Executive recruiters are optimistic that the executive employment market will improve over the next six months, but judging from their own hiring plans, it seems a conservative approach to rebuilding their teams is the order of the day.

In December, 21 percent of the 144 executive recruiters who participated in ExecuNet's monthly Search Firm Hiring Index poll indicated they planned to increase their professional research and consulting staff to keep pace with expected search assignment growth over the next three months. That was down four points from November.



Looking ahead, it appears most search firms would rather secure more search assignments before rebuilding the internal recruiting resources they had before the recession prompted significant belt-tightening. On balance, however, given a steady increase in recruiter confidence, it may only be a matter of time before demand for executive talent moves more search firms to bring more resources to the business at hand.

Joseph Daniel McCool
Joseph Daniel McCool is senior contributing editor with ExecuNet and principal of management recruiting/succession advisory firm The McCool Group. He is also the author of Deciding Who Leads: How Executive Recruiters Drive, Direct & Disrupt the Global Search for Leadership Talent, recognized widely as "one of the best business books of 2008," and its Brazilian Portuguese translation, Escolhendo Líderes, published in June 2010.

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