Author: Target Search Editorial

The UK Chair market has changed measurably in the last twenty-four months, and the profile Nomination Committees now write briefs against is different in three specific ways from the profile of five years ago. Below is our reading of where the Chair market sits at H2 2026. Chair tenure is being explicitly time-limited The UK…

Hiring a Chief Financial Officer is the most consequential functional appointment most CEOs and Chairs ever make. It also has the highest failure rate of any executive appointment — roughly one in three new CFOs is out of the seat within eighteen months, and the cost of a mis-hire is typically 6-24 times the CFO’s…

Below is our reading of the UK retained executive search market at H2 2026 — where compensation is going, which sectors are hiring hardest, and what we see as the two structural shifts most likely to reshape the market in the next twenty-four months. The compensation reset has been sharpest at CSO, CDO and CISO…

If you are hiring a headhunter for the first time, or have had a bad experience with one previously, the six questions below are the ones we suggest you ask any firm before signing an engagement letter. They are the questions every reputable retained executive search firm should answer directly and in writing. 1. Who…

The UK energy and sustainability leadership market at H2 2026 is defined by three converging pressures — the Chief Sustainability Officer role professionalising into a genuinely accountable executive seat, renewables hiring outpacing domestic candidate supply, and the emergence of Transition Finance as a distinct sub-market within regulated financial services. Below is our reading. The CSO…

The UK real estate leadership market has been through three distinct phases in five years — the post-pandemic reset of 2020-2021, the interest-rate-driven repricing of 2022-2023, and now, in 2026, a growth-led rebound concentrated in alternative sectors. The senior leadership profile the market rewards has moved with each phase. Below is where the market sits…

The Chief Marketing Officer role has bifurcated. What used to be a single senior seat is now two distinct profiles, and boards that treat them as one produce mis-hires. Below is the framework we now use to distinguish the two, plus the market context at H2 2026. The two CMO profiles Profile 1 — the…

The UK consumer and retail leadership market has been re-graded three times in the last five years — first by digital acceleration during COVID, then by the DTC valuation reset in 2022-2023, and now by an AI-driven reset in how consumer brands run marketing, merchandising and personalisation. The CEO profile the market rewards has moved…

The UK biotech leadership market at H2 2026 is defined by three converging pressures — a wave of Series C companies transitioning into pivotal trials, a compensation reset that has repriced the CEO seat, and a widening gap between the profiles boards want and the profiles the market can supply. Below is how we read…

The UK hospitality leadership market has been rebuilding since the pandemic reset the industry’s talent base. Four patterns define where the market sits at H2 2026, and shape every senior mandate we now run in the sector. The luxury and lifestyle segments have separated Ten years ago, luxury hotel General Managers moved freely between classical…