Should your next CEO come from your industry?

When a company begins the search for a new Chief Executive Officer, one requirement often appears almost immediately: the candidate must know our industry. 

It sounds logical. A CEO who already understands the competitive landscape, customers, regulatory environment and economics of the sector should theoretically be able to take control faster and make better-informed decisions. 

But is industry experience always the safest criterion for CEO recruitment? Or can it sometimes prevent companies from considering the leader they actually need? 

The question is becoming increasingly relevant in Belgium. Companies are operating in an environment shaped simultaneously by digitalisation, artificial intelligence, sustainability requirements, changing workforce expectations and persistent talent shortages. 

In such circumstances, recruiting a CEO is no longer simply about finding someone who understands today's business. Increasingly, Boards must identify someone capable of leading the business the organisation is becoming. 

And that person may not necessarily come from the same industry.

CEO recruitment in Belgium: why industry experience remains the default choice 

There are perfectly legitimate reasons why Boards tend to favour executives from their own sector.  

Industry experience reduces perceived risk 

A CEO coming from a direct competitor or adjacent organisation already understands many of the dynamics that would otherwise take months to learn: market structures, margins, regulation, customers, competitors, suppliers and often the relevant talent ecosystem. 

For heavily regulated or technically complex industries (financial services, pharmaceuticals, energy or certain industrial environments, for example) this knowledge can be particularly valuable.

Another advantage is credibility 

Employees, investors, clients and other stakeholders may initially feel more reassured by the appointment of an executive whose career demonstrates a clear understanding of their environment. 

For a company seeking continuity, industry expertise can therefore be entirely rational. 

The difficulty arises when sector experience stops being an advantage and becomes an automatic filter. 

For heavily regulated or technically complex industries (financial services, pharmaceuticals, energy or certain industrial environments, for example) this knowledge can be particularly valuable.

Read more: Board-ready leadership: what executives think matters and what boards actually evaluate?

The Belgian executive talent market is already relatively constrained 

Belgium provides an interesting context for this debate. 

Despite a gradual easing of recruitment pressure, the Belgian labour market continues to show significant unmet demand. According to Statbel, Belgian companies still reported 140,462 job vacancies in the first quarter of 2026, representing a vacancy rate of 3.42%. The figure varies considerably between regions: 3.83% in Flanders, compared with 2.94% in Brussels and 2.78% in Wallonia. 

The pressure is also highly sector-dependent. In ICT, for example, the vacancy rate reached 6.21% in the first quarter of 2026, the highest of all sectors measured by Statbel. 

These figures concern the labour market broadly rather than CEOs specifically. But they illustrate an important reality for executive recruitment: companies are already operating within uneven and sometimes constrained talent pools. 

Every additional mandatory criterion reduces that pool further. 

A Board looking for a CEO with experience in exactly the same industry, in a comparable organisation, at a similar scale, with the right languages, geography, leadership style, transformation experience and compensation expectations may ultimately discover that its theoretical candidate market is remarkably small. 

The question therefore becomes: which criteria are genuinely essential, and which simply make the profile feel safer? 

Should your next CEO have sector experience or transformation experience? 

The distinction becomes particularly important when an organisation is entering a period of transformation. 

Imagine an industrial company moving towards services. A traditional business developing a digital operating model. A Belgian company preparing for international expansion. A family-owned organisation professionalising its governance. Or an established group attempting to integrate artificial intelligence across its operations. 

In each case, is previous experience in the company's existing sector necessarily the most valuable asset? Possibly not. 

Belgium's adoption of artificial intelligence offers a useful illustration of how rapidly leadership environments are changing. According to Belgium's High Council for Employment, nearly 35% of Belgian companies were using AI in 2025, an increase of approximately 20 percentage points in only two years. The Council nevertheless identifies shortages in digital and AI capabilities as a barrier to wider implementation.

To complete your read: Accelerating digital transformation with interim managers in Belgium

The green transition creates a similar challenge. Belgium's High Council for Employment has concluded that the labour market is not yet sufficiently prepared for the shift towards a decarbonised economy, with skills mismatches contributing to shortages in green occupations. 

When the business model itself is changing, Boards may therefore need to reconsider what constitutes “relevant experience”. An executive who has already managed technological disruption, internationalisation, restructuring or business-model transformation elsewhere may bring more relevant leadership experience than someone who has spent an entire career inside the sector but has never led comparable change.

Cross-industry CEO recruitment: the case for looking beyond your competitors 

Hiring outside an industry does not mean ignoring expertise. It means defining expertise differently. 

An executive from another sector may bring operating models, technologies, commercial practices or management disciplines that are already mature elsewhere but remain relatively new to the hiring organisation. 

• A consumer executive may bring sophisticated customer-centric thinking into a traditionally product-led business. 
• A technology leader may introduce a fundamentally different approach to data and scalability. 
• An executive from a highly regulated industry may bring governance discipline to a company facing increasing compliance requirements. 
• A leader from an international organisation may help a Belgian company move beyond its domestic market. 

This is one of the potential advantages of cross-industry executive recruitment: the organisation is not simply hiring knowledge. It can import a different frame of reference. 

