⚠ Preliminary Scores — Pending partner validation · Internal research use only
Briana Johnson
Howard-Sloan Search

Briana Johnson

Chief of Staff

$20.8B
Global Executive Search Market Size (2025)
9.1%
Global Market CAGR (2025-2030)
$7.35B
US Executive Search Market Size (2025)
Founded1957. One of the longest-operating executive search firms in the United States and among the oldest in New York City. Primary office at 555 5th Ave, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10017. London office also active.
Scale51-200 employees on LinkedIn; 40 associated LinkedIn members. Approximately 42 employees per LeadIQ March 2026 data. US and London offices. CEO Mitchell Berger has 40+ years with the firm. Named 5th largest executive recruiting firm by Crain's New York Business. Ranked in the Global 30 of leading executive search providers worldwide via IMSA Search Global Partners.
Key signalIPL Health Staffing is an affiliated entity with its own LinkedIn page at 2,426 followers, visible on Howard-Sloan's LinkedIn page. This healthcare staffing division operates alongside the core executive search practice and extends Howard-Sloan's reach into a high-demand vertical without advertising it on the primary digital presence.
The 7 on 7+ Assessment

7 on 7+ Score

Website Score
14 / 49
Website effectiveness as evidence of leadership thinking — 7 criteria, each scored 1–7. Build on methodology developed by Alan Power & Gair Maxwell.
IDEA Score
15 / 49
Power of your complete digital presence, including social, search, gen-AI - to generate PULL.
Website Score
14
Tracks your website effectiveness.
+
IDEA Adjustment
2
Adjusts for your complete digital footprint.
=
7 on 7+ Score
16
Your legend-building signal.
Category Leader
BarkerGilmore
30
Website
4
IDEA
BarkerGilmore scores highest in this competitive set on both website execution (30/49) and content intensity. The LinkedIn feed runs approximately 2 posts per week: named placement announcements with photos, compensation report data visualizations, a 20th anniversary GC interview series, a live webinar event on May 12 2026, and a monthly newsletter. Six to eight distinct post types in the most recent four-week window. LinkedIn followers are 4,232, far below Howard-Sloan, but every post earns engagement from exactly the audience the firm targets.

Executive Takeaway

Howard-Sloan Search carries 67 years of brand equity, a Global 30 ranking among the world's leading executive search providers through IMSA Search Global Partners, and a culture that visibly invests in its people through annual retreats and events across US and London offices. None of that lands on the website. The site is fully JavaScript-rendered and invisible to search engines. LinkedIn, the firm's only active channel at 56,651 followers, posts roughly twice a month, and a meaningful share of that content is IMSA partner articles rather than Howard-Sloan's own voice. BarkerGilmore, a boutique competitor with a fraction of Howard-Sloan's follower count, posts twice a week with named placements, data from its own compensation reports, and webinars for GCs and CCOs. The gap between operational credibility and digital presence is real and closeable. The raw materials, the retreats, the CEO's voice, the specialty depth, are already being produced. The pipeline to visibility is what is missing.

Website Score — By Criterion

Seven criteria, each scored 1–7 by Alan Power and Gair Maxwell. The sum is your website score out of 49. Vistage room average: 13–14. A score above 20 is genuinely strong.

