Part of the EPR GEO Scorecard series, Everything-PR's quarterly measure of AI Citation Share by vertical.
Disclosure: Everything-PR and 5W AI Communications share common ownership. Everything-PR reports independently on the communications industry, including on research produced by 5W. Editorial decisions are made by Everything-PR's editorial team.
"The board asking ChatGPT who should run the next CEO search gets an answer before the first candidate call happens. Executive search sells discretion. AI retrieval sells the opposite."
Ronn Torossian, Publisher, Everything-PR · Founder and chairman, 5W AI Communications
Executive Summary
Korn Ferry 78 (B+). Heidrick & Struggles 71 (B). Russell Reynolds 66 (C). True Search 63 (C). Spencer Stuart 60 (D). DHR Global 54 (D). Egon Zehnder 52 (D). Caldwell Partners 46 (F).
A 32-point gap separates the top and bottom of the executive search category. The two publicly traded firms in the cohort, Korn Ferry and Heidrick & Struggles, occupy the top two positions. That is not a coincidence. Public disclosure requirements force the exact structured, dated, entity-rich content the AI engines need to retrieve a firm. The five privately held firms in the cohort, including three of the storied "SHREK" group, all score D or worse.
Egon Zehnder's single-profit-pool partnership model and Spencer Stuart's discreet, board-only positioning are genuine competitive advantages in a boardroom. They are citation-share liabilities in an AI engine. The category mirrors the pattern Vol. 8's law firm study identified: confidentiality-driven business models produce the lowest GEO scores of any professional-services vertical measured, right behind law.
Korn Ferry's advantage is structural, not accidental. The firm's evolution into a public, diversified organizational-consulting business, on top of its search practice, generates quarterly disclosures, published compensation surveys, and a research arm that the engines can retrieve the way they retrieve McKinsey Global Institute. No other firm in the cohort has an equivalent publication engine.
Audience: Board chairs and lead directors running CEO successions, chief human resources officers evaluating search partners, private equity operating partners staffing portfolio-company leadership, in-house talent acquisition leaders, business journalists covering executive moves, and communications professionals advising search firms on AI visibility.
15 Publishable Findings
- The two publicly traded firms in the cohort, Korn Ferry and Heidrick & Struggles, occupy the top two scores. Disclosure obligations are a measurable GEO advantage.
- Egon Zehnder, the industry's most discreet firm by design, scores 52 (D) despite ranking among the top three executive search brands globally by reputation surveys.
- Asked "best executive search firm for a CEO succession," four of five engines name Korn Ferry or Spencer Stuart first, but Spencer Stuart's own website generates almost none of the supporting citation.
- Korn Ferry's diversification into organizational consulting is the single largest driver of its score. The firm's ~$2.8B revenue base and public compensation-benchmarking data give the engines a retrieval anchor no pure-search competitor can match.
- True Search, founded in 2000 and the youngest firm in the cohort, outscores three of the five legacy "SHREK" firms. Digital-native content strategy compensates for a shorter operating history.
- Crawl Access is the single worst-performing dimension across the cohort (average: 41), consistent with the pattern in law and consulting: professional-services firms guarding client confidentiality also tend to block AI crawlers.
- Asked "who hired the most Fortune 500 CEOs," three of five engines cannot answer with a named firm — the highest non-answer rate of any Scorecard volume to date.
- Heidrick & Struggles' 2025 revenue of roughly $1.1B makes it Korn Ferry's closest public peer, and its GEO score (71) is the closest second-place score to any category leader in the series.
- Perplexity produces the highest scores for six of eight firms — its real-time web-search architecture retrieves SEC filings, Glassdoor reviews, and business-press coverage of placements that the firms' own sites do not surface.
- Russell Reynolds Associates scores highest among the cohort's private firms (66, C) on the strength of a published thought-leadership platform and frequent bylined commentary in business media.
- DHR Global, one of the largest privately held search firms by placement volume, scores 54 (D) — volume of business does not translate into volume of retrievable content.
- Caldwell Partners, the smallest and only Canadian-listed firm in the cohort, is the floor of the category (46, F). Public-company disclosure alone is not sufficient; scale of content still matters.
- No firm in the cohort has FAQ schema or Organization schema on its website. The extractability floor found in law and consulting repeats here.
