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How to Start an Executive Search Firm

Starting an executive search firm can be quite lucrative, but you’re going to have to work hard for those liquid assets.

Executive search projects are more complex and time consuming than other search projects, and success will require you secure the best people and tools to meet the demands of executive search projects.

We wrote “How to Start a Recruiting Company from Home,” to cover basic steps of starting a recruiting business, so this post will focus on starting an executive recruiting business rather than all of the boxes you need to check when starting a company.

Find Your Executive Recruiting Niche

The first step in starting a successful executive recruiting company is to find the best niche for your company.

For people with specialized careers who have mostly worked within a single industry or closely related industries, this niche will be easy to find. Simply look back over your career for the most successful executive search projects completed in this niche and leverage these examples to help your firm win business and excel on your home turf.

For generalists who have worked executive search projects in a variety of industries, it is also in your best interest to specialize. For instance, you could look back on your career to see whether you have been more successful on executive search projects for B2B companies or B2C.

No matter what niche you choose, specializing will only give you an advantage if you, your firm’s partners or your recruiters have direct experience hiring executives in this niche. As a new firm, you will be relying on successful work from the past to win your first client, making “breaking into” a new industry nearly impossible for a newly formed firm.

Finding Your Niche

Proving Your Success in Your Niche

Build Your Brand

Once you’ve defined the niche your executive recruiting company is going to dominate, start building a brand that goes hand in hand with your company’s focus.

These are the baseline brand assets you should launch your company with:

You don’t have to hire a consultant when building your brand. Just think strategically about your company’s target customers, the brands of the executive recruiting companies that work in your niche and how you can stand out positively from these competitors.

Who is in your Brand’s Audience?

How Will Your Brand Stand Out?

Secure Executive Recruiting Talent

To ensure that your first executive search project is successful, you should secure executive recruiting talent for your firm well before you sign your first client.

As a new firm, you will need to rely on your personal reputation and the reputation of your business partners to attract talent, but you will also need to provide a competitive job offer to get talented recruiters onto your team.

What do you Need from Executive Recruiters?

How will You Recruit the Executive Recruiters you Need?

Secure Executive Search Tools

To ensure your executive recruiting company is a success, you need to secure executive recruiting software to support the effectiveness of your recruiters and the timely close of your search projects.

You should secure tools that:

Loxo’s all in one recruiting platform uses a comprehensive CRM + ATS, automatic sourcing and contact creation powered by AI and a suite of candidate marketing tools to meet the extensive demands of executive search projects.

Our customers are leading executive search and boutique staffing firms that are tired of complex recruiting software that slows them down. Loxo is simple and intuitive so you can reduce your overhead and dramatically simplify the way you work.

Not only has Loxo automated your manual and mundane processes, we built smart tools into your recruiting experience. From finding contact information with the click of a button to automatically sourcing the top 10 percent of every market, it’s time for your software to work for you.

If want an executive recruiting tool that enhances the effectiveness of your team, schedule a demo to see how we’ll be improving search project outcomes for you and your clients.

Find Your First Client

You’ve got the brand, recruiting talent and tools required to make great placements, so all that’s left is finding the first client for your executive agency.

When you engage a potential client, your goal is to prove that you are trustworthy, experienced and capable enough to handle this company’s most important hires.

Identify New Client Leads

Use Your Network

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