2
First Impression
Immediate 2-3 sec WOW factor. Instant clarity on who this brand speaks to.
The site title reads 'Executive Search Firm | Howard Sloan Search' and the meta description states the firm connects organizations with executive leadership since 1957. Nothing stops a visitor. The founding year is the most distinctive element on the page, but it sits in a sentence of category language. No credential, ranking, or proof point surfaces in the two seconds a first-time visitor uses to decide whether to stay.
2
Impact
Signature homepage video. Genuine human connection, cinematic and story-based.
The site is built on Gatsby 5.14.1 and is fully JavaScript-rendered. No video is present on the site. The OG image is a standard branded graphic. There is no homepage motion, no embedded media, and no content that communicates the firm's scale or energy to someone arriving for the first time.
2
Originality
Highly distinctive identity. Instantly recognizable. Not a template.
The tagline 'Dedicated to recruiting the right people, effectively and efficiently' is functional positioning. The About page exists at howardsloan.com/about-us but its body content does not render for external review. What the meta description carries, connecting organizations with executive leadership through tailored solutions since 1957, is category language shared by dozens of search firms. No named methodology, credential, or point of view differentiates the firm in any observable site copy.
2
Culture
Video evidence from real people indicating a destination employer. Not a values list.
A Join Us page and Team page appear in the site navigation, signaling that culture is a recruiting priority. Beyond navigation, no observable site content establishes what working at or partnering with Howard-Sloan is actually like. No team photography, no employee voice, no values statement, and no culture page content is accessible from the site's rendered output.
2
Consistency
Track record of publishing current, original content across platforms.
A News and Insights page exists at howardsloan.com/news. The page title and meta description confirm it is intended as a content hub. No article headlines, publish dates, or post summaries are accessible from the site's rendered output, so cadence and recency cannot be assessed from the site itself. A buyer who visits this page directly cannot confirm the firm is actively publishing.
2
Audience Reach
Numbers indicating a growing community. Evidence of genuine engagement.
The site navigation confirms a For Employers section and a candidate-facing section, establishing dual-audience intent. The declared specialties, legal, financial, compliance, IT, life sciences, HR, construction, real estate, and sales and marketing, suggest a broad multi-vertical firm rather than a focused niche. The breadth is a reasonable choice for a firm of this tenure, but the site's JavaScript rendering means none of the specialty pages carry readable content to a buyer who searches for a specific vertical. There is no observable homepage copy that speaks to a named role or industry, no differentiated entry point for a GC versus a CFO, and no language that tells either audience why Howard-Sloan is the right firm for their specific search.
2
Visuals
Cohesive visual elements reflecting brand spirit. Distinctive design language.
The site OG image is a standard branded graphic using the Howard-Sloan 'H' mark on a dark blue field. No photography, illustration, or video is confirmable from the site's rendered output. The Gatsby build suggests a modern front-end, but the visual execution cannot be assessed beyond the brand mark and color that appear in metadata. The overall impression from what the site surfaces externally is clean but generic.
IDEA Score — The Signal Before the Click

How You Show Up in the World

The IDEA Score measures what happens before someone reaches your website — the off-site signal that shapes perception from the first search, the LinkedIn scroll, the founder post.

15
out of 49
IDEA Score — Digital Footprint

The Idea That Changes Everything

Seven axes. Each one measures a different dimension of how your off-site signal lands — not what your website says, but what the world hears before anyone clicks your URL.

Pull vs. push. Category of one vs. category of many. A founder voice vs. a corporate signal. These are the levers that determine whether a prospect arrives already interested — or arrives already skeptical.

2
Pull vs. Push
Content creates gravity vs. broadcast/promotional
The LinkedIn feed shows nine posts over the past year or so. The content breaks down as: NAMI Walk for Mental Health (1 month ago), an IMSA partner article on AI and talent shortages (2 months ago), an IMSA partner article on workplace happiness (2 months ago), an IMSA partner article on performance reviews (5 months ago), a Holiday Event 2025 video (5 months ago), an IMSA partner article on corporate values (7 months ago), a Summer Retreat 2025 video (9 months ago), a Summer Retreat announcement (10 months ago), and a holiday post (1 year ago). Six of the nine posts are IMSA partner content with Howard-Sloan intro copy added. None offers candidate guidance, market intelligence, or a reason for a GC or compliance officer to stop scrolling.
2
ONLY vs. Category
Proprietary language/named POV vs. sounds like every competitor
The Global 30 ranking through IMSA Search Global Partners appears in the LinkedIn banner. It is the firm's strongest positioning signal and it appears only as a banner image, not in post copy, not in the tagline, not in any text content that carries off the page. The Crain's Top 5 New York recognition exists. CEO Mitch Berger's tenure exists. None of it is deployed in a way that frames Howard-Sloan as categorically different from other established search firms.
2
Audience Building
Clear who it's for AND building following beyond buyers
The LinkedIn company page has 56,651 followers. Briana Johnson's personal page has 1,354 followers. Instagram is private with 2 posts and 0 followers. No newsletter, podcast, or content series visible. The follower base is meaningful. The twice-per-month posting cadence, combined with heavy reliance on IMSA partner reposts, means the audience is largely passive.
2
Different-er vs. Better
Competes on distinctiveness/belief vs. features/specs/price
Post content competes on culture and people investment: annual retreats, team events, employee wellness. The IMSA thought leadership reposts gesture at market awareness but are written by IMSA Chile, IMSA Brazil, and other IMSA network partners, not by Howard-Sloan consultants. Nothing in the visible feed positions Howard-Sloan's consultants as specialists with opinions, relationships, or market knowledge that a competing search firm cannot offer.
2
IDEA vs. Best Practices
Organizing belief visible across all channels vs. channel-by-channel
LinkedIn does culture events and partner content reposts. Instagram is dormant. There is no through-line between channels. The IMSA partner relationship is an underused differentiator: being part of a global executive search network with a formal ranking system is a real signal, but it surfaces only in a banner image, not as a content strategy.
2
Founder/Leader Voice
Named human with consistent opinionated first-person presence
CEO Mitchell Berger appears in two IMSA partner article reposts where Howard-Sloan provides the intro copy referencing Berger's perspective on workplace happiness. No CEO post from Berger himself is visible in the current feed. Berger himself does not appear to post on LinkedIn from a personal account based on visible content. Briana Johnson's own posts from 4 years ago included an original job posting and a personal recruiting call-to-action. That personal voice has since shifted entirely to company event commentary.
3
Cultural Relevance
Signal connects to a larger shift in the world vs. exists in isolation
The NAMI Walk for Mental Health post (1 month ago, 11 reactions, 4 reposts) is the clearest connection to a broader issue, and Howard-Sloan is named as a participant, not just a sharer. The AI and talent post (2 months ago) references 'the future of business being rewritten in real time' as an IMSA article intro. Both are episodic rather than a sustained theme. The IMSA network affiliation itself, a global executive search partnership, is the most relevant cultural signal available but goes unnamed in post copy.
Digital Footprint Scan

