Appointing a senior leader is harder than it was a few years ago. Not because the talent has gone. Because good people are staying where they are, and their current employer is doing everything it can to keep them. The businesses still appointing well are not winning on salary. They are winning on confidence, clarity, and being able to show a leader the platform they will be given to succeed.
Good leaders are staying put
A few years ago a strong leader would move fairly readily. A bigger role, more responsibility, a better package, a more interesting problem. That instinct has cooled.
I am not going to put a figure on it. What I can tell you is what I am hearing. Over the past couple of years the conversations have changed. Leaders who are not unhappy are staying where they are. Better the devil they know.
The backdrop does not help. Interest rates, economic uncertainty, businesses restructuring, some high-profile redundancies. None of that encourages a leader with a decent job to take on risk.
So when you go to market for a senior appointment, the business you are really competing against is not another manufacturer down the road. It is the one your candidate already works for. If the person is any good, their employer is doing all they can to hold onto them, and that usually starts the moment they sense the person might leave.
Your biggest competitor for talent is not another employer down the road. It is the one your candidate already works for.
They are not frightened. They are making a judgement
This is the part I think gets misread. Cautious does not mean nervous.
The leaders I speak to are not frightened of moving. Most of them have moved before, more than once. They are making a professional judgement about whether they will actually be successful in the new business.
The questions have changed with it. It used to be, is this a bigger role. Now it is:
How stable is the business. How profitable is it.
Will I have the support of the CEO, the Chair or the owner.
Will I have the freedom to make the changes I am being brought in to make.
Is success actually defined.
That is not fear. That is a competent person doing due diligence on a risk. And the last two are the questions most employers answer badly.
What you are actually competing on
Not salary. Worth saying plainly, because money is where most businesses start.
Two things move a strong candidate in a market like this. The first is confidence in the future. Either the business is clearly doing well, or the person believes they can influence where it goes. The second is culture, and I mean something quite specific by that. Whether they will be given the room to act.
There is a harder truth underneath, and it is about the employer, not the candidate.
The person a candidate meets has to know what is actually broken. Not “we need a stronger operations director”. What are the symptoms. Why did the last one leave. What does success look like in twelve months. What decisions will this person own, and how will they be measured.
If the employer is vague about that, the candidate feels it. Good leaders do not want to walk into something that vague. Vagueness reads as not being on top of it. And a leader who thinks you are not on top of it is not going to stake their next three years on you.
What to do before you go to market
Two things, and both happen before the search starts.
Be vocal about what is going well. The wins, the new contracts, the investment, the people you are promoting, the awards. Put it where a candidate will look. Your website, your news page, LinkedIn. If the MD is not comfortable doing that, the team has to. In a cautious market, a business that is visibly doing well is a lower risk to join.
Then get clear about the role. Before the brief is written, work out what is genuinely broken and what a fix looks like in twelve months. Be able to show a candidate the decisions they will make and how their success will be judged. That clarity is what separates a business that appoints its first choice from one that keeps going back to market.
None of this is complicated. It does ask something of the employer though. It is a two-way process. You want the best people, and you have to be the business worth joining.
I do not know how long this lasts. It may ease, it may not. Either way, the businesses that keep appointing well are the ones doing this work up front, long before the search starts.
Frequently asked questions
Why is it harder to appoint senior leaders at the moment?
Because good people are staying put. A leader who is not unhappy has little reason to take on risk right now, and their current employer is usually working hard to keep them. So the people worth appointing normally have to be persuaded away from a business that is fighting to hold onto them.
Is it a salary problem?
Rarely. Money gets matched. What moves a strong candidate is confidence that the business has a future, and clarity that they will be given the support and the freedom to do the job they are being brought in to do.
What do employers get wrong most often before a senior search?
Vagueness about what is actually broken. If the person doing the appointing cannot describe the real problem, what success looks like, and how the new leader will be measured, the best candidates sense it and step back. That clarity comes before the brief, not after it. It applies just as much to an interim appointment as to a permanent one.
