The job market is still very tough for most people, but many candidates for executive positions are receiving multiple job offers.

For the lucky ones, however, it’s 2007 all over again. “It’s incredibly competitive out there for talent, incredibly competitive,” says Kim Shanahan, a Korn Ferry partner in Reston, Va. Her searches for human resources executives have been “over the top — insane” because demand is so strong and candidates are becoming more selective. Adds Jeff Hodge, the San Francisco-based vice chairman of Diversified Search, a Philadelphia firm: “It is almost as if there’s been a floodgate opened, a material change since December.”

Korn Ferry (KFY) recruiters estimate that currently about 5% to 10% of executive candidates are ending up with multiple job offers within three or four months of starting their search. That might not seem like much, but competition is fierce for that group, and big signing bonuses are becoming common. In certain areas, including R&D, human resources, product development, and Java J2E software expertise, the talent wars are well underway, while elsewhere the job world is a frozen wasteland.

So who’s landing multiple offers? Those who show demonstrated results — and can prove they know how to grow businesses. Brian Sullivan, chief executive of CT Partners, uses the example of a CEO his firm placed at a Silicon Valley turnaround. In nine months he got the company on track, then sold it. “He now has three different offers from three private equity firms to go into one of their portfolio firms,” said Sullivan.

If you’re in this potential group the job market should be picking up.

It’s getting tough out there. Employers are realizing that the old ways of screening out job candidates, particularly candidates for executive positions, are insufficient in today’s competitive world. Employers are employing much more thorough tactics, such as psychological scrutiny and rigorous simulations. Some are calling it “extreme hiring.”

It’s Andrew Noon’s first day on the job, and already he has had to discipline a worker, thwart a departmental turf war, cajole two recalcitrant employees, convince an irate customer not to cancel a contract and present his strategic plan for the next three years to the company’s chief executive, complete with flip charts. But the boss, the employees and the customers are actors. The company is fictitious. The office space is an assessment center outside Pittsburgh. At least three trained observers are listening to Noon’s every voice mail, reading his every e-mail and watching his every move. The whole exercise is a simulation designed to determine his readiness for the executive suite at Mutual of Omaha.

To prepare, Noon, 35, spent the weeks leading up to his assessment poring over reams of fictitious financials and memorizing fake org charts, employee bios, product descriptions, company histories and global sales breakdowns. He also took three personality tests, each consisting of 200 to 300 questions designed to uncover his levels of sociability, creativity and ambition and to identify any “derailers”–talent-management-speak for the dark side.

Psychological scrutiny and rigorous simulations are fast becoming a requisite part of the interview process. Gone are the days when a clutch golf swing or well-schmoozed dinner might score you a spot in the C-suite. The downturn has shed a decidedly unflattering light on subjective hiring practices. Even the standard application-interview-résumé-and-reference-check formula has come under fire for being too soft and unreliable.

In many ways this makes sense, but it would make even more sense if the results are compared to feedback given by that candidates former co-workers and superiors.