Global Executive Hiring and Economic Outlook: Q3 2026

3 minute read

Global growth is slowing, AI is reshaping what boards need from their senior leaders, and executive mobility is accelerating in response. Our Q3 global economic outlook covers the hiring picture across the US, Europe, MENA and Asia, and explains what executives in each region need to do to be well-positioned for future career opportunities.

The IMF projects global growth of 3.0% in 2026, down from around 3.3% across 2024-25 (IMF). ManpowerGroup’s Q3 Employment Outlook Survey puts the global Net Employment Outlook at 26%, with outlooks weakening in 33 of 42 countries. Hiring is not contracting evenly, however. Specific geographies and sectors are generating intense executive demand while others stagnate. The executives finding opportunity are those who understand where the demand is and what it requires.

Where the demand is

The US leads with the strongest hiring intentions in nearly five years, NEO 45%, up 15 points year-on-year. 78% of US companies now use AI in at least one function and the race to find executives who can govern and scale it is intense across technology, healthcare, financial services and energy.

India records among the strongest Net Employment Outlook globally and projects demand for over one million AI roles against a 53% skills deficit.

The Gulf states collectively need 2.5 million skilled professionals over three years; 56% of GCC employers are expanding headcount.

Europe is the weakest region at NEO 16%, but the EU AI Act, with general compliance obligations from August 2026, high-risk system obligations from December 2027, and fines up to €35 million for prohibited uses, is generating specific and urgent executive demand for AI governance, data compliance and risk leadership.

What boards actually want

A leadership narrative that travels. The ability to communicate complex transformation credibly across geographies, cultures and stakeholder types is the capability most consistently cited as the differentiating factor.

Commercial judgement beyond your home market. Executives who understand capital allocation across currency environments and regulatory frameworks are in short supply at senior level.

Cross-border positioning. Growth is concentrated by both geography and sector. Executives who can demonstrate what they bring to a specific market, not just what they have done at home, move faster and achieve better terms than those offering undifferentiated international experience.

What this means for Executive positioning  

What this means for your positioning

• US: The US is the strongest hiring market in nearly five years, but the competition is global and US boards are buying sector depth, not international experience in general. Pick your entry point – technology, healthcare, fintech, energy – and position around it specifically. The AI leadership gap is real; if you can show specific outcomes (which tools, which decisions, what commercial result), you are addressing something US organisations cannot easily fill domestically. Get into US search firm networks before you need them.
• Europe: AI governance is the EU’s defining executive opportunity. The EU AI Act’s extraterritorial scope means you do not need to relocate to be relevant – any organisation whose AI touches EU markets is in scope. Lead with compliance-to-operations capability and position it as a board-level asset, not a legal function. The Netherlands and Nordics offer more accessible entry than Germany or France for non-EU executives.
• MENA: In Gulf markets, direct introduction is a prerequisite. Build relationships with regional search firms before you need them. In Saudi Arabia, board-level familiarity with Vision 2030 priorities is expected; know the agenda before the first conversation. The financial case is real: £1m AED annual salary in the UAE (equivalent to £220,000) requires a UK gross of approximately £385,000 to match in take-home terms.
• Asia: Singapore and India require completely different positioning. Singapore suits executives who can lead regional operations across diverse, geographically dispersed teams; India suits those who can translate technology investment into commercial growth at scale. In both markets, introductions and network visibility come before opportunity; work with search firms that have genuine local presence, not global mandates run from London.

Read the full Rialto Q3 2026 Global Executive Outlook below, the Rialto Q3 UK Outlook here or get in touch for a free initial consultation on your career strategy.

3-minute read

Amid tumultuous geopolitical issues, fluctuating energy prices, inflation worries and AI disruption causing a human workforce crisis, the UK is facing more upheaval and uncertainty with its seventh Prime Minister in a decade. What does it all mean for executives seeking transition, progression or just trying to stay ahead of the ever-changing landscape?

This quarter’s Rialto Executive Outlook examines what the economic trends and data really mean – and how senior leadership can best respond and prepare.

Redundancies are rising, visible vacancies sit at a five-year low and Andy Burnham’s arrival as Prime Minister has added political uncertainty to an already complex landscape. Yet Q3 hiring intentions are the strongest in two years. The UK’s Net Employment Outlook of 37 (ManpowerGroup) places it fourth in the world. The contradiction is the story: organisations are eliminating roles AI can automate while urgently seeking executives who can lead that transformation. Structural change is sharpest at the top.

Where the market is moving

Growth is real but concentrated. Defence, cybersecurity, fintech, healthcare technology and green energy are generating the strongest executive demand. Technology and Information leads sector hiring intentions at NEO 46. The fastest-growing titles are Chief AI Officer, Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Transformation Officer.

70 to 80% of senior appointments are still made without a public vacancy. The hidden market is active. Interim placements rose 29% year-on-year globally in 2025 and the supply-demand balance for interim leadership is among the most favourable in five years.

What boards actually want

AI literacy that is specific. Generic claims about embracing AI are dismissed. Boards want to know which tools you have used, what decisions they changed and what guardrails you put in place.

A transformation narrative that travels. The ability to communicate complex change credibly across board, investor, employee and regulator audiences is the capability search partners most frequently cite as the differentiating factor.

Commercial judgement beyond one function. Executives who can read the full P&L and speak to capital allocation consistently outperform those who cannot.

Sector versatility. Executives who can credibly cross from legacy to growth sectors, with a clear articulation of what transfers, are moving faster and achieving better terms.