Where You're Showing Up — and Where You're Not

Company Website (howardsloan.com)
Weak
Site rebuilt on Gatsby 5 with confirmed pages for About, Team, News, Employers, and Join Us. JavaScript rendering means no body content reaches crawlers or AI-powered search. The LinkedIn banner carries a Global 30 ranking claim that is likely on the site, but that signal cannot be indexed. The site has a real brand and real infrastructure. It is simply invisible to the search-driven buyer.
Company LinkedIn
Weak
56,651 followers. Post cadence runs roughly twice a month, with the most recent activity clustered in a three-month window and older posts spaced months apart. Content mix: 6 IMSA partner article reposts, 2 team culture videos (holiday event, summer retreat), 1 NAMI Walk partnership post. Video posts earn the highest engagement, 29 reactions and 5 reposts for the holiday event video.
Briana Johnson LinkedIn
Weak
1,354 followers. Recent posts are enthusiastic comments on company events, with no original content in the past two years. Four years back, two original posts appear: a job listing for a Digital Marketing Specialist and a personal recruiting call asking candidates to message her directly. Both drove solid engagement. That voice has since been replaced by company event commentary.
Instagram (howardsloansearch)
Absent
Account exists. Private profile. 0 followers. Not a functional channel.
Facebook
Absent
No Facebook page confirmed for Howard-Sloan Search. Not found in research.
YouTube
Absent
No YouTube channel confirmed. Retreat and holiday event videos are produced and natively hosted on LinkedIn, with durations of 0:08 to 0:49. A dedicated YouTube channel does not exist.
Industry Events and Publications
Weak
Howard-Sloan is ranked in the Global 30 of leading executive search providers worldwide through IMSA Search Global Partners, visible in the LinkedIn banner. IMSA is a global executive search network. CEO Mitchell Berger has bylined workplace articles published at howardsloan.com and distributed via IMSA. Crain's New York Business Top 5 Executive Recruiting Firm recognition noted on LinkedIn. No recent press coverage, speaking engagements, or conference appearances found for Briana Johnson specifically.
Strategic Opportunity

How to Build Your Legend

Short Term (0–6 months)

Post Under Howard-Sloan's Own Name
Six of nine visible LinkedIn posts are IMSA partner reposts written by consultants in Chile, Brazil, and other IMSA markets. The intro copy Howard-Sloan adds is 1-2 sentences. The opportunity is to flip that ratio: lead with Howard-Sloan's own consultants sharing what they are seeing in legal, compliance, and life sciences hiring right now, and use IMSA content as supporting context rather than primary content. The firm has 56,651 followers who signed up to hear from Howard-Sloan, not from IMSA Chile.
Fix the Website's Search Reach
The Gatsby site is structurally sound but JavaScript-rendered pages deliver no readable content to crawlers or AI-powered search. Adding server-side rendering or static generation for the About, Specialties, and News pages would extend the site's organic reach without a redesign. The Global 30 ranking, the Crain's Top 5 recognition, and the 67-year founding story are all competitive signals the current site cannot surface to a buyer who hasn't already heard of the firm.
Post the Placements
BarkerGilmore's most engaged posts are named placement announcements: 'We are pleased to announce that Max Gelernter has placed Ryan McCarthy as Assistant General Counsel at Liberty Tire Recycling.' These earn 24-32 reactions and signal to every GC and compliance officer in the feed that BarkerGilmore is working and closing. Howard-Sloan is making placements every week. Not one is visible in the LinkedIn feed.

