Table of Contents 2024 Q3 Overview Leadership hiring demand dropped 4% quarter-over-quarter in Q3, the second straight quarterly decline. This, after a promising second half of 2023 and a strong start to 2024, leaves the market seemingly slipping off the growth trajectory it’s been fighting so hard to find. While the market isn’t flirting with the market bottom of mid-2022, it also can’t seem to find consistent growth. In the last eight quarters now, opened executive searches have grown roughly 3.5% CAGR in an extremely non-linear fashion: Half the quarters have seen QoQ gains, and half the quarters have seen QoQ declines. While the market has ebbed and flowed in that time period, there had been a constant: CEO and Sales leadership hiring was very much up and to the right. Combined, the two posted five straight quarters of QoQ growth, seemingly carrying the executive search market as companies worked to figure out their “profitable growth” plans. Not anymore. In the last two quarters, it seems the leadership changes needed to execute those plans have been made, with CEO/Sales leadership demand dropping 5% QoQ in Q2 and 10% QoQ in Q3. In Q3, that drop was offset by a surge in Product & Engineering leadership hiring (19% QoQ growth) Some of this change appears related to macro developments, which continue to display a heavy prioritization of AI (and a secondary effect on technology more generally): 210 S&P 500 companies mentioned AI in their Q2 earnings calls, the second straight quarter of more than 200 companies making such a mention—a 3X change from 2022. Q3 remained a challenging quarter for Venture Capital, but you almost wouldn’t know it, as AI funding continues to buoy the market. Though LP commitments are again pacing at half the totals of 2021 and 2022 and the exit markets not yet opening up, investors are placing heavy bets on AI companies, leading to higher deal sizes and valuations. Private Equity, meanwhile, seems to be getting it’s technology legs back. According to PitchBook estimates, PE is on pace to increase software deal volume by 27% YoY and deal value by 33% YoY. Those growth numbers are outpacing the global PE recovery, which has seen deal value increase 23% YoY and deal count increase 13% YoY, suggesting a stronger appetite for AI-adjacent investments. For the executive search market, the above developments map clearly in one more way: Leadership hiring at PE and VC-backed technology companies was up 26% QoQ in Q3. It was a breakout quarter for that sector of the market, which had been dealing with flat quarterly trends since the market dropped. In fact, the total volume of newly opened searches among PE and VC-backed technology companies was the highest it’s been since Q2 2022. The rest of the market? Down 17% QoQ. The search market, then, looks a lot like the market at large: A lot of appetite for the next wave of technology—and not much room for everything else. Looking for vertical-specific insights and compensation data? Fill out the form below to get the full report.