Is executive search still reserved for recruitment agencies?
Direct and executive search - a recruitment agency thing?
For a long time, direct and executive search was something only headhunters did, usually working out of recruitment agencies. The premise is simple: instead of posting a job ad and waiting, you go out and contact specific people. Executive search narrows that down to managerial roles and specialists who are genuinely hard to find.
How are candidates actually found?
The usual channels:
Why employers started doing it themselves
There was a time when directly poaching someone from another company felt ethically murky, so employers outsourced that work to agencies. Someone else did the uncomfortable part.
But once LinkedIn became mainstream, the whole mystique around executive search dissolved. Add sourcing tools, modern ATS systems like Element, and the internet in general, and the “secret knowledge” stopped being secret. Today, in-house HR teams do this routinely, not just recruitment agencies.
IT was where this shift happened first, and honestly, it would have been strange if it hadn’t:
- Demand for developers exploded, and traditional job postings stopped cutting it;
- Developers live online – they’re on LinkedIn, GitHub, Stack Overflow – which makes them relatively easy to find and message;
- IT recruiters were already comfortable with digital tools, so picking up sourcing felt natural.
In my view, it comes down to two things. LinkedIn made it trivially easy to reach employees at other companies, and the growing shortage of candidates made it necessary. Executive search is no longer the exclusive domain of recruitment agencies – and it hasn’t been for a while now.
DISCOVER ELEMENT!
Maciej Michalewski
CEO @ Element. Recruitment Automation Software
Recent posts:
A Polish-founded robot that drives screws faster than humans
A Polish-founded robot that drives screws faster than humans When people think about automation, they usually picture chatbots, image generators, and coding assistants. Meanwhile, AI
People prefer AI poetry over Shakespeare
A study published in Scientific Reports (Nature) produced results that should interest anyone who thinks human creativity is easy to tell apart from machine output.
Three tools that measure AI’s impact on the job market
The debate about AI’s impact on the job market has been going on for years, but it only recently moved past the “experts predict” stage.
Poland’s job market: 238,000 offers and the specter of jobless recovery
In February 2026, Polish employers posted 238,000 job offers – 7% fewer than last year. Analysis of the Grant Thornton report and Element CEO commentary.
HR services market in Poland 2025 – key findings from the PFHR report
Polskie Forum HR has published its annual report on the condition of the HR services market in Poland. Element is a technology partner of PFHR,
I Don’t See a Future for MS Office
Three phases of transition from clicking buttons to AI commands. Why Microsoft Office in its current form is destined to disappear.
