The Hidden Risk in Hiring The Biggest Name in the Industry
When recruiting for a senior appointment, a candidate from one of the industry’s largest and most recognisable businesses can look like the safest choice.
Their CV carries weight. They understand the market, have worked with major customers and may have led sizeable teams, sites or commercial functions.
But a prestigious company name does not automatically guarantee success, even when they are moving into another global organisation.
What did they personally deliver?
Large businesses often have established systems, specialist functions, recognised brands and significant resources. However, no two organisations operate in exactly the same way.
The important question is not simply what the candidate’s employer achieved, but what the individual personally contributed.
Did they create the strategy or inherit it? Did they win new customers or manage established relationships? Did they lead the transformation or join once it was already underway?
Senior hiring decisions require evidence, not assumptions based on an employer’s reputation.
Can their success transfer?
An executive may move between two organisations of comparable size and still encounter a completely different environment.
Reporting structures, decision-making authority, investment priorities and internal politics can vary enormously. One global business may give its regional leaders considerable autonomy, while another operates through highly centralised processes.
The scale may be similar, but the expectations placed on the individual may not be.
The same applies when moving into a mid-sized, privately owned or family-run company, where leaders may work more closely with owners and remain nearer to customers, people and day-to-day operations.
In every case, the real question is whether the candidate can adapt.
Does their style fit what comes next?
A successful leader may be highly effective at maintaining performance within an established operation but less experienced in building, restructuring or transforming one.
Others may thrive during periods of rapid change but become frustrated within a more structured environment.
Neither style is inherently better. What matters is whether it aligns with the organisation’s culture, challenges and future direction.
Look beyond the logo
The strongest candidate may come from the market leader, another global group or a smaller competitor where they have achieved more with less.
A prominent company name should attract attention, but it should never replace proper assessment.
The question is not simply, “Who have they worked for?”
It is, “What did they deliver, under what circumstances, and can they deliver what our business needs next?”
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Packaging and manufacturing businesses have changed considerably over recent years. Customer expectations, margin pressure, sustainability requirements, automation, skills shortages, consolidation and supply-chain volatility have all influenced how businesses operate.
The executive who was right for the organisation five years ago may not possess the capabilities required for its next phase.
Yet many senior appointment briefs remain heavily influenced by the past. They describe the outgoing executive, rely on an established job description or repeat criteria the business has traditionally considered important.
This can lead to some fundamentally important questions being overlooked:
- What must this person achieve during their first 6, 12 and 24 months?
- Which business problem are they being appointed to solve?
- What will be different about the organisation in three to five years?
- Which capabilities will be required that may not exist within the current senior team?
- Does the position itself still need to operate in the same way?
Without clear answers, a business can unintentionally search for a highly capable executive suited to an organisation that no longer exists.
Familiar criteria are not always the right criteria
Some requirements appear in senior briefs because they feel reassuring.
A board may request 20 years of sector experience, an identical job title, employment with a direct competitor or previous responsibility for a business of a particular size. These criteria can be relevant, but they should not automatically become non-negotiable.
Length of experience does not, by itself, demonstrate an ability to transform a business. An identical title does not guarantee comparable accountability. Experience within a competitor does not necessarily mean the individual has operated in the same culture, commercial environment or stage of development.
A business looking for a Sales Director may believe it needs an established industry network. Its actual challenge, however, may be restoring margin, reducing dependence on a small number of customers and introducing greater commercial discipline.
A company replacing an Operations Director may initially prioritise deep technical knowledge. But if its future strategy involves automation, cultural change and significant capital investment, the ability to lead transformation may be equally important.
Similarly, a board may describe its ideal Managing Director as a “safe pair of hands” when the business really needs someone willing to challenge established thinking and make difficult decisions.
The title may be correct, but the definition of success is wrong.
Begin with outcomes, not a career history
A stronger executive brief starts with the business rather than the candidate.
It should establish why the appointment is being made, what the executive will inherit and what measurable difference they are expected to make. It should distinguish the experience genuinely required from preferences that simply feel familiar.
