Sector knowledge and search craft: what a hard-to-fill senior hire really needs

When a client asks me to work in a sector I haven't recruited in before, the first question is a fair one. Why trust someone without twenty years in their industry?

Sector knowledge matters. A recruiter who knows a market can tell a strong CV from a polished one and talk to candidates in their own language. But the most recent data on senior appointments suggests the bigger risk in a senior hire lies somewhere else.

Russell Reynolds Associates counted 234 CEO departures across major global indices in 2025, up 16% on 2024 and a record for the second year running. The detail is more telling than the total: the share of CEOs leaving within 30 to 36 months rose 79% in a year, which the firm reads as boards "making definitive judgments far earlier in the CEO lifecycle than in the past."

At the same time, 86% of incoming CEOs were first-timers. In the FTSE 100, every one was.

Put those together and you have the core problem of senior hiring in 2026. The track record you can check is thinner, and the time a new leader gets to prove themselves is shorter. A search can't lean on "has done this exact job before". It has to test whether the person fits the problem the business actually has.

Heidrick & Struggles' 2026 survey of more than 1,000 CEOs and directors puts a number on that gap. At more than a third of US companies, the CEO lacks the capabilities the organisation needs over the next two to three years, and directors (46%) see the mismatch more often than CEOs do. In the UAE, 37% reported the same gap, and Heidrick's conclusion there was blunt: "Experience and credentials remain important, but they are increasingly table stakes."

Less than many people assume, and it varies a lot by market. Heidrick's 2026 data on 1,664 sitting CEOs shows how often the person at the top has worked in a different sector in one of their last two roles:

Market	CEOs with recent cross-sector experience	CEOs hired externally
UK	39%	32%
UAE	30%	45%
Saudi Arabia	22%	33%
US	18%	20%

Source: Heidrick & Struggles, Route to the Top 2026 data dashboard.

Two things stand out. UK boards are twice as likely as US boards to appoint a CEO with recent experience outside their sector. And the UAE hires externally far more than anywhere else in the table, with leaders reaching the top after an average of five years at the company, against twelve in the US.

Do outsiders do worse? Spencer Stuart's analysis of 950 S&P 500 CEOs, reported by Fortune in December 2025, found almost no difference: 34% of insiders and 33% of outsiders were overperformers. The difference was in the spread. In the words of Spencer Stuart's Jim Citrin, outsiders show "more upside, but there's more downside."

That is the honest case for and against looking beyond a sector. An adjacent-sector hire is a wider bet, not a worse one. What narrows the downside is a proper understanding of the role and a rigorous assessment of fit.

LinkedIn's Economic Graph team found that searching on skills rather than past job titles expands the median talent pool 8.4 times in the UK, 6.4 times in the UAE and 5.9 times in Saudi Arabia. That research covers all levels, not just senior roles, but the direction is clear: a search that only looks at people with the right job title in the right sector sees a fraction of the market.

UK employers are starting to act on it. CIPD's 2026 resourcing survey found 31% already recruit from other sectors and a further 48% would consider it.

Russell Reynolds' latest Global Leadership Monitor, a survey of more than 2,700 leaders in over 70 countries in spring 2026, found strategic thinking is the most in-demand leadership skill, named by 55%, 24 points ahead of change management. Only 29% believe their boards have the right AI expertise. The World Economic Forum expects 39% of existing skill sets to be transformed or outdated by 2030.

In a market moving that fast, ten years in one sector is useful context. It isn't a substitute for judgement.

Sector knowledge and search craft are not opposites. The best search uses both. If you're choosing a search partner, ask:

1. How will they understand the problem? The real question behind the job description: what has to change, who the new person must win over, and what would make the hire fail.
2. How wide will they look? Whether they will map adjacent sectors as well as yours, and how they reach people who aren't on the market.
3. How will they test fit, not just pedigree? With more first-time leaders and shorter runways, judgement, adaptability and stakeholder skills need to be assessed directly.
4. Who will do the work? Whether the person you brief is the person who approaches, interviews and advises.

If you're working through a hire like this, I'm happy to talk it through.

• Russell Reynolds Associates, Global CEO Turnover Index 2025: "Shorter Runways, Higher Stakes", January 2026.
• Heidrick & Struggles, Route to the Top US 2026, May 2026 (survey of 1,033 CEOs and directors, Q1 2026).
• Heidrick & Struggles, Route to the Top United Arab Emirates 2026, September 2026 (59 UAE respondents).
• Heidrick & Struggles, Route to the Top 2026 interactive data dashboard, April 2026 (1,664 sitting CEOs, 28 markets).
• Fortune, "Outsider CEO appointments research", December 2025, reporting Spencer Stuart.
• LinkedIn Economic Graph, Skills-Based Hiring: Increasing Access to Opportunity, March 2025.
• CIPD and Omni RMS, Resourcing and talent planning report 2026, September 2026.
• Russell Reynolds Associates, Global Leadership Monitor H1 2026, August 2026.
• World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025, January 2025.