Close to 40 specialists in executive search and leadership development gathered recently in Madrid for the annual conference of Cornerstone International Group. It’s a good time to be a member partner of a group that is in growth mode in a growing business.
Industry growth
At a time when the workplace is rapidly becoming more complex, finding the right people becomes more challenging and the pressure to do so also increases.
The pressure is greatest at the key technical and leadership level, positions that are going to influence performance directly. But mid and upper-mid are also becoming harder to figure out as engineering and operations roles become more specialized.
Small wonder then that worldwide revenues for executive search and leadership consulting grew for the fifth straight year in 2016, and increase of 11.7% to an estimated $12.9 billion according to the Association of Executive Search Consultants, which represents over 9,000 consultants worldwide.
Growth within the industry
Cornerstone continues to carve its own niche within this market and has been named to two prestige lists within the past 12 months.
In April 2016, we were listed by Forbes in the Top 10 of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms in Executive Search. This past April, we were also named in the Forbes Top 20 of America’s Executive Search Firms.
The Americas constitute the largest global market for executive search by revenue volume.
Cornerstone has partner members in 35 countries around the world. Recent additions to the network have been Turkey, Brazil, Vietnam and Japan.
The Group is also growing its service portfolio. Much of the discussion in Madrid centred around the expansion of the Leadership consulting component and further specialization within the executive search offer.
“Although executive search accounts for 84% of the sector we are in, the fastest growth is coming from Leadership Consulting,” explained Simon Wan, CEO of Cornerstone International Group. “We also see specialization of search services becoming more and more important.”
Cornerstone will introduce a new global website in mid-June which will reflect both imperatives. The primary service in the Leadership Development portfolio is Executive Coaching, including new hire onboarding, career coaching, leadership coaching and skills training.
The specialization of executive search pulls together global teams led by Life Sciences & Health and Digital Financial Services. The Group anticipates a total of 12 Practice Groups by the end of 2017, six in industry specialization and six in functional, or role specialties.
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