Medium Term (6–18 months)

Build a Legal and Compliance Intelligence Series
BarkerGilmore publishes an annual In-House Counsel Compensation Report, distributes a monthly newsletter, and runs webinars where named partners discuss market data. Howard-Sloan has the same market knowledge from 67 years of placements, but it is not published anywhere. A quarterly salary and demand brief for legal, compliance, and life sciences, drawing on the firm's own placement data, would give GCs and CHROs a reason to follow and return. The content is already inside the firm. It just needs to be extracted and distributed.
Activate the Global 30 Ranking
Being ranked in the Global 30 of leading executive search providers worldwide through IMSA is a meaningful credential for a firm of Howard-Sloan's size. It currently appears only as a LinkedIn banner image. Weaving it into post copy, the website's about section, and outreach materials would transform it from a passive visual into an active proof point. Clients comparing boutique search firms at the executive level respond to verifiable rankings. This one is being left on the table.
Develop Briana's Voice Around Culture Building
Briana Johnson's 4-year-old posts show she can write in an authentic voice that drives engagement: a personal hiring post earned 9 reactions, a job promotion earned 12. Her current role as the person who plans and executes the retreats and events that define Howard-Sloan's culture is a credible platform. Posts about what it actually takes to build a distributed team culture, the planning behind the Boston retreat, lessons from six years of these events, would establish her as a voice on people operations and culture, a topic directly relevant to the CHROs and HR leaders Howard-Sloan recruits for.
Competitive Landscape

Who's in the Conversation

TBG / The Bachrach Group
NATIONAL STAFFING SCALE
Founded 1974, approximately $227M in revenue and 293 employees across 25+ offices nationwide. Named the No. 1 executive recruiting firm by Crain's New York Business. Operates 18+ practice areas. LinkedIn following of 379,114. A fully resourced national platform that competes on scale and breadth, not relationship depth in any single specialty.
BarkerGilmore
NICHE LEGAL AND COMPLIANCE DEPTH
Founded 2005, headquartered in Pittsford, New York. 11-50 employees, 36 associated LinkedIn members, 18 office locations, 4,232 LinkedIn followers. Exclusively focused on in-house legal and compliance executive search, advisory, and coaching. Posts approximately twice per week on LinkedIn: named placement announcements, compensation report data, 20th anniversary interview series, and monthly newsletter promos. Published the 2026 In-House Counsel Compensation Report in April 2026 and hosted a webinar on May 12 featuring John Gilmore and Brittney McDonough. Website scored 30/49 in this analysis.
Major, Lindsey & Africa
GLOBAL LEGAL SEARCH SCALE
Founded 1982, Allegis Group subsidiary. 84,628 LinkedIn followers. 200+ search consultants across 27 global offices. Made 1,162 placements in 2024. Focused exclusively on legal talent across in-house counsel, partner recruiting, associate placement, interim legal talent, and board services. The institutional benchmark for legal executive search globally.
The IMSA Affiliation Is an Untapped Moat
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Howard-Sloan's membership in IMSA Search Global Partners, and its placement in the Global 30 of leading executive search providers worldwide, gives it a verified global network credential that neither BarkerGilmore nor most boutique New York search firms can claim. The IMSA connection also provides a steady stream of international thought leadership content. What is missing is the activation: the ranking sits in a banner image, the partner content gets reposted without Howard-Sloan's own framing, and no client-facing material appears to deploy the Global 30 credential as a proof point for why a company should choose Howard-Sloan over a larger firm or a narrower specialist.
Market Context

The Industry Around You

The global executive search and headhunting market was valued at approximately $20.82 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $22.71 billion in 2026, growing at a 9.1% CAGR. North America holds the largest regional share at approximately 38%. The US executive search market specifically is estimated at $7.35 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $10.3 billion by 2030 at a 7.0% CAGR. Demand is being shaped by leadership transitions tied to AI adoption, DEI mandates, new C-suite roles in sustainability and compliance, and succession activity in private equity portfolios.