What this means for your positioning

• AI-literate candidates are achieving materially better terms than peers with equivalent functional experience. If AI is a gap, close it before your next search conversation.
• Search firms are assessing AI and transformation capability before presenting shortlists. Your profile is reviewed before any approach is made. Have specific examples ready.
• The executive who appears in search firm networks before a role exists has a structural advantage. Build those relationships now, not when you need them.
• NED fees on FTSE 350 boards run from £40,000 to £70,000 per year. For executives in transition, a NED or advisory appointment maintains visibility and drives the network activity behind most senior appointments.
• Burnham’s agenda on water, energy, transport, housing and infrastructure is still forming. Boards in those sectors need to be mapping exposure now rather than waiting for the detail.

Five actions for executives in Q3 2026

1. Audit your AI literacy against board expectations.
2. Develop a transformation narrative that goes beyond your function.
3. Build visibility in the hidden market before you need it.
4. Consider interim, advisory and NED routes alongside permanent roles.
5. Position around growth sectors rather than legacy sectors.

Read the full Rialto Q3 2026 UK Executive Outlook below, the Rialto Q3 global outlook here or get in touch for a free initial consultation on your career strategy.

The Value of Strategy, Team-building and Adaptability and Trust

4 minute read

When established giants fall and underdogs outperform expectations at the highest level of competition, it is rarely through chance.  Whether seeking an executive transition or leadership through transformation, leaders can learn as much from the gutsy and spirited fight of the minnows as they can from the slick performances of the favourites.

The FIFA World Cup is more than football’s biggest tournament. It is one of the world’s clearest demonstrations of leadership under pressure, where strategy, resilience and decision-making are tested in full public view. Every match mirrors challenges executives face every day: responding to unexpected setbacks, adapting plans in real time, making high-stakes decisions and leading teams through uncertainty.

England’s win over Mexico showed the value of composure under pressure, adapting to adversity after a red card threatened to derail their campaign. Cape Verde, the smallest nation ever to reach the knockout stage, pushed reigning champions Argentina to extra time through preparation and self-belief. Meanwhile, traditional powerhouses Germany, Brazil and the Netherlands were eliminated by emerging contenders who were better prepared – and perhaps more committed – on the day; who proved greater than the sums of their parts.

These results weren’t simply footballing upsets. They were the product of preparation, adaptability, disciplined execution, intelligent leadership and exceptional teamwork, the same qualities now separating organisations that keep growing and stay relevant from those coasting on past success as AI and constant disruption reset the competitive landscape.

1. Prepare for every challenge with focused intentionality.

England’s manager Thomas Tuchel adapts fixture by fixture rather than applying a fixed system regardless of opponent. Facing Mexico with ten men, he ripped up his plan, switched to a back five, and held a one-goal lead for half an hour in the thin air of the Azteca. It worked because the response was built for the situation in front of him, not the one he’d prepared for.

A fixed playbook is a liability in a fast-moving, AI-driven market. The leaders who win reassess continuously, adapt quickly and stress-test themselves against the challenges they aspire to overcome.

2: Don’t mistake reputation for current form.

Brazil are out, beaten by Norway. Germany went out on penalties to Paraguay, the Netherlands to Morocco, and two-time champions Uruguay never recovered from being held by debutants Cape Verde.

Market leaders fail the same way. Rank, history and brand may earn a place in the competition, but they don’t guarantee success in the next fixture. Leadership requires continual self-reflection and the willingness to challenge assumptions before the market does.

3. Recruit beyond your immediate pool – and hold on to your talent.

Cape Verde (population around 525,000) and Curaçao (around 156,000) built their squads largely from the diaspora, treating their talent pool as global rather than local. Cape Verde’s defender Roberto Lopes was first approached through a LinkedIn message he ignored as spam. And the story has a human heart: 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozinha made seven saves to shut out Spain, then took Argentina to extra time, saving even from Messi, before a deflection settled it.

The strongest candidate is rarely the one already inside the building.  Finding exceptional people is only half the job; keeping them through culture, loyalty and meaningful experiences creates an advantage competitors cannot easily buy.

4. There is real strength in defence.

Football is usually about the goals and the strikers who score them, just as business can fixate on the bottom line and the obvious performers. This tournament has rewarded defensive discipline just as much as attacking brilliance: England defending a lead with ten men at a ferocious Azteca, Cape Verde snuffing out Spain, goalkeepers performing heroics.

In business, governance, data security and the other less visible defence mechanisms are what keep you in the game.  The same applies to leadership capability. Organisations that invest in coaching, resilience and judgement before a crisis are the ones still standing when it arrives.

5. Build for what outlasts the immediate campaign.

The US Soccer Federation and Major League Soccer have planned for this World Cup since winning hosting rights in 2018, treating it as a launchpad for lasting growth rather than a six-week spike in attention.  Creating lasting value is what matters in business. Organisations that invest in long-term capability, rather than short-term momentum, create advantages that outlast any single campaign or initiative.

6. Make AI tools accessible to all to lift performance.

FIFA and Lenovo’s Football AI Pro gives all 48 competing nations, not just the wealthiest federations access to advanced performance data, helping smaller teams compete more effectively.

For executives, the constraint has shifted from access to strategic clarity. The organisations gaining the greatest advantage are combining AI with strong leadership, governance and the capability to ask better questions.

7. Stakeholder trust in your personal or organisational brand is everything.

The tournament organisers and team worked so hard to build the reputation of US soccer – but their organisation and performance disintegrated in their last 4-1 loss to Belgium with many suggesting the overturned red card furore played its part. It also brought FIFA and its embattled President Gianni Infantino into disrepute. Executives cannot afford to bend compliance for quick wins.

What connects all seven?

The game is football. The lessons are leadership.
Success belongs to the organisations that prepare with intention, adapt faster than their competitors, build capabilities that outlast the immediate challenge. They