Recently, one of the Chicago-based executive search firms received a desperate call from a long-time customer, a manufacturing company venturing into Germany.
They had to recruit a Chief Operations Officer who would know the American corporate culture and the complexity of the German Mittelstand business environment. What they didn't have was the deep network in Munich or Stuttgart necessary to identify and engage the right candidates.
Five years back, they would have refused to give the assignment or would have outsourced it completely and would have seen the revenue and the equity of relations being lost to a competitor. Instead, they entered into a strategic alliance with a German company providing search services, co-owned the placement, delivered outstanding results, and enhanced their relationship with the client.
This is not a one-time only achievement. It is a paradigm change in the manner by which regional executive search firms ensure sustainable competitive advantage in a more globalized market.
The Market Forces Reshaping Executive Search
Dramatic change in the executive search environment has experienced a significant change over the last decade. What started as slow evolutionary developments, working-from-home practices, hiring internationally, and electronic talent pools has gained steam into a structural re-organisation of how organisations acquire leadership talent.
Total volumes of hiring have been oscillating, but executive placements across borders have increased by over 40% since 2020. Remote work and hybrid work models have rendered location less essential, but at the same time, cultural fit and local market knowledge seem more critical than ever before.
This presents a strategic quandary to regional search firms. The demand of clients to have international capabilities is growing, and developing really profound networks in not only two or three geographies would require decades to do it organically and would have unsustainable overheads. The clients desire that their trusted advisor stay involved and not make an introduction and walk off.
In smaller independent and boutique firms of between 5 and 50 consultants, it is not just about losing individual searches, but it is slowly becoming irrelevant to the business-critical clients.
Why Regional Expertise Remains Irreplaceable
This is what globalization narrative often lacks:
āAs much as markets are becoming more interconnected, they have not become homogenized. On the contrary, it is so in numerous aspects. Now the value of real local expertise is even more acute, not less so, since the cross-border hiring process has become more prevalentā.
Take the case of the Benelux region, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
On the surface, these are three little, neighbouring states with well-educated labour forces and robust economies. Practically, a search firm working in all three markets has to reside in Dutch, French and German business, numerous rules regarding employment and compensation, and separate pools of talent with different expectations in terms of career mobility, equity participation, and integration of work and life.
The same rules apply in all the key markets. Understanding the nuances of stock option expectations in Los Angeles entertainment versus San Francisco technology, or the cultural dynamics of hiring C-suite executives in Japan's rapidly evolving corporate governance environment, or the specific considerations around Mittelstand leadership succession in Germany, these aren't things you can learn from a database or a few phone calls. They require years of relationship-building, pattern recognition, and market immersion.
Regional search firms possess several irreplaceable advantages:
Robust Network
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They have networks that extend beyond LinkedIn connections.
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They know who the rising stars are before they appear on anyone's radar.
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They understand the informal power structures within local industries.
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They are also able to evaluate the issues of cultural fit beyond what is on a resume since they know the unwritten rules of business in the country where they operate.
Deep Market Intelligence & Industry Expertise
They possess market intelligence that no amount of desk research can replicate.
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Which companies are experiencing leadership instability?
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Which executives are quietly open to new opportunities?
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What compensation packages are actually competitive versus what salary surveys suggest?
More Credibility
The executive in Toronto, Munich, or Tokyo is much more likely to pick up the phone when a search consultant calls, and they realise that they are a legitimate participant in the market and not some market-invading parachute. The credibility of the first use of time reduces the search time and enhances the quality of candidates exponentially.
What Effective Partnerships Actually Look Like?
The executive search industry is littered with failed alliance attempts, referral networks that generate little actual business, affiliations that exist on websites but not in practice, and partnerships that create more coordination overhead than value.
The partnerships that actually work share several characteristics that distinguish them from superficial affiliations:
Mutual Client Access, Not One-Way Referrals
Depending on partnerships are truly two-way. The value moves in both directions, resulting in sustainable motivation between the parties to invest in the relationship.
This needs a lot more than good intentions. It involves organised methods of market discovery, defined procedures when introducing clients and fee-sharing arrangements that can make teamwork cost-effective.
Operational Independence With Strategic Alignment
Local companies have devoted decades, in some cases, to developing their brand, their approach, and their culture. The notion of having to give up independence when venturing to be associated with someone is valid. The working partnerships maintain the partner independence in the formulation of operations, but establish a concord in the formulation of the partnership.
It implies that partners have their own brand name, own relationships with clients and own processes of operations. The similarity between them is market intelligence, search approaches, evaluation models and the wider network access.
Shared Intelligence and Best Practices
An advantage of strategic alliances, which is underestimated, is the learning through different companies that are already in operation in another market.
This is not the wholesale duplication of methodology, but the learning curve is faster, and mistakes are not repeated, which partners may have already made. Where there is a possibility of sharing the assessment tools, research carried out in the market, or in the area of expertise, then all the firms will work more effectively.
Brand Amplification, Not Dilution
Counterintuitive, perhaps, is the ability of the correct partnerships to reinforce individual firm brands as opposed to weakening them. The collaboration does not mean that it is a limitation, but rather a competitive differentiator.
