The questions top headhunters ask that junior recruiters skip

Everyone asks about experience, salary, and notice. Those are table stakes, and they tell you almost nothing about whether a candidate will actually move, actually fit, and actually still be there at offer stage. The seasoned ones get under the surface, and they do it with a handful of specific questions.

Here are the questions the best headhunters ask, and why the answers matter more than they look.

"What would have to be true for you to leave your current role?"

Junior recruiters ask if someone is open to opportunities. Everyone says yes, because it is free to say yes. It tells you nothing.

The better question forces a real answer. It surfaces what is actually driving them, and just as useful, whether anything is. A candidate who cannot name what would make them move is not on the market. They are curious. Knowing that early saves you weeks of chasing someone who was never going to sign.

"Walk me through the last time you did this, specifically."

Anyone can describe what they are good at in the abstract. The skill is real when it comes with a specific story attached.

Ask for the actual instance. The project, the problem, what they did, what happened. Vague confidence falls apart here, and quiet competence comes alive. You learn more from one concrete example than from ten lines of self-assessment, and you get something real to put in front of the client instead of adjectives.

"What would make a move worth it for you?"

Juniors ask for a salary expectation, write down the number, and move on. Headhunters ask what would actually make the move worth making, which is a bigger question than the figure.

Note that asking what someone currently earns is restricted or banned in a growing number of markets, so the right question is forward-looking anyway. What are they expecting, and what would make a move worth it. The answer surfaces the things that are not salary. A title, a shorter commute, a manager they would respect, the work itself. Money is rarely the only lever, and the candidates who pretend it is are usually the ones who counteroffer.

"Who else are you talking to?"

This feels intrusive, so juniors skip it. It is one of the most useful questions you can ask.

You are not prying. You are mapping the competition for this person and the timeline you are working against. A candidate three rounds deep elsewhere is a different situation from one just starting to look, and you manage each completely differently. Asked plainly and without pressure, most candidates answer, because it reads as someone taking their search seriously.

"What did you not like about the last few roles?"

Strengths are easy and rehearsed. The signal is in what frustrated them, because that is what they are trying to avoid next, and it is what will make them leave the role you place them in.

If everything that went wrong was always someone else's fault, that is information. If they can talk honestly about a poor fit and what they learned, that is a different candidate. Either way you learn what to protect them from, which is how placements stick.

"If we made you an offer tomorrow, what happens next?"

Ask this early, not at the end. It surfaces every obstacle between interest and signature before you hit them by surprise.

A counteroffer they have not thought about. A partner who has not agreed to relocate. A bonus that pays out in two months. A notice period longer than they first said. The candidates who fall through at the last minute almost always had a reason that was visible weeks earlier, if someone had asked. This is the question that asks.

The short version

The questions that separate top headhunters from junior recruiters are not harder. They are more honest. What would actually make you move. Show me the real example. Who else is in this. What goes wrong next. They get past the rehearsed version of the candidate to the one who will or will not sign.

The rehearsed answers tell you who someone wants to look like. These tell you who they are.

Sonarnote records interviews locally, without a bot joining the call, and turns them into structured candidate briefs, so the answers to questions like these end up in the brief instead of lost after the call. See how it works.