Employ
Recruit
- Hire Anywhere, Worry-Free
- Spencer Stuart Review Summary
- Spencer Stuart Company Overview
- How Spencer Stuart Recruiting Works
- Spencer Stuart Features
- Spencer Stuart Pricing
- Spencer Stuart Reviews
- Spencer Stuart Pros and Cons
- Spencer Stuart Unique Selling Point
- Remote People Score for Spencer Stuart
- Overall Assessment: Spencer Stuart
Hire Anywhere, Worry-Free
Hiring, payroll, and compliance in 150+ countries.
Spencer Stuart Review Summary
Score 1 out of 10
Spencer Stuart is a leading international talent agency, focused on executive search.
Key Takeaways
- Spencer Stuart is one of the world’s foremost professional services organizations.
- This agency specializes in executive and board director recruiting works in 30 countries around the world.
- The agency provides board advisory, CEO succession advisory, and leadership consulting services to some of the world’s biggest companies.
- Spencer Stuart performs executive searches on a retainer, which only some of the world’s leading businesses can afford.
Spencer Stuart Company Overview
Spencer Stuart is a professional services organization currently headquartered in Chicago. The firm was named after its founder, Spencer Stuart, who worked as a consultant and recruiter post-WWII. In 1956, he founded his own agency and started to travel the world, focusing on filling top positions for some of the world’s biggest companies. Since then, the firm has grown into one of the largest in the world, with 60 offices in 30 countries and annual revenues of $1 billion.
While many competitors work on both recruitment and temporary staffing, Spencer Stuart’s aim is to reach the highest end of the market. It provides support for Fortune 500 companies through its executive search, board services, executive assessment, executive succession planning, and many other services.
Spencer Stuart is well-known for its executive search service and has been recognized by Forbes as the 3rd best recruiter in America for executive positions as well as the 115th-best firm for professional searches. This agency offers decades of professional experience and a multitude of programs to support its clients in building effective leadership teams.
In this review, we’ll look at how Spencer Stuart is organized and the range of services it offers to help you decide whether this provider is the right choice for your organization to partner with.
How Spencer Stuart Recruiting Works
Spencer Stuart’s main functions are consulting, planning, and recruiting to help organizations create the leadership capabilities they need. While consulting was previously performed through subsidiaries Kincentric and Cambria, it now all falls under the Spencer Stuart umbrella. This organization employs over 1200 people including 500 professional recruiters who work in 30 countries.
1. Executive Positions
The main thrust of Spencer Stuart’s work is to search out and recruit appropriate candidates for C-suite and other top-level positions. To kick off this process, the firm is engaged by a client to fill an executive position and Spencer Stuart’s recruiters will first assess the needs of the organization. They’ll consult extensively with the client to define the role that needs to be filled and the skills, knowledge, abilities, and experience required for a successful candidate. This often includes advising the client on the need for change or redefining the role if required. After completing this consultation, the recruiters are able to design a specific job description, including its roles and responsibilities, goals and key challenges, and requirements for success.
Once this information is in place, Spencer Stuart’s recruiters go prospecting. They use their existing relationships with companies and boards to locate people with the right skill sets and then go about attracting them, often through “headhunting” techniques. They’ll reach out to candidates and determine their interest in the role. Interested candidates are then assessed for competencies, abilities, and aptitudes. This involves using proprietary executive intelligence evaluation methods and confirming their work experience and track records. They’re also examined for their fit with the organization’s culture and values. A short list of candidates is eventually presented to the organization, and interviews are arranged for the most qualified candidates.
When the client chooses a successful candidate, recruiters perform thorough background checks to ensure the person’s reputation. They then help the client negotiate contract and compensation terms with the recruited executive. Once the recruit signs a contract with the client organization and begins working for it, Spencer Stuart invoices the client for its outstanding service fees.
2. Board Directors
For the past 30 years, Spencer Stuart has also offered board director recruitment services. This service also goes hand-in-hand with its board assessment service that helps to look at the governance structure and makeup of the client’s board. By assessing the current state of the board and recommending developments and changes, Spencer Stuart can also determine the characteristics and qualifications of non-executive board members that can be an asset. The firm has placed over 10,000 board members globally, including over 3,800 women and more than 1,300 people from minority groups.
Spencer Stuart Features
Spencer Stuart is a service provider focused on top-level recruitment and professional consulting. The key features of this firm’s services include:
1. Professional Sector Focus
Most general recruiters specialize in a dozen or so industries where they have extensive experience and professional connections. However, Spencer Stuart is most concerned with the level and quality of its recruits and aims to attract the top talent in the entire world to some of the most exclusive positions. The types of positions it recruits for include:
Kelly Services also handles executive searches for CEOs, CFOs, and COOs, as well as other high-level positions in the banking, finance, financial services, accounting, project management, and education industries.
- Chief executive officers
- Board directors
- Chief financial officers
- Chief human resources officers
- Chief sustainability officers
- Marketing, sales, and communication officers
- Chief product officers
- Chief digital officers
- Chief data officers
- Chief information security officers
- Chief technology officers
- Chief information officers
- Legal and compliance leaders
- Supply chain professionals
- Risk management professionals
However, even with a focus on the types of positions it recruits for, Spencer Stuart still specializes in a collection of industries, including:
- Communications
- Consumer – consumer products, consumer technology, retail, direct-to-consumer, sports, luxury goods, apparel
- Hospitality and leisure
- Financial services – asset management, impact investing, FinTech, insurance, global banking, real estate, private wealth management
- Education and social impact – academia, research, for-profit education, arts and culture, associations, global development, social enterprise
- Government
- Healthcare – healthcare services, biopharma, medical technology
- Industry – aerospace, agriculture, automotive, aviation, commodities, defense, energy, engineered products, industrial services, industrial technology, infrastructure, transportation and logistics
- Law firms and legal services
- Media
- Private equity
- Professional services
- Technology services
While this might seem like a very wide range of industries, these are all areas that Spencer Stuart has experience in and recruiters have filled executive positions for in the past.
