Executive search trends for 2027: what is published and what is not

The latest published numbers close to executive search point in different directions. The public pages checked from the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC) and Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) print no executive search market size. Russell Reynolds counted 234 CEO departures in 2025 among the companies on the 13 indices it tracks, 16% more than in 2024. Its index page now counts 141 CEO departures through Q3 2026, against 174 in the same period of 2025. Korn Ferry reported 10% year-over-year fee revenue growth in Search in the first quarter of its fiscal 2027. None of these figures is a count of search assignments, since two count CEO departures and one is fee revenue.

This page is written for owners of search firms and for heads of talent who buy search. Figures are as of October 27, 2026, except the Russell Reynolds Q3 2026 figures, which were read on October 28. Each row of the table below gives the period, the group the number covers and, where the publisher states one, the date of the next update. Hiring numbers for the wider labor market sit on Recruiting Trends 2027, and the in-house view is in Talent Acquisition Trends 2027.

The numbers, with the group each one covers

The three 2025 Russell Reynolds rows cover one universe of companies, those listed on the indices it tracks, and permanent enterprise CEOs only. The first two rows count departing CEOs and the third counts incoming CEOs. Companies outside those indices are not in the count. The index page words the Q3 2026 appointment counts as global. This page does not confirm that they use the same 13 indices and the same permanent-CEO definition as the 2025 rows.

CEO turnover rose in 2025 and is lower so far in 2026

Russell Reynolds puts 2025 CEO departures 21% above its eight-year average. Its index page shows a lower count for 2026, with 141 departures through Q3 against 174 in the same period of 2025 and a nine-year average of 151. The page says CEO turnover “is showing signs of normalizing after the heightened activity of recent years”. Korn Ferry’s Search fee revenue grew 10% in the quarter it reported on September 9, 2026. The measures also differ. One counts people leaving CEO seats at listed companies. The other is a search firm’s own fee revenue, reported in a release that does not split executive search from professional search. Korn Ferry’s release adds that fee revenue grew in all regions year over year and calls the quarter its sixth consecutive quarter of top line growth. Russell Reynolds publishes its own index and Korn Ferry reports its own results. Neither is an independent statistic of the search market.

A departure is not a search. Russell Reynolds quotes its UK board and CEO practice leader saying that boards are “increasingly selecting internal candidates over proven CEOs”. The text of the annual report gives no split between internal and external appointments. The index page says it tracks “whether CEOs are internal or external hires”. From the index chart data, the internal share of incoming CEOs worldwide was 51.4% in Q4 2025, 69.2% in Q1 2026, 78.2% in Q2 2026 and 55.3% in Q3 2026, when the external share was 44.7%. Those values were read from the chart data embedded in the page, so they carry less certainty than the printed figures. In our view, 234 is the number of CEO seats that opened at those companies, and the number filled through a search firm is not in these sources. An external hire is not necessarily a search-led hire, so no firm should read 234 or a quarterly external share as a forecast of its own search assignments.

The US outlook shows how fast the seats themselves grow. BLS projects employment of top executives to grow 5% from 2025 to 2035, faster than the 3% average for all occupations. Most of that group is general and operations managers, 3,599,000 of the 3,890,600 jobs in 2025. Chief executives held 291,600 jobs and are projected to grow 3%, the same figure BLS gives as the all-occupations average. The 304,100 yearly openings cover the whole group, and BLS says many come from replacing workers who transfer to other occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.

Rusty O’Kelley, Co-Lead Board and CEO Advisory Partners in the Americas at Russell Reynolds Associates, says in the January 2026 report that sustained high levels of CEO turnover should be expected given the environment leaders are operating in today. In our view, a 2027 plan should not assume a repeat of 2025’s count, since the index page’s later Q3 2026 figures show fewer departures than a year earlier. With US chief executive seats projected to grow 3% in a decade, a search firm’s CEO work depends on turnover and on how many of those seats are filled through a search firm, so the sensible plan starts from your own list of expected successions and treats the market total as background.

First-time CEOs are the default

Russell Reynolds reports that first-time CEOs were 86% of incoming CEO appointments in 2025, against 85% in 2024. Its index page says these CEOs “had never held a CEO role at a public-listed company”. The report calls the consistency the signal, and says first-time appointments have been the boards’ preferred choice since Russell Reynolds began tracking in 2018. The index page’s Q3 2026 year-to-date figures keep the majority, with first-time CEOs at 75% of 2026 appointments so far. The planning assumption for 2027 should be that a CEO appointment at a company on those indices usually goes to a first-time CEO.

That changes what a shortlist has to prove. By that definition a first-time CEO has no public-company CEO record to check, so the evidence moves to references and assessment, and to the plan for the first year. Russell Reynolds says boards that set up first-time CEOs for success “invest early and visibly”, and its examples include a structured transition and targeted coaching and mentorship. A search firm can sell that work as named deliverables beside the search. A buyer can ask what the firm does between acceptance and the end of the first year.

That leaves about 14% of incoming CEOs who were not first-time CEOs, computed from the rounded 86%. Through Q3 2026, 42 of the 171 incoming CEOs had previously led a public company, or 25% of appointments, against 13% in the same period of 2025 and a nine-year average of 15%. The share who had led a public company has almost doubled from the same period of 2025, while first-time CEOs remain the majority. A brief that requires prior public-company CEO experience asks the client to make a choice that boards made in about 14% of appointments in 2025 and 25% so far in 2026, and the client should hear both numbers before the search starts. The 2025 figures cover companies on the 13 indices. They say nothing about private companies or companies outside those indices.

