The AI Revolution in Executive Search and Leadership Consulting

Artificial intelligence continues to reshape industries across the globe. The executive search and leadership consulting profession is no exception. The industry stands poised for transformation.

John Collins, Ph.D., a FinTech pioneer and founder of Deep Vertical AI, believes AI will not replace human practitioners, but rather will empower them in new and exciting ways.

AI Augmentation

Collins envisions AI dramatically enhancing the capabilities of search professionals, including streamlining processes, increasing market and competitive intelligence, complementing human decision-making and much more.

"Imagine if the executive search person can supercharge their expertise with infinite knowledge that's available instantaneously through a wearable device," he explains. "If she's talking to me and all of the technical jargon that I'm using is being replayed to her through a set of Ray Ban frames via an AI model… she has that information flow available to her in real time."

Consultants already bring expertise, rigorous methodologies and data to an assignment. Collins anticipates a time when AI-powered insights are available to a consultant instantaneously. “Her instincts are telling her this candidate is really good. The AI is telling her why.”

Impact on Roles

It is irrefutable that AI can complete some tasks faster and better than a human. Collins estimates, "Most of the work that researchers currently spend their time doing will be done by AI." What happens to the professional doing that work today? Collins says, “At the moment, the researcher describes a set of CVs after spending seven days and two weekends trawling through them. Within a year or two that researcher is going to be able to say, ‘I have looked at 1000 CV's this morning, then I played them back to the biopharmaceutical landscape analysis, and I found this really interesting correlation.’”

“AI truly revolutionizes the work that the researcher does,” he says. “The researcher becomes a user of information rather than a producer of information.”

Collins sees parallels to how technology transformed financial trading floors: "There are still legions of bright young things every year finding their way onto trading floors. They're not writing tickets anymore; they're doing other things.”

Bias in AI

A concern across talent acquisition and development is the impact models trained on biased data may have on organizations and individuals committed to fairness. Collins explains bias in AI models as an input-output issue. "If I want a model to operate within a certain range of outcomes (for example, broad representation in the result set) then I have to carefully design my input data and training process."

Counteracting bias that may be present in training data is the responsibility of the human using the tools. Collins adds, "It's not something you can just outsource to the model and say, OK, I want an unbiased model."

Data Privacy and Security

The security of client and candidate data is central to the trust placed in consultants, their teams and their firms. “Certain information leaking into the market isn't just a personal catastrophe. It moves the market. It's that significant so obviously, that's something that simply cannot happen," Collins says.

All AESC member firms are rigorous about data privacy and security. To maintain security and derive the value of AI, Collins recommends two approaches. First, cloud-based models in certain circumstances. “If, for example, you're doing some leadership consulting and you're looking at the strategic position of the firm and you're looking at the composition of the leadership team and what an optimal structure around that might be, you're necessarily dealing with public data.”

For confidential work, Collins recommends exploring locally installed open-source AI models rather than relying solely on cloud-based services. "Where you're dealing with data the protection of that data is absolutely paramount, we use these open-source models installed locally and they're extraordinarily powerful," he explains.

Future of the Profession

In the near term, Collins believes AI will revolutionize many of the time-consuming administrative tasks that currently bog down recruiters and researchers. "Candidate screening, for example, is something you can largely automate," he notes. "CV reviews, interactions with clients - for the boutique that doesn't necessarily have a large administrative staff, the full automation of these tasks via AI tools are available and continually emerging on an almost daily basis."

Looking ahead, Collins predicts: "Within a 5-year period, most firms will be using AI pretty much for every interaction that they have." He anticipates AI enabling system-to-system communication between search firms and clients, allowing advisors to consume and analyze virtually infinite amounts of information on clients and candidates.

Ultimately, Collins believes AI will allow executive search and leadership consulting professionals to focus on their highest-value activities. "We become users of information rather than producers of information," he says. "That's one of my favorite ways of describing it.

Facing the Future

While the pace of change may seem daunting, Collins encourages an attitude of curiosity and excitement rather than fear or alarm. "AI enables people to do things in ways that they probably can't conceive of at the moment," he says. "It's not something to be scared of, but something to be really, really excited about."

What does it all mean for people? "The human-to-human connection will always be essential in executive search and leadership consulting," Collins asserts. "We are unable to model that fundamental thing within a human being that enables us to understand another human being."

As the leadership and talent advisory profession navigates this AI-powered future, firms that embrace these new technologies thoughtfully and strategically may find themselves with a powerful competitive edge. The core value of human emotion, intelligence and relationship-building will remain essential, but augmented by AI in ways that expand what's possible toward the infinite.