Executive hiring continued its 2025 growth streak, ending Q3 up 14% quarter-over-quarter and hitting a new post-COVID high water mark for demand.

And while there are positive signals for continued demand (public markets continue their runs and private market capital deployment keeps picking up steam), the market has seemed to reset in its approach: No longer, it seems, does the market want to outrun its own growth. 

While the trajectory of demand in the executive search market has historically tracked the S&P 500, the spread between the two has widened in recent quarters, especially as both markets have refound their footing this year. In essence, the executive search market is rebounding—but it is doing so at an increasingly cautious pace.

Indexing Opened Searches and the S&P 500 to Q1 2020, you can see that the spread between the two indexes has grown over the last two years. In fact, on a rolling four-quarter basis, that spread is larger now than it ever has been.

That caution appears to be showing in other ways, too. 

Since Q3 2024, reliance on executive recruiters to help land director-level and below roles has dropped by nearly 10 raw percentage points. 

What used to comprise roughly a quarter of the executive search market now accounts for about 15%. 

Year-over-year, newly opened searches for director-and-below roles were down 10% in Q3, while newly opened searches for more senior roles (Head of, VP, SVP & C-Level) were up 19%.

These “cautious” growth trends seem to be hitting in other parts of the market, too: 

• In Private Equity, which has already surpassed 2024 in terms of exit value and hit 28% YoY growth for deal value in Q3, product and engineering roles remain fairly flat in terms of demand. But when you zoom in on median compensation for more senior product and engineering roles (Head of, VP, SVP & C-Level), that figure is up 26% YoY. The market may be cautious about overhiring, but not overspending.
• Venture Capital, meanwhile, saw a 25% QoQ jump in opened searches in Q3. It certainly seems like “caution” might not apply here. But then you look at the fact that VCs have deployed nearly 2X the amount of capital over on a trailing 12-month basis, and suddenly it looks much more tame. 
• In Q2 earnings calls, S&P 500 companies mentioning “AI” jumped 32% QoQ, according to FactSect. Though the context of AI isn’t distinguished between using the technology for operational efficiency (a term that, itself, popped in 2024, according to Morgan Stanley) or to fuel growth by incorporating it into their product offerings, the lack of clarity there is sort of the point: Public companies appear to be increasingly willing to grow faster than they hire, thereby creating a more efficient growth story.

And, across all markets, we saw search velocity accelerate this quarter, with the time to identify a placed candidate from 23 days in Q2 to 15 days in Q3. And while that type of accelerated timeframe isn’t something we’ve seen since COVID, there was no corresponding drop in time to place said candidate. So, even there, growth…but with caution.

As growth returns, albeit with its own “cautious” caveats, we’ll monitor these developments to see how the executive search market handles the changing demands. For now, though, it seems clear: In highly prioritized roles, top talent will still generate top demand and command top dollar. Employers, however, may just be waiting a little longer to collectively pull the trigger.

About the Report

This report was developed to provide executive recruiters and talent leaders with data-backed insights to help them both gain a better understanding of the industry, market, and environment they operate in and make more informed decisions.

We anonymized and aggregated our data from more than 31,000 compensation and search records to construct the benchmarks, statistics, and trends you will see in this report. We also cross-referenced relevant industry analysis and sources to understand how leadership recruiting is being impacted by rapidly evolving macro and socioeconomic events, in addition to recent extreme volatility in growth markets.

Our data and combined research uncovers leading indicators for executive hiring, how public and private market fluctuations impact demand for leadership hiring, why VCs have been impacted more than others, what the forecast is for leadership hiring over the next few quarters, as well as trends with executive compensation benchmarks.