Senior Executive Market Updates – Increasingly Hectic

The pandemic has seen massive fluctuations in the job market, affecting a wide range of industries, disciplines and territories. At the senior end of the market however, there has been surprisingly continuous demand across industry and geography for top talent.

It’s not quite business as usual – in this post-pandemic world, corporates want and need to expand their top talent to turn around, recover and continue the growth of their organisations.

With over 45 years of working with Senior Executives and an active network of 15,000+ Search Consultants worldwide, InterExec has experienced the wide range of ups and downs in the Senior Executive recruitment market. The latest news and views we hear from our global network reflects a more buoyant market and certainly would encourage those who are thinking about their next key challenge to get the process underway.

Markets Overview

UK

Candidates with a background around change and transformation remain in high demand in the UK, regardless of sector. Of particular note, one search consultant recently mentioned several roles where change / transformation are key as interim or interim to perm roles.
Another Search Consultant sums up the current UK situation, “the market is crazy, I’ve not seen anything like this in the last 27 years in the industry”.
Europe
We are seeing a lot of movement in the tech space in Western Europe, especially in Switzerland and Germany with senior roles ranging from traditional IT services to Crypto-currencies.
Again an experienced Search Consultant in the InterExec network sums up the situation in Europe, “it is extremely hectic, we are buried in new opportunities that need the right senior people”.

Australia
Although Australia has now opened its borders, Search Consultants there are reporting it may still be see some time until the market reacts to the availability of international talent. However, given the shortage of international talent over the last 18 months, it is expected that situation will improve for international candidates in the coming months.

Middle East/ Asia
The tech market across Asia is very buoyant with a lot of PE and institutional investment leading to the expansion of tech focused organisations.
Dubai in particular is currently active in a number of sectors.
As a broader trend, there seems to be more geographic flexibility from employers and search consultants than we saw pre-covid.

Business Sectors
On the financial and professional services side things are significantly improving with a growing demand for Senior Executives in several sectors.
There is activity in Risk, Compliance, Digitalisation, FinTech, Corporate Finance / M&A, Treasury, Pensions, Insurance and Renewables.  Consultancy, Business Transformation and Technology in relation to banking also offer important new opportunities.
CityAM currently reports a jump from the City into Private Equity where salaries in a number of situations are currently seeing a 50% increase.
O&G has seen a downturn in demand as a knock on effect of the pandemic but this is likely to change over the next 6-12 months as that market recovers.
Summary

From a broad cross section of the InterExec network we are seeing an increasingly active market, as always there is a strong tech services, CTO/CIO, financial officers profiles are in demand, but now in several other business sectors the situation is more buoyant.

In searching for your next challenge please do not hesitate to get in touch with the InterExec team.