$20.8B
Global Executive Search Market Size (2025)
Business Research Company, 2026
9.1%
Global Market CAGR (2025-2030)
Business Research Company, 2026
$7.35B
US Executive Search Market Size (2025)
Business Research Company, 2026
62.9%
Retained Search Share of Global Market (2025)
Mordor Intelligence, 2026

What Keeps You Up at Night

The forces shaping Howard-Sloan Search's competitive environment — and why standing still is not an option.

⚡
AI-Driven Candidate Screening Pressure

LinkedIn's own Hiring Assistant product promotes saving 4+ hours per role and reviewing 81% fewer profiles. Internal talent teams adopting these tools reduce dependence on external search for director and VP-level roles. The value case for relationship-based executive search increasingly concentrates in the top tier of roles where confidentiality and network access matter most, which is where Howard-Sloan plays, but the pressure on the broader funnel is real.

Headwind
⚡
Macro-Driven Hiring Slowdowns

US executive search industry revenue declined at a -10.8% CAGR from 2019 to 2024 per IBISWorld, driven by rising interest rates and election-year hiring conservatism. The 2025 Crain's survey showed 25 of New York's top executive recruiting firms shed a combined 4.5% of recruiter headcount year over year. Howard-Sloan's 40-50 employee base makes it more sensitive to cyclical demand swings than larger platforms with diversified revenue across geographies and service lines.

Headwind
⚡
Content Gap vs. Niche Specialists

BarkerGilmore, with 4,232 LinkedIn followers to Howard-Sloan's 56,651, posts twice per week with named placements, original compensation data, and live webinars. Howard-Sloan posts twice per month, mostly with partner reposts. For a GC evaluating search firms by researching them online, the content signal from BarkerGilmore says 'active, expert, placing people now.' The content signal from Howard-Sloan says 'team events.' The gap is not about resources. It is about focus.

Headwind

Where the Opportunity Lives

The same forces creating pressure are also creating openings for firms willing to lead.

🎯
Leadership Complexity Driving Retained Search Demand

Retained search accounted for 62.9% of the global executive search market in 2025 and is projected to grow at 11.72% CAGR through 2031. New C-suite roles including Chief AI Officer and Chief Compliance Officer in regulated sectors have short tenures and specialized talent pools that require relationship-based search rather than database sourcing. Howard-Sloan's multi-specialty depth positions it to serve multiple retained engagements within a single client organization.

Mordor Intelligence, 2026 Tailwind
🎯
Regulatory Complexity in Legal, Compliance, and Life Sciences

SEC enforcement activity, FDA regulatory changes, and financial industry compliance requirements continue to drive demand for specialized in-house counsel and compliance leadership. BarkerGilmore's 2026 In-House Counsel Compensation Report shows that in-house counsel are motivated to move primarily by better compensation (22%) and desire for new challenges (15%), confirming an active and mobile candidate market. Howard-Sloan's 67 years of relationship depth in these verticals is a structural advantage as search difficulty increases.

BarkerGilmore 2026 In-House Counsel Compensation Report; Business Research Company, 2026 Tailwind
🎯
IMSA Global Network as a Business Development Asset

IMSA Search Global Partners is a global executive search network with a formal ranking system. Howard-Sloan's placement in the Global 30 gives it a verifiable global reach credential that positions it to serve US companies building international leadership teams and international companies entering the US market. As multinational hiring decisions increasingly require search firms that can operate across borders, this affiliation is a structural asset that the firm currently undermarketes.

IMSA Search Global Partners; Howard-Sloan LinkedIn Tailwind
🔒
Unlock Your Full Roadmap

Your Future-State Brand Expression

We've built a vision of what Howard-Sloan Search could look like — a reimagined digital presence that matches the caliber of the operation behind it. Your full 7 on 7+ Score & Analysis includes:

Phase 1
Brand Identity Strategy
Clarify positioning, origin story, and visual identity to match the caliber of the operation, people, and relationships the company has actually built.
Phase 2
Brand Amplification Strategy
Build the content engine, thought leadership, and social presence that makes Howard-Sloan Search impossible to ignore in a category being reshaped in real time.
Phase 3
Media & Distribution Strategy
Launch the channels, campaigns, and conversion architecture that turn visibility into relationships and position Howard-Sloan Search as a category-defining brand.
Yes, I Want to Build a Legendary Brand. Let's Move to the Next Step.