- Asked "who invented the retained search model," four of five engines credit the industry generally rather than naming a founding firm — a rare case where heritage narrative fails to anchor a category leader the way it did for Wachtell in law or BCG in consulting.
- The executive search category ceiling (78) is lower than consulting (88) and roughly in line with law's average professional-services performance, confirming that confidentiality-first business models cap AI visibility regardless of which side of the M&A-and-leadership advisory complex a firm sits on.
Methodology. Scores are based on observed AI engine outputs during an August 2026 test window. Five engines: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews. 50 prompts per firm across five query buckets (Recommendation, Comparison, Capability, Reputation, Corporate), 10 prompts each. Total: 2,000 individual response audits across eight firms. Each response is scored on a binary (cited/not cited) and qualitative (primary mention, secondary mention, absent) basis. Raw observations are normalized into the five-dimension framework: Citation Frequency 40%, Cross-Engine Breadth 20%, Query-Type Breadth 20%, Extractability 15%, Crawl Access 5%. The methodology is identical to Vols. 1–9 and is reproduced quarter-over-quarter. Full protocol at the EPR GEO Scorecard hub.
The Board Test: What the Engines Actually Say
We ran the queries a board chair, a CHRO, and a PE operating partner would actually type. Here are the results.
| Prompt | ChatGPT Names First | Perplexity Names First | Gemini Names First |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Best executive search firm for a CEO succession" | Korn Ferry (scale, consulting arm) | Spencer Stuart (board reputation) | Korn Ferry (global reach) |
| "Which firm does the most Fortune 500 board searches" | Spencer Stuart (board practice) | Spencer Stuart (board practice) | Russell Reynolds (board governance) |
| "Largest executive search firm by revenue" | Korn Ferry ($2.8B) | Korn Ferry (public filings) | Korn Ferry (revenue lead) |
| "Best search firm for private equity portfolio company CEOs" | Heidrick & Struggles (PE practice) | Heidrick & Struggles (PE practice) | Russell Reynolds (mentioned second) |
| "Who invented retained executive search" | No single firm named | Spencer Stuart (historical mention) | No single firm named |
| "Best search firm to work for" | Korn Ferry (Glassdoor visibility) | Korn Ferry (employer reviews) | Egon Zehnder (prestige, thin data) |
The finding: Korn Ferry owns the general recommendation query the way McKinsey owns consulting's, on the strength of the same mechanism: public disclosure plus a research-publication arm. But the category fragments sharply by search type. Spencer Stuart and Russell Reynolds contest the board-governance lane. Heidrick & Struggles owns private equity portfolio placements. No firm owns the historical "who invented this industry" query the way Wachtell owns the poison pill in law. Discretion, the product these firms sell to clients, is the same trait that keeps them out of the engines' training data.
The Scorecard
| Dimension (weight) | Korn Ferry | Heidrick & Struggles | Russell Reynolds | True Search | Spencer Stuart | DHR Global | Egon Zehnder | Caldwell Partners |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citation Frequency (40%) | 82 | 76 | 70 | 66 | 62 | 56 | 54 | 46 |
| Cross-Engine Breadth (20%) | 80 | 72 | 68 | 64 | 60 | 54 | 52 | 44 |
| Query-Type Breadth (20%) | 74 | 68 | 64 | 60 | 56 | 52 | 48 | 42 |
| Extractability (15%) | 72 | 64 | 60 | 58 | 52 | 48 | 46 | 40 |
| Crawl Access (5%) | 58 | 54 | 46 | 50 | 38 | 36 | 32 | 34 |
| FINAL GRADE | 78 · B+ | 71 · B | 66 · C | 63 · C | 60 · D | 54 · D | 52 · D | 46 · F |
Engine Heatmap
| Firm | ChatGPT | Claude | Gemini | Perplexity | Google AIO | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Korn Ferry | 80 (A) | 76 (B) | 74 (B) | 84 (A) | 76 (B) | 78 |
| Heidrick & Struggles | 72 (B) | 70 (B) | 66 (C) | 76 (B) | 68 (C) | 71 |
| Russell Reynolds | 66 (C) | 64 (C) | 60 (D) | 72 (B) | 58 (D) | 66 |
| True Search | 64 (C) | 60 (D) | 58 (D) | 68 (C) | 56 (D) | 61 |
| Spencer Stuart | 62 (D) | 58 (D) | 56 (D) | 64 (C) | 52 (D) | 58 |
| DHR Global | 56 (D) | 52 (D) | 50 (D) | 58 (D) | 48 (F) | 53 |
| Egon Zehnder | 54 (D) | 50 (D) | 48 (F) | 58 (D) | 46 (F) | 51 |
| Caldwell Partners | 48 (F) | 44 (F) | 42 (F) | 50 (D) | 40 (F) | 45 |
Engine reads. Perplexity produces the highest score for every firm in the cohort, the widest such sweep in any Scorecard volume, because its real-time search retrieves SEC filings, Glassdoor pages, and business-press placement coverage that the firms' own sites do not surface. Google AIO is the weakest engine for six of eight firms. No firm scores above B+ on any single engine.
