Q1 2016 State of the Industry Report

Every industry sector reported a quarter-on-quarter increase in searches started, with Consumer and Industrial leading the way with a 9.2 and 6.9 percentage point increase respectively. Non-Profit saw an increase of 42.7 percentage points, but is prone to much larger shifts due to a smaller volume of searches overall.

Revenue grew by 8.8% quarter-on-quarter and 18.4% year-on-year, which is especially noteworthy considering the profession has recorded two consecutive years of record-breaking growth.

Karen Greenbaum, AESC President & CEO, said: “It’s interesting to note that while average fees were flat year-on-year, the number of searches, total revenues and average revenues per consultant increased. Overall, this indicates that clients are turning to our profession for their critical executive talent needs and would suggest that we are on track for another strong year. That said, we will be monitoring the impact of BREXIT on European executive talent decisions during the second half of the year.”

While our year end state of the industry statistics now represent a much larger group of global firms, based on data availability, our quarterly data is based on a narrower group of global firms. As a result we are streamlining this report to provide a quarterly snapshot of high-level trends and committing to a greater level of geographic and sector data in our annual reporting.

• Average fee per assignment recorded a 7.2% decrease quarter-on-quarter and is flat year-on-year. The quarterly decrease is explained by three consecutive rises from Q1-3 last year.
• The number of searches started rose by 8% quarter-on-quarter. While we normally see an increase of searches started every year during Q1, it is encouraging that the year-on-year figure has also grown by 5.3%.
• Average revenue per consultant is on the rise by 1% quarter-on-quarter and 11% year-on-year
• Every industry sector reported a quarter-on-quarter increase in searches started, with Consumer and Industrial leading the way with a 9.2 and 6.9 percentage point increase respectively. Non-Profit saw an increase of 42.7 percentage points, but is prone to much larger shifts due to a smaller volume of searches overall.
• The Life Sciences / Healthcare, Financial and Consumer sectors all recorded a strong increase in number of searches started year-on-year – with 24.7, 11.5 and 8.8 percentage point gains respectively.

Download the full report here.