For companies looking for senior managers in an increasingly tight executive market, executive search may be the only way to secure the right mix of skills, experience and cultural compatibility in recruiting. As companies expand into new markets and globalization becomes the key strategic focus, the need to identify executives with international experience and the ability to build market share in emerging economies is even more pressing.

Retainer Executive Search Firms rely on databases of information (their own databases of information about people, as well as public databases of company information and people in the news), and are always happy to receive resume information on executives, and updates on that information. On the other hand, the ongoing recruitment activity of collecting and retaining information is kept quite separate from the daily, hourly focus by executive search consultants on solving the few highly targeted executive search assignments which their current clients entrust to them, with short deadlines.