Monthly Confidence Levels: Executive Retreats, Recruiter Surges

Published on: Tuesday, October 30, 2007       Comments (0)       Category: Human Capital, 

According to the September survey of 233 senior-level executives, 32 percent are “confident” or “very confident” the executive employment market will improve during the next six months, a significant 14-point drop from August. Short-term confidence (next three months) also faltered with 31 percent of executives indicating they are “confident” or “very confident” that there will be improvement — down from 42 percent the previous month.

“Executive confidence remained strong through the summer, despite the historical lulls we measured in 2005 and 2006,” notes Mark Anderson, president of ExecuNet. “The September retreat in confidence is representative of economic concerns and financial market volatility.”

A full quarter of the executive respondents indicated that the overall employment market improved over the last 30 days, while 65 percent declared it flat, and 11 percent thought it was getting worse.

In the longer term, however, search firm professionals were more optimistic than the executives. ExecuNet’s September companion survey of 125 executive recruiters found that 60 percent (up from 55 percent in August) were “confident” or “very confident” the executive employment market will improve during the next six months; while 60 percent were “confident” or “very confident” about the coming three months — down from 65 percent in August.

The executive search industry’s outlook for job growth during the fourth quarter remained bullish, as the vast majority of professionals (78 percent) are expecting at least a 10 percent increase in the number of assignments received from corporate clients before year-end. To help manage this growth, nearly half of all search firms (46 percent) are planning to add professional staff during this period of time. In the previous three months, 32 percent of all firms increased their staff.

“Based on the amount of pent-up demand in the market, predictions of strong executive level job growth through the first quarter of 2008 are well within reach,” says Anderson. “Given the current shortage of top talent, companies are well aware of the consequences of putting their hiring plans on hold — and very few are willing to take that risk.”