Regional Market Opportunities in 2026
North American Markets
The narrative about US executive search often focuses exclusively on New York and San Francisco. Still, some of the most interesting dynamics are playing out in what's sometimes called "Middle America" and in secondary coastal markets.
Cities like Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix have emerged as major corporate centers. The energy shift promises in Houston have generated massive executive demands for people capable of traversing the two worlds. Dallas has emerged as a big technology center, whereas Phoenix is drawing in manufacturing and semiconductor capital.
Los Angeles and Seattle are different ecosystems on the West Coast. The combination of the entertainment, aerospace, technology, and healthcare industries in LA makes it have special search needs.
The leadership that Seattle has in cloud computing, e-commerce, and aerospace also implies that the executives are becoming a valuable target for global corporations.
Other East Coast secondary markets, such as Philadelphia, are not precisely the same. Healthcare and life sciences concentration in Philadelphia, combined with the fact that it is close to New York and Washington, DC, offers some interesting opportunities in partnering with firms that are able to combine a regional knowledge base and global access.
The Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver Canadian markets are incredibly fascinating to interact with, a mix of factors. Such cities are the centre of huge international investments, the headquarters of big companies, and have immigration policies that make them appealing to talented people all over the world.
Benelux Region
It is a joint venture of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg that presents one of the most exhilarating business environments in Europe. Amsterdam has transformed into a significant technological and financial hub, especially following the acceleration of the relocation of some activities out of London as a result of Brexit.
Rotterdam has continued to be among the largest ports and a logistical hub internationally. The headquarters of the European Union and significant pharmaceutical activity are in Belgium.
The Benelux is also of special interest in terms of partnership because of the concentration of the international headquarters and a multilingual, multi-cultural executive talent pool.
Germany: The Mittelstand and Beyond
Germany is one of the most complicated executive search markets in Europe and the biggest economy. Although Frankfurt is the financial center, the practical narrative of German business leadership is the cities of Munich, Stuttgart, and Cologne, where giant operations in automotive, industrial, and technology are established.
Interesting search problems can be explicitly raised in the Mittelstand, the renowned system of family-owned medium-sized businesses in Germany. These companies often have highly sophisticated global operations but approach leadership selection differently than Anglo-American corporations.
When a US manufacturing company needs to hire leadership for its German operations, or when a German industrial firm needs to identify North American talent, the partnership between firms with genuine expertise in both markets becomes invaluable.
Japan: Transformation and Tradition
The Japanese executive search marketplace is undergoing a fascinating evolution. Reform of corporate governance, pressure to gain international expertise in management teams and changed attitudes towards career mobility have provided new dynamics.
Search firms with deep Japan expertise are particularly valuable partners because they can help international companies understand what's actually changing versus what remains constant.
The Economics of Partnership
Partnership discussions often stumble over economics.
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How should fees be split?
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Who owns the client relationship?
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What happens if the partnership generates conflicts?
The most successful partnerships approach these questions with transparency and mutual respect.
In a typical cross-border search, both firms contribute meaningful value; the originating firm brings the client relationship and often manages the overall engagement. In contrast, the partner firm provides local market access, candidate identification, and assessment.
More importantly, effective partnerships recognize that the real economic opportunity isn't in optimizing the split on individual searches, it's in accessing searches that wouldn't exist otherwise.
The partnership model creates value by expanding the total addressable market for all participants. A Chicago firm can pursue searches with European components that it would previously have declined. A Munich company accesses the US clientele that it could not achieve single-handedly.
Clients who exhibit stable quality and responsiveness, as well as a specific cultural fit, become increasingly valuable with time. The first collaborative search might involve detailed negotiation of roles and economics. By the fifth or tenth, the collaboration becomes routine, and the value to both parties becomes undeniable.
Making Partnership Work in Practice
Several practical factors separate successful partnerships from well-intentioned failures:
Transparency
Clear communication protocols matter enormously. When a Dallas firm identifies a potential cross-border opportunity:
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Whom do they contact at the partner firm?
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What's the expected response time?
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How do partners share candidate information while respecting confidentiality?
Cultural Alignment
This doesn't mean firms need to be identical; in fact, diversity of approach can be valuable. But partners need compatible values around client service, professional standards, and ethical conduct.
Regular Communication
Whenever partners simply focus on a particular client contact, the relationship will be transactional. The partnership builds depth when they communicate market intelligence on a regular basis, discuss industry trends, or do joint work on thought leadership, which can be translated to higher search execution.
Technology Infrastructure
This enables effective partnership. Secure systems for sharing candidate information, clear documentation of search progress, and efficient communication channels all matter. Partners shouldn't need to work harder to collaborate than they would to execute searches independently.
The Path Forward
For regional search firms, the strategic choice isn't whether to develop international capabilities, but how. Building global infrastructure organically requires capital, time, and overhead that most independent and boutique firms can't justify.
The most successful firms over the next decade won't necessarily be the largest or the ones with the most offices. They'll be the ones that can combine genuine local expertise with authentic international capability, and they'll achieve that combination through strategic partnerships that create mutual value.
At The Taplow Group, we are exploring strategic collaborations with the global executive search companies in the major markets in North America, Europe, and Asia. When you are contemplating how to enhance your global capabilities without losing the regional character and autonomy, we would be glad to have a discussion with you.