creates something which changes the sector I work in just slightly.  

What other things outside of traditional recruitment do you get up to?  How does it benefit your business and does it make you money?