AI changes what a search fee pays for

The sources on this page say little about AI inside search firms. AESC’s March 24, 2026 release says its members-only report, The Human Era in Executive Search, draws on AESC’s 2025 Three-Year Global Benchmark Survey to examine how client expectations are evolving amid market volatility and leadership complexity, and amid the growing influence of artificial intelligence. One listed theme is “Where AI is influencing process, perception, and performance”, another is “How firms are being evaluated and selected”, and the release prints no survey result. No source on this page measures AI’s effect on search fees or on search firm headcount, so what follows is a position.

In our view, the long list is the part of a search most exposed to software, and the fee should rest on what software does not do. If a first list of names can be drafted in an afternoon, clients may stop paying for the list. What stays scarce is the work that depends on people agreeing to talk. That means reference calls and back-channel diligence, and closing a candidate who has other options.

For an owner, the question is what the researchers do next. A firm can retrain them toward diligence work and reference interviews, or accept that the list stage needs fewer people. For a buyer, the useful questions are which steps use AI tools and who answers when a source turns out to be wrong. Before accepting an AI screening step in a search, check AI Hiring Laws 2027: Dates by Jurisdiction for the places where the candidates live and work.

Credential and identity checks move ahead of the shortlist

Gartner predicts that by 2028 one in four candidate profiles worldwide will be fake. That is a forecast from a press release dated July 31, 2025. The release gives no method for it and no breakdown by seniority, and it covers candidate profiles in general, so it gives no rate for executive candidates.

The same release reports a second-quarter 2025 survey of 3,000 job candidates in which 6% admitted to interview fraud, either posing as someone else or having someone else pose as them in an interview. The release says employers should focus on “system-level validation rather than individual surveillance”.

A search firm should verify identity and the checkable parts of a finalist’s record, such as degrees and board seats, before the shortlist reaches the client. The firm’s name is on the shortlist, and a candidate who fails a check after presentation costs the firm credibility with that client. The check belongs before the introduction. A buyer can ask when the identity and credential checks happen and who runs them.

What we could not confirm

• Executive search market size and growth. The AESC release prints no market size or growth rate. It says AESC brings together over 16,000 professionals in more than 80 countries. Only the first page of AESC’s research listing was read, because the second page could not be opened. SIA’s global staffing estimates carry the line “This information can only be accessed by SIA members.” The closest public SIA figure covers all US staffing: SIA projects 2.4% growth in 2026 to $183.1 billion and forecasts 2.2% further growth in 2027, with no executive search split in the public summary. For the staffing market, see Recruitment Agency Trends 2027. SIA lists a members-only global forecast webinar for November 4, 2026, whose description mentions staffing segments and does not name executive search. Market sizes quoted on vendor or job-board pages are not used, since the AESC and SIA pages checked give no figure to check them against.
• AESC’s Australia market report. The summary page for the Australia Market Report 2025 prints “11.6% CAGR growth since 2018” for the Australian executive search industry. That is a growth rate for Australia only, the page prints no market size, and the report body, reached through a “View Now and Download” link on that page, was not read.
• What Korn Ferry’s Search figure includes. The release does not split executive search from professional search. Korn Ferry’s filings or earnings call may, and neither was read for this page. The 10% describes Korn Ferry’s Search label as a whole.
• Other search firms. Results from Heidrick & Struggles and Spencer Stuart were not searched.
• Newer CEO turnover data. Russell Reynolds says it will continue to publish quarterly Global CEO Turnover Index updates throughout 2026. Its index page, read on October 28, 2026, carries data through Q3 2026, prints no calendar date and lists annual reports for 2023 through 2025, so it shows no Q4 2026 figure and no 2026 annual report.
• Why the 234 CEOs left, and who replaced them. The text of the annual report gives no breakdown of the departures by reason and no share of internal versus external appointments. The index chart data gives quarterly internal and external shares of incoming CEOs from Q4 2025 to Q3 2026, shown above. This page has no internal or external share for the first three quarters of 2025 or for the year, and no source on this page gives departure reasons.
• Executive-level fake-profile rates. No source on this page gives one. AESC’s research listing includes a May 2024 guide titled Candidate Background Screening in Executive Search. Its content was not reviewed for this page.

Using this in your 2027 plan

If you run a search firm:

1. Treat the 234 as seats that opened. Build the pipeline from your own list of expected successions, because the sources on this page do not say how many seats were filled through a search firm.
2. Price the parts of a search that depend on people. If any fee milestone is tied to delivering a long list, ask whether it still matches what the client values.
3. Offer assessment and a first-year plan as named deliverables for first-time CEOs, since they were 86% of incoming CEOs at the companies Russell Reynolds tracks in 2025 and 75% of appointments through Q3 2026.
4. Put identity and credential checks before the introduction in your process document and in your proposals.
5. Keep market-size claims out of pitch decks unless you can cite an AESC or SIA figure.

If you buy search:

1. Ask what happens after acceptance when the candidate has not been a public-company CEO before.
2. Ask which steps use AI tools and who answers for them.
3. Ask when identity and credential checks happen and who runs them.
4. Russell Reynolds counts 141 CEO departures through Q3 2026 even as it describes turnover as normalizing. Build a succession slate before the seat opens, because seats keep opening at that rate. A slate drawn up after the resignation letter lands is a rushed search with a better name.

Your next step is to list the executive roles that could open in 2027, name an internal successor for each, and add the list to your Recruiting Plan Template 2027.

Written and reviewed by the HR Riant Editorial Team. General information, not legal advice.