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Personnel Consulting Rethought
Growing up to challenges
When Deininger Consulting was founded in 1981 as a partner-led personnel consultancy in Frankfurt am Main, the world was a different one.
The personnel consultancy 40 years ago was highly person-centred. Headhunters found candidates primarily through personal relationships.
The processes were carried out manually and not digitally controlled. Getting a holistic overview of the market was very complex and therefore particularly interesting for corporations.
With visionary energy and professional expertise, Deininger has developed into an internationally renowned partner for executive search. In the mid-1990s, the company entered Eastern European markets and opened its first own offices in Asia in 2004.
Our self-image today
Today, personnel consulting is significantly more digitalized, data-driven and offers a wider range of services. We are at home all over the world with our locations in Berlin, Delhi/Gurugram, Düsseldorf, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hamburg, London, Mumbai, Shanghai and Warsaw — with more than 20 consultants and a total of around 100 employees.
We do not see ourselves as intermediaries or headhunters, but are partners and consultants for companies that want to have strategically important key positions filled by the right managers.
The new generation of personnel consulting
The task of the new generation is to respect the successes achieved, but at the same time not to persist in old structures.
Under the leadership of Joy Edwin Thanarajah, who took over the operational business from company founder Thomas Deininger in 2022, the shift from patriarchal leadership to a collaborative way of working began.
We actively support the promotion of diversity and female leadership.
What is not up for discussion: The quest for excellence and the absolute will to discover suitable managers even in areas where the talent pool has been emptied or does not yet seem to be sufficiently filled.
Our goal
We know from our own experience: The more global the markets and the stronger the competition, the more important it is to rely on the right people.
That is why we help companies make optimal personnel decisions and position themselves in a future-proof manner. We work with selected specialists, great commitment, a global network and a great deal of sensitivity.
It is important to us exceptional talents to put them in positions where they can develop optimally. We support many of the candidates across their entire professional career and beyond.
What makes us proud
In collaboration with The IQ Company, the Handelsblatt Research Institute (HRI) has once again identified a selection of internationally active recruitment consultancies of various sizes for 2025. The “40 top recruitment consultancies of 2025” were determined from the weighted votes of the peer group and decision-makers. We at Deininger are once again among the top recruitment consultancies (2025, 2024, 2023, 2022).
In times when a shortage of skilled workers and demographic change are presenting companies with major challenges, choosing the right recruitment consultancy is of crucial importance. On behalf of the SZ Institute, INNOFACT AG conducted a study to identify the best personnel consultancies in Germany.
When evaluating the study, it is evident that Germany has a large number of excellent recruitment consultancies. We at Deininger not only again made it into the top 10 this year, but also improved to second place in the ranking with a remarkable index score of 127 (from eighth place in 2024).
In addition, we were recognized by FOCUS Business in collaboration with Statista as “Top Personnel Service Provider 2025” in the “Executive Search” category. About 4000 personnel consultancies were up for selection. A total of 56 top recruitment agencies were honored in the Executive Search category this year.
We are proud of these recognitions and thank our clients and partners as well as our candidates for their trust and for taking part in the surveys. These awards confirm our commitment and continuous efforts to find and successfully place the best talent.
Our brand for managers with proven digital expertise, five14, has also won several awards:
It was repeatedly given the TOP Personnel Service Providers award of FOCUS Business in the “Executive Search” category (2024, 2023, 2022), Wirtschaftswoche included the executive search boutique in its “Best Personnel Consultants” Ranking in 2022. In addition, five14 GmbH was honored by Corporate Vision Magazine as “Executive Search Consulting Firm of the Year 2024” and its founder and our managing director, Harald R. Fortmann, as LinkedIn Top Voice.
Special thanks go to our team, who deliver top performance every day. We will continue to work on optimising our consulting and offering our customers the best possible service. Because it is our passion!