For each requirement, the business should be able to answer a further question: what evidence would demonstrate that a candidate can deliver this?
If profitable growth is the priority, the assessment should go beyond whether someone has managed a large sales function. What did they personally change? How did they improve margin? What resistance did they encounter? Were the results created through market growth, acquisition, pricing, new business or the development of the existing team?
If operational transformation is required, it is not enough to know that a candidate worked in a highly automated facility. Did they inherit that environment, or did they lead the investment and change required to create it?
This distinction is critical. A CV records where an executive has worked and what they were responsible for. A robust search process must establish the difference they personally made.
The market may challenge the original assumption
External market mapping can also reveal that the proposed brief is too narrow, unrealistic or focused on the wrong talent pool.
Strong potential candidates may hold different titles, operate in adjacent sectors or have followed less conventional career routes. Conversely, the supposedly ideal profile may be extremely scarce, geographically unavailable or unlikely to view the opportunity as a credible next step.
This is valuable information. The purpose of a retained search is not simply to execute the original instruction without question. It is to test the assumptions behind it, provide market evidence and refine the brief before unsuitable criteria restrict the outcome.
That challenge may feel uncomfortable, particularly when several stakeholders have different views of the appointment. It is far less uncomfortable than discovering, six months after the new executive arrives, that the business appointed against the wrong requirements.
The most valuable work happens before the first approach
A successful senior appointment begins with an honest assessment of where the organisation is going and what will be demanded of the person helping to take it there.
That means looking beyond the previous job description, questioning inherited assumptions and resisting the temptation to recreate the outgoing executive.
The strongest brief does not describe the person the business would have appointed five years ago. It defines the outcomes, evidence and capabilities required for the next five.
Because even the best-executed search cannot compensate for searching for the wrong executive.
Businesses often recruit senior executives with a clear instruction: improve performance, modernise operations, strengthen the commercial function or lead the organisation through its next stage of growth.
Yet once the appointment is made, the appetite for change can quickly disappear.
New ideas are questioned. Difficult decisions are delayed. Longstanding practices become untouchable, and the new guy or gal discovers that the mandate discussed during the recruitment process does not exist in reality.
Change will create discomfort
Meaningful change rarely happens without disruption.
Reporting lines may need to be reconsidered. Responsibilities may change. Underperformance may need to be addressed, and investment may be required before results improve.
An organisation cannot recruit someone to challenge established thinking and then resist them because their recommendations feel uncomfortable.
This does not mean every proposal should be accepted without scrutiny. It means the business must be honest about whether it genuinely wants change or simply wants better results without altering anything fundamental.
Responsibility without authority
A senior hire can be held accountable for performance while having very little control over the factors affecting it.
An Operations Director may be expected to improve productivity but lack authority over capital investment. A Commercial Director may carry a growth target while pricing decisions remain elsewhere. A Managing Director may be asked to reshape the business while every significant decision still requires multiple layers of approval.
This can happen within global groups, privately owned companies and family businesses alike. The structure may differ, but the problem is the same: responsibility has been delegated while authority has not.
Is the organisation ready?
Before recruiting someone to deliver change, the key stakeholders need to agree what they are prepared to support.
Which decisions will the new person own? What is genuinely open to review? Where will resistance come from, and who will help them overcome it? How much disruption is considered acceptable, and how quickly are results expected?
If the board, owners or wider group are not aligned, your new hire can become trapped between conflicting expectations.
The person appointed may then be blamed for failing to deliver an outcome they were never properly empowered to achieve.
Be honest from the beginning
A credible search brief should explain not only what needs to change, but also the authority, investment and internal support available to make it happen.
Candidates deserve an accurate picture of the challenge. The organisation also benefits, because it can assess who is equipped to work within the real environment rather than recruiting against an idealised version of the role.
Hiring someone capable of delivering change is only the beginning.
The more important question is: when they start changing things, will you genuinely let them?