And sometimes that is precisely what a transformation requires.

Read more: How to identify skill gaps in the workplace

The hidden risk of recruiting a CEO who looks too familiar 

There is also a less obvious danger in defining the ideal CEO too closely around the company's past. 

When Boards describe the profile they want, they frequently start with previous successful leaders. 

• Someone who understands our market. 
• Someone who knows our customers. 
• Someone who has worked for one of our competitors. 
• Someone who has already held exactly this position. 

Each criterion is individually understandable. Together, however, they can produce a search for a candidate who represents an improved version of what the organisation already knows. 

That can be appropriate when the strategy is continuity. It is less convincing when the strategy is transformation. 

If a company's ambition is to enter new markets, redesign its operating model, accelerate digitalisation or reposition itself, recruiting exclusively from the same small circle of companies can create a paradox: the organisation expects a different future while recruiting from its past. 

Executive mobility in Belgium shows that sector boundaries remain strong 

Belgian labour-market data also reveals how persistent sector boundaries can be. 

Statbel found that around 370,000 employed people changed jobs between 2024 and 2025, equivalent to 7.9% of people who were employed at both points in time. Job mobility therefore remains above the pre-Covid level of approximately 5–6%. 

But something interesting is happening within that mobility. 

Among people changing jobs, 53.9% remained within the same sector in 2025, up from 49.6% the previous year and the highest proportion recorded since Statbel began the series in 2017. In financial activities, more than half of job changes also remained within the sector. 

Again, these figures are not specific to executives. But they illustrate the strength of sector-based career patterns in Belgium. 

For Executive Search, this creates an interesting question. 

If talent naturally tends to circulate within established sector boundaries, should an executive search simply reproduce those patterns, or deliberately examine where transferable leadership capabilities might exist outside them?

What should boards look for when hiring a CEO? 

Removing a strict industry requirement does not mean making a CEO search broader without discipline. Quite the opposite. 

It requires the Board to become more precise about the actual leadership challenge. 

Before defining a candidate profile, the discussion should begin with the business situation. 

What must this CEO accomplish over the next three to five years? 

• If the mandate is primarily to protect market position and optimise an established model, deep sector expertise may rank very highly. 
• If the mandate is international expansion, experience scaling organisations across markets may matter more. 
• If the organisation requires restructuring, transformation experience could outweigh industry familiarity. 
• If technology is fundamentally changing the company's proposition, digital leadership may become one of the defining criteria. 
• And if the challenge concerns culture, succession or organisational maturity, the Board may need to focus more heavily on leadership style and change management. 

The CEO specification should therefore emerge from the future business mandate, rather than from the CV of the person who previously occupied the position.

When does industry experience matter most in CEO recruitment? 

There are situations where sector expertise should remain a major, and potentially non-negotiable, selection criterion. 

Highly regulated environments are an obvious example. A steep technical learning curve, complex stakeholder ecosystem or specialised commercial model can make previous industry exposure particularly valuable. 

The same may be true when a company needs immediate operational credibility or is navigating a crisis where there is little time for a new leader to learn the fundamentals. 

But even here, Boards can distinguish between different levels of requirement. 

• Does the CEO need 20 years in precisely this niche? 
• Could experience in an adjacent industry provide sufficient understanding? 
• Could sector knowledge exist elsewhere within the executive committee, allowing the CEO to bring complementary capabilities? 

This distinction can materially change the available talent pool.

When should companies consider a CEO from another industry? 

The case for looking beyond the sector becomes stronger when the organisation is trying to accomplish something that its traditional competitors have not yet accomplished themselves. 

Transformation is the clearest example. 

Companies facing digital disruption, new business models, international expansion, sustainability challenges or significant cultural change may benefit from executives who have already encountered comparable situations elsewhere. 

This changes the central question in CEO recruitment. 

Instead of asking: 

“Has this person worked in our industry?” 

Boards can ask: 

“Has this person successfully led through the challenge we are about to face?” 

The difference appears subtle. 

In practice, it can produce an entirely different shortlist. 

Why executive search should start with the business challenge, not the job description 

This is also where Executive Search differs from simply identifying candidates who correspond to a specification. 

For senior leadership appointments, the initial brief itself deserves scrutiny. 

An effective search should map not only the obvious candidates (direct competitors, recognised sector leaders and executives already occupying comparable roles) but also adjacent talent pools. 

• Where else do similar leadership challenges exist? 
• Which industries have already undergone the transformation now affecting the client? 
• Which executives possess transferable experience? 
• Which candidates would never appear in a conventional database search because their current job title or sector does not immediately match the specification? 

Executive Search is particularly valuable when the obvious candidate pool is not necessarily the best one. 

At Morgan Philips Executive Search Belgium, we combine in-depth market knowledge, targeted headhunting and executive assessment to identify senior leaders both within your industry and beyond the obvious candidate pool. 

Our consultants work closely with Boards, CEOs and HR leaders to challenge the initial brief, map relevant talent markets and approach executives whose experience and leadership capabilities align with the organisation’s strategic ambitions. 

Because the right leader may already know your industry. Or they may bring exactly the perspective it needs next.

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