Company Deep Dives
Korn Ferry, 78 (B+)
Founded: 1969, Los Angeles. NYSE: KFY. Revenue ~$2.8B. ~10,800 employees. 100+ offices in 50+ countries.
What's working. Korn Ferry is the largest executive search firm globally and the only firm in the cohort to have transformed into a full-service organizational consulting business, covering compensation benchmarking, leadership development, and succession planning alongside search. That diversification produces a research-publication engine the engines can retrieve the way they retrieve McKinsey Global Institute in Vol. 9. Public-company disclosure requirements generate quarterly, dated, structured content no private competitor matches.
What's hurting. Crawl Access (58) is the highest in the cohort but still low in absolute terms — even the best-positioned firm in executive search trails every firm scored in Vol. 9's consulting cohort. Reputation queries surface layoff and restructuring coverage from the firm's own recent workforce reductions alongside its search credentials.
What moves the score. Extend the compensation-survey publication cadence into structured, schema-marked data products. Unblock remaining crawler restrictions. Estimated lift: 4-6 points within two quarters.
Heidrick & Struggles, 71 (B)
Founded: 1953, Chicago. NASDAQ: HSII. Revenue ~$1.1B (2025). Fourth-largest U.S. executive search firm by most industry rankings.
What's working. Korn Ferry's closest public peer. Disclosure requirements produce the same structural advantage at smaller scale. The firm's private equity and portfolio-company CEO placement practice is a clear retrieval anchor — five of five engines associate Heidrick with PE-backed leadership searches.
What's hurting. Query-Type Breadth (68) lags Korn Ferry's (74). Heidrick is retrieved reliably on PE and general-corporate queries but rarely on board-governance queries, where Spencer Stuart and Russell Reynolds dominate.
What moves the score. Board-practice content investment to compete in the governance query lane where the firm currently has no retrieval presence. Estimated lift: 4-7 points within two quarters.
Russell Reynolds Associates, 66 (C)
Founded: 1969, New York. Private partnership. One of the "SHREK" group of five dominant global search firms.
What's working. Highest score among the cohort's private firms. A published thought-leadership platform and frequent bylined partner commentary in business media give the engines more structured content than most privately held peers produce. Strong retrieval on board-governance and succession-planning queries.
What's hurting. No public-disclosure obligation means no quarterly cadence of dated, structured content. Extractability (60) trails both public firms by double digits. The firm's website, like most in the cohort, carries no schema markup.
What moves the score. Convert existing thought leadership to structured HTML with schema. Publish placement-volume data the way Korn Ferry publishes compensation data. Estimated lift: 6-9 points within three quarters.
True Search, 63 (C)
Founded: 2000, New York. Private. Part of the True Platform. The fastest-growing firm in the cohort by most industry accounts.
What's working. The youngest firm in the cohort outscores three of the five legacy SHREK firms. A tech-forward, digital-native content strategy and a strong reputation in venture-backed and growth-company CEO placements give True Search a disproportionate share of retrieval relative to its size and age.
What's hurting. Cross-Engine Breadth (64) and Query-Type Breadth (60) are both mid-pack. The firm is retrieved reliably for technology-sector CEO searches but rarely for board-governance or industrial-sector queries.
What moves the score. Expand published content beyond technology-sector placements into adjacent verticals. Schema markup on the existing digital-forward site is the fastest available lift. Estimated lift: 5-8 points within two quarters.
Spencer Stuart, 60 (D)
Founded: 1956, Chicago. Private partnership. 70+ offices in 30+ countries. Widely regarded as the leading board-and-CEO-succession specialist among the SHREK firms.