2. Temporary Staffing Services
Unlike many other competitors in the recruitment industry, Spencer Stuart does not also double as a temporary staffing service. However, it does, at times, help organizations to recruit executives for interim positions, such as when a C-level executive will take an extended period of leave.
3. Other Services
Recruitment of executives and board members is far and away Spencer Stuart’s main activity. At the same time, however, it also provides a range of other services that add value to large organizations. Some of these additional services include:
- Board advisory and assessment: assesses boards and gives advice to improve performance and governance
- CEO performance acceleration: advises and coaches executives to improve their effectiveness as leaders
- CEO succession planning: helps boars create succession plans and develop executives
- Executive assessment: assesses character, capacity, skills, capabilities, and career plans for executive candidates
- Leadership consulting: advises organizations on their leadership development and team effectiveness
- Digital transformation: promotes and facilitates digital adoption and coaches leaders on their digital effectiveness
- Sustainability: advises organizations on how to work through environmental and social changes and challenges
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion: works with boards to develop and make plans to meet their DEI objectives
- Restructuring: advises boards on how to change structures and find new leaders during times of crisis
4. Global Reach
Spencer Stuart maintains a staff of over 1200, including more than 500 professional recruiters. This staff is spread out across 60 offices in 30 countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific region. Most often, recruiters in these offices spend their time recruiting either for local businesses or for subsidiaries of multinational conglomerates that are located in these countries. However, they also work together to coordinate global search operations when necessary. This allows recruiters to scour the globe and find the very best of the best executives to recruit to join the world’s biggest and best companies.
5. Platform
Most of Spencer Stuart’s main services, like board services and executive search, are accessed through its website. Potential clients can reach out through contact forms and then usually communicate and manage services through phone, email, and live chat channels. Executive job searchers can also register through the website to enter themselves into the firm’s database for further screening.
Spencer Stuart also provides two mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. SSI Meetings allows recruiters to share information and video call candidates. The KLead app is a self-development tool for leaders that helps users take tests and challenges, access learning resources, create plans, and interface with mentors and coaches.
6. Resources
Like most of its competitors, Spencer Stuart offers free resources for its clients and job seekers. It has an extensive collection of research reports and blog posts relating to leadership, recruitment, and governance. It also provides job seekers with the opportunity to register with BlueSteps, a career management service maintained by the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC) which Spencer Stuart is a founding member of.
Spencer Stuart Pricing
Like most of its competitors, Spencer Stuart does not publicly post its pricing online. Instead, it reveals its fee structure to potential clients once their needs have been assessed so that they can be given tailored quotes for the services they require.
Like most executive search firms, Spencer Stuart must be engaged on a pre-agreed retainer which typically represents one-third of the executive’s first-year compensation. Our research has uncovered that Spencer Stuart’s retainer normally starts at $100,000, so it won’t take on recruitment for positions that pay less than $300,000. We haven’t found accurate pricing for the firm’s other service provisions.
Spencer Stuart Reviews
The average scores (as of the time of writing) were:
- Spencer Stuart Glassdoor = 4.1/5 (436 reviews)
- Spencer Stuart G2 = 4.3/5 (2 reviews)
- Spencer Stuart Indeed = 4.0/5 (49 reviews)
Spencer Stuart Pros and Cons
Spencer Stuart is both a high-end executive and board director search provider and a consultancy firm. The unique strengths and weaknesses of this provider include:
- Pros
Extensive industry experience
This firm has decades of experience with recruiting and has worked in a wide array of industries. If you require an executive for an industry it specializes in, Spencer Stuart can recruit for you to fill your position quickly.
Extensive global reach
Spencer Stuart has 60 offices in 30 countries around the world. These offices provide recruitment and consulting services for local businesses but can also help each other recruit executives internationally.
Mobile apps
The firm offers two mobile apps for iOS and Android device users. One is for leadership development, and the other helps recruiters, clients, and candidates connect and have video conferences during the recruitment process.
- Cons
No prices online
Spencer Stuart doesn’t reveal its price structure online. This can make it hard and time-consuming for potential clients to compare this provider with others.
No temporary staffing
This agency is specialized in executive and professional recruitment. It sometimes places interim executives but unlike other recruiters, it doesn’t offer a more generalized temporary staffing service.
Spencer Stuart Unique Selling Point
Spencer Stuart’s unique selling point is its collection of services aimed at leadership and organizational development. Through its executive search, board advisory, CEO succession planning, and leadership consulting services, it works directly with its clients to help them strengthen and build their companies in times of both challenge and plenty.
Remote People Score for Spencer Stuart
8.0/10
Our expert score for Spencer Stuart
Our team came to this score by considering the following components in the following weightings:
Recruitment features
25%
Consulting features
10%
HR features
10%
Compliance features
10%
Platform features
10%
Pricing
20%
User reviews
15%
For each component, Spencer Stuart received the following score:
Recruitment features
23/25
Consulting features
7/10
HR features
8/10
Compliance features
8/10
Platform features
9/10
Pricing
12/20
User reviews
13/15
Overall Assessment: Spencer Stuart
Spencer Stuart is a well-regard recruitment agency. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) will find Spencer Stuart’s fees too high for them to engage its services. However, large enterprises and many of the leading companies in the world can leverage the firm’s experience to find the top-level leadership they need to propel their organizations forward.
To find out more about other recruitment agencies, check out our guide to the leading global recruiting firms in 2026.
