Where London's best marketing leaders come from: cross-sector hiring across the capital
Many senior briefs open with the same line: "10 years' experience in our sector." It feels safe. In a market as varied as London's, it is also one of the quickest ways to shrink the field before the search has started.
London's senior marketing, digital and technology talent sits in distinct business clusters, and some of the strongest appointments we see come from moving leaders between them. The skill is knowing which moves work.
This piece is for hiring managers who default to "must have sector experience", and for senior leaders who want to change sector and aren't sure how.
Where London's senior marketing talent sits
Few places in the UK have so many different sectors side by side. The clusters below are broad generalisations, but they show what leaders from each area often bring with them.
A leader from one of these clusters can be the strongest candidate for a role in another. The strongest candidate for a London-based CMO role may come from another sector entirely.
The one-move rule
Here is the practical test Suzie Walker, MD & Founder of Suzie Walker Executive Search, applies: "When a senior candidate changes jobs, they can usually either move sector or move up a level. Doing both at once is very difficult, especially in today's highly competitive market."
Which sector moves work best?
Sector moves are easiest where business models are similar. Within broad consumer services, for example, leaders often move between financial services, insurance and utilities. The reasons are practical: the customers are similar, regulation shapes the work in similar ways, and the economics of subscription, renewal and retention have a lot in common.
The same logic applies elsewhere. A leader who has grown a subscription business in one sector already understands acquisition cost, churn and lifetime value. What changes is the vocabulary, and that is quick to learn. Commercial capability, leadership style and cultural alignment often predict success better than identical sector experience.
We saw this in a premium hospitality search, where the shortlist deliberately balanced hospitality insiders with premium-consumer leaders from adjacent categories. In a business built on looking after people, how candidates talked about guests mattered as much as how they talked about yield, and both kinds of background could meet that bar.
How the new roles are changing the picture
The newest high-demand roles are skill-led rather than sector-led. For Growth Directors, Growth Marketing Directors, Digital and AI or Data and AI Directors, companies are starting to hire for skill set above sector experience. A leader who has taken AI from pilot into production with measured returns, or who has owned a funnel and its economics, can often carry that capability across sectors. It is one reason we expect more cross-sector moves as these roles grow.
Stage matters here too. In a search for a consumer technology scale-up, we favoured leaders who had already taken a business through a similar scaling journey over those whose careers had run entirely inside very large corporates. Big companies teach scale; scale-ups teach speed under constraint.
How to brief for cross-sector talent
Define the outcome and the business stage, not the sector. Start with what the business needs this leader to achieve over the next 12 to 24 months, and the stage of growth it is in. That opens the field to leaders who have solved the same problem somewhere else.
Don't look for a perfect match. One of the most common hiring mistakes we see is prioritising an almost identical career history. The strongest senior leaders often bring fresh perspectives and transferable expertise from other industries.
Test for the skill, not the title. Ask for proof of the commercial and growth results they generated, the change they led, and the stakeholders they influenced. These skills translate across sectors far better than a job title does.
If you're a leader thinking about changing sector
Plan the move rather than hoping for it. Pick the sectors with business models closest to your own, and be ready to show how your results translate. Show evidence in the language of the new sector: customers, economics and outcomes, not just campaigns.
If the sector move is a priority, be prepared to accept that it may mean a sideways step in level first. A move across and then up is usually more achievable than both at once. For more on how senior hiring decisions are made, see Suzie's book, The Successful Candidate.
Talk to us
Whether you are shaping a brief and wondering how wide to cast the net, or considering a move into a new sector yourself, we would be glad to talk it through. To find out how we can support you with senior leadership hires, connect with a Consultant. You can also follow Suzie's profile, our company page and her newsletter, The Successful Candidate: Tips from Inside the Hiring Room, on LinkedIn.
Suzie Walker Executive Search is a specialist headhunting firm dedicated to finding exceptional interim and permanent senior marketing, digital, and technology leaders for both B2C and B2B organisations. We partner with FTSE 350 and private equity–backed companies, recruiting for roles at Head, Director and Chief (C-suite) level.
If you’re ready to make your next move, we regularly post new opportunities on our LinkedIn company page. If you apply for a role on the platform, it requires a 1st connection for us to respond, so please make sure to connect with Suzie Walker. Our company page is also frequently updated with the latest hiring news, expert interviews, and candidate guidance, so well worth following.