What's working. Named first by Perplexity and Gemini on board-governance queries specifically. The firm's reputation for discretion and quality-over-quantity service is a genuine competitive advantage in the boardroom that occasionally surfaces as a positive reputation signal on AI reputation queries.
What's hurting. The same discretion that wins client trust produces almost no retrievable content. Crawl Access (38) is among the lowest in the cohort. Asked general capability questions outside board searches, three of five engines cannot answer with specifics about Spencer Stuart.
What moves the score. Even minimal structured content, a quarterly board-search trend summary or expanded consultant bios with schema, would capitalize on an already-strong reputation signal. Estimated lift: 8-12 points within three quarters.
DHR Global, 54 (D)
Founded: Private partnership, Chicago-headquartered. One of the largest privately held executive search firms globally by placement volume.
What's working. Retrieved on operations and mid-market CEO placement queries in a minority of engine tests. Global office network supports cross-border search queries.
What's hurting. Placement volume does not translate into retrievable content volume. The firm publishes minimal public-facing research. Google AIO (48, F) is the floor for the firm across all five engines.
What moves the score. Publish placement-trend data and sector-specific research at a materially higher cadence. Estimated lift: 6-10 points within three quarters, contingent on publication investment.
Egon Zehnder, 52 (D)
Founded: 1964, Zurich. Private, single-profit-pool partnership. Widely ranked among the top three executive search brands globally by reputation.
What's working. The firm's partnership model and CEO-succession specialization are permanent reputation assets that surface on qualitative "most prestigious" queries even without supporting web content. 60+ offices worldwide support genuine cross-border retrieval on multinational board searches.
What's hurting. Egon Zehnder is, by reputation, one of the three or four most respected firms in the industry and, by GEO score, in the bottom half of the cohort. The gap is the clearest illustration in this volume of the difference between reputation and AI retrieval. Deliberate discretion, minimal public commentary, and the industry's longest search timelines leave almost nothing current for the engines to retrieve.
What moves the score. The honest assessment mirrors Wachtell Lipton's in Vol. 8: Egon Zehnder's client base may not reward a change in strategy. If the CHRO who needs a CEO succession search already knows to call Egon Zehnder, AI visibility may be structurally irrelevant to the firm's business. Estimated lift if the firm chose to act: 10-15 points within two quarters. Likelihood of action: low.
Caldwell Partners, 46 (F)
HQ: Toronto. Public, Toronto Stock Exchange-listed. The smallest firm in the cohort by revenue and headcount.
What's working. Public-company disclosure generates some baseline structured content, the same mechanism that lifts Korn Ferry and Heidrick & Struggles. Retrieved occasionally on Canadian-market executive search queries.
What's hurting. Scale still matters. Public disclosure alone does not compensate for a small research and content-publication footprint. Caldwell is the floor of the cohort on every single dimension, confirming that disclosure is necessary but not sufficient for GEO performance.
What moves the score. The firm's public-company status is an underused asset. Publishing more of what disclosure already requires, in structured, schema-marked formats, is the highest-leverage single intervention available to any firm in this volume. Estimated lift: 8-12 points within three quarters.
Biggest Winners
| Winner | Why |
|---|---|
| Korn Ferry on general recommendation queries | Public disclosure plus organizational-consulting diversification gives the engines a retrieval anchor no pure-search competitor matches. |
| Heidrick & Struggles on PE portfolio placements | Second public firm in the cohort, second-highest score, on the strength of the same disclosure mechanism. |
| True Search relative to its age | Founded in 2000, outscores three legacy SHREK firms through digital-native content strategy. |
| Spencer Stuart and Russell Reynolds on board-governance queries specifically | Narrow lanes where reputation and existing content combine to produce genuine query-category ownership. |
Biggest Risks
| Risk | Who It Hurts | Severity |
|---|---|---|
| Discretion-first business model blocks retrieval | Egon Zehnder, Spencer Stuart | High |
| Zero structured data across all firm websites | All eight firms | High |
| Placement volume without content volume | DHR Global | Medium |
| Layoff and restructuring coverage in reputation retrieval | Korn Ferry | Medium |
| Small content footprint offsets public-disclosure advantage | Caldwell Partners | Medium |
| Generational buyer shift to AI-first search-partner discovery | All privately held firms in the cohort | Medium |
Q4 2026 Predictions
Who gains next quarter:Heidrick & Struggles (+2-4 points). Continued PE-practice deal flow and quarterly disclosure cadence reinforce the retrieval anchor Korn Ferry already benefits from at larger scale.
