When hovering into a headwind I always preferred to crack the lever forward a tad from the hover stop rather than lower the nose in order to achieve the bit of rearwards thrust. There are several advantages to this, firstly I think the aircraft looks naff in a slighly low nose attitude (and the USMC taught me that it is always better to die than look bad) secondly the view and so one`s judgement of height is unchanged, but most impoirtant of all, the gear much prefers a mainwheel first VL. In the days when there was a big nose down trim change as you entered ground effect (P1127 and Kestrel configs) various mates broke the nose leg by letting it hit first.