AESC report reveals boosted confidence in executive search sector

In conjunction with BlueSteps, the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) released its Global Executive Outlook Report for 2015.

The findings showed that confidence amongst senior executives around the world had grown by 15% compared to AESC’s 2014 report, with 51% of the 508 executives contacted saying they were optimistic over the prospects in 2015 for the executive recruitment market. All industries were represented in the survey, from healthcare and energy to manufacturing and technology.

Another positive result from the report was that only 13% of the senior executives surveyed were pessimistic in their expectations for 2015. Half of those contacted were in the Americas, with 37% from Europe, the Middle East and Africa and 13% from countries in Asia and the Pacific region.

Describing the five preceding years as having experienced “moribund compensation growth and cost-cutting pressures”, AESC’s president Peter Felix reassuringly went on to comment that “many executives [74%] will consider themselves to be ‘mobile’ once again and interested in a change of environment and opportunity.”

Mr Felix added that “greater economic certainty will encourage executives to take a career risk, and this mobility factor may well usher in a new phase in a war for talent”.

The report’s findings along with ensuing sentiments such as these herald an increasingly bright future for executive search companies and the clients and candidates they represent, with 87% of the executives surveyed saying they actively intended to move on to new challenges last year. In December 2014, only 29% of executive search consultants shared an optimistic view of the market, but this figure had now more than doubled, with 64% of consultants having held a positive outlook for 2015.