Who falls next quarter:Egon Zehnder (-1-2 points) if the firm makes no content changes. The gap between reputation and retrieval widens as competitors with public-disclosure obligations continue to publish at the engines' preferred cadence.
Biggest wildcard:The first privately held SHREK firm to publish schema-marked, structured research at Korn Ferry's cadence. Whichever firm moves first gains a first-mover advantage the way Vol. 8 identified for law firms unblocking AI crawlers.
Structural prediction:Executive search will track law more closely than consulting on AI visibility. Client confidentiality and long, bespoke search timelines work against the transparency the engines reward, the same dynamic Vol. 8 identified for law firms.
Action Items by Audience
| Audience | What This Means | What to Do |
|---|---|---|
| Board Chairs | Directors are already asking AI engines which search firm to hire before the first partner call happens. | Ask ChatGPT which firm to hire for your next CEO succession. Compare the answer to your actual shortlist. |
| CHROs | Your preferred search partner's AI visibility score is now a business-development signal whether the firm tracks it or not. | Ask each finalist firm in an RFP what its own AI citation share looks like on the queries that matter to your searches. |
| Search Firm Managing Partners | Discretion protects client relationships but starves the retrieval graph. | Publish placement-trend and compensation data in structured, schema-marked formats without disclosing client-identifying details. |
| PE Operating Partners | Heidrick & Struggles owns the PE-portfolio placement answer. If you use another firm, the AI engines are not reinforcing your choice. | Cross-reference AI recommendations with your portfolio companies' actual placement outcomes before renewing a search mandate. |
| Communications Advisors | Executive search proves the same rule law and consulting proved: published content drives citation share, confidentiality norms notwithstanding. | Build search-firm clients' GEO strategy around the content the firm can publish without breaching client confidentiality. |
FAQ
Why these eight firms?
The traditional "SHREK" group (Spencer Stuart, Heidrick & Struggles, Russell Reynolds, Egon Zehnder, Korn Ferry), plus True Search, DHR Global, and Caldwell Partners for a mix of digital-native, high-volume-private, and small-public comparators.
Why do the two public firms score highest?
Public-company disclosure obligations force quarterly, dated, structured content: earnings commentary, compensation data, and SEC filings the engines can retrieve directly. Private partnerships have no equivalent publication requirement.
Why does Egon Zehnder, a top-three brand by reputation, score so low?
Reputation and AI retrieval measure different things. Egon Zehnder's discretion, minimal public commentary, and single-profit-pool partnership model are genuine client-facing advantages that leave almost nothing current for the engines to retrieve, the same dynamic Vol. 8 identified for Wachtell Lipton in law.
How does this connect to the law firm and consulting volumes?
Executive search sits structurally between the two: it shares law's confidentiality-driven business model and crawl-blocking behavior, but like consulting, the firms with public-disclosure obligations and research-publication arms outperform. The category confirms that disclosure, not industry identity, is the load-bearing variable.
How are scores calculated?
50 prompts × 5 engines × 8 firms = 2,000 audits. Binary + qualitative scoring. Normalized into five dimensions (Citation Frequency 40%, Cross-Engine Breadth 20%, Query-Type Breadth 20%, Extractability 15%, Crawl Access 5%). Identical methodology across all ten volumes. Reproduced quarterly.
How often does the Scorecard rerun?
Quarterly. Q1 2027 rerun ships in the new year. Quarter-over-quarter movement is the structural story.
About the EPR GEO Scorecard Series
The EPR GEO Scorecard Series applies a single locked five-dimension framework to one consumer or industry vertical at a time. Published volumes: Beauty (Vol. 1), Hotels & Hospitality (Vol. 2), Luxury Brands (Vol. 3), Streaming & Entertainment (Vol. 4), QSR (Vol. 5), Consumer Tech (Vol. 6), PR Holding Companies (Vol. 7), Law Firms (Vol. 8), Management Consulting (Vol. 9), and Executive Search Firms (Vol. 10). Quarterly. The methodology hub: everything-pr.com/epr-geo-scorecard.
Ronn Torossian is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications, the AI Communications Firm. He is the publisher of Everything-PR and the author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release.
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Thirty-plus publications. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
Part of Everything-PR's Citation Share Index and Generative Engine Optimization research.