As mentioned on my LinkedIn page, I just returned from the International Association for Corporate and Professional Recruitment Conference (IACPR). The spring conference is called the Small Search Firm Forum. It brings together the principals of small search firms from around the U.S. and Canada. (The fall conference adds the heads of talent acquisition from large corporations such as Google, Kodak and Colgate-Palmolive as well as the principals of the international search firms.)

Incremental improvement in the economy

These are the words that seem to best describe what we all are hearing, seeing and reading. Nothing monumental - but incremental and in a positive direction. While search professionals are notoriously optimistic people, there are actually multiple sources for the information.

Executive Hiring on the Upswing

• This is one of the headlines from the recent ExecuNet RecruitSmart Today e-mail (May 6, 2010). They are reporting an upturn in executive hiring. Their 18th annual report represents a survey of 3,636 participants including executives, search firm consultants and corporate human resource professionals.

CEO Survey

• A special thanks to Clark Waterfall, one of the other members of the planning committee for the IACPR conference referenced above. He conducted a Q2 2010 CEO Survey. From his survey, he states that "CEO sentiment from our last survey has demonstrably shifted, with almost 75% of CEO's indicating that the economy has either bottomed out, or is recovering" (see his firm's Blog at www.bostonsearchgroup.com/blog/ to see the entire survey).

Multiple offers?

• While not the final indicator, many candidates for varying searches in multiple industries and functions are being considered for multiple positions and in two recent cases, received other offers during their consideration by our clients.

This is something we as an industry have not seen for over a year. (Interestingly, our industry is considered a leading economic industry.) We'll end as we began:

• What a difference a year makes!

Stay tuned - the next Blog entries will also be 'learnings' from the conference.