Executive hiring continues at a brisk pace driven by emerging technology sectors such as Hydrogen, Climate tech, Crypto, Ai, and digital enablement/transformation across all sectors. Both funding availability and growth are fueling the drive to beef up talent in small and large companies alike.

Proven performers continue to have their pick of the litter, and are negotiating rich compensation packages with equity upside. Companies that dally or hesitate with hiring decisions find that such candidates are not available for long.

Larger companies continue to compete with start-ups for the same talent. The corporates have the ability and willingness to pay for what they want and use retention bonuses, LTIP plans and gold-plated benefits to attract and ‘poach-proof’ their talent. Smaller firms struggle to reconcile the gap between the calibre of staff they seek and the price they now need to pay to attract them. Internal equity challenges loom.

Needs appear across the whole C-Suite from CEOs to COOs to revenue leadership, marketing to engineering and finance. Proven public company CFOs are in demand as an unprecedented number of firms go, or announce plans to go, public. Functions such as marketing are becoming more expensive as the demands for sophistication in data analysis and decision-making changes elements of the roles and the experience portfolios of desired candidates. Recruitment continues to be largely location agnostic, an experiment with implications still to be determined.

Still exciting and interesting times….