While demand for CEO leadership has been up and to the right for the last several quarters, companies are beginning to take more time to assess candidates before making offers.

In the last three quarters, the amount of time to placement after the candidate was identified increased by 32% from 90 days to 119 days—the longest amount of time we’ve ever observed in our dataset.

CEO Trends

The time to find the candidate, meanwhile, has come down by a similar percentage, moving from 35 days to identify the candidate to 20 days.

Combined, the dynamics have lengthened search velocity from 125 days to 139 days, suggesting a greater diligence in evaluating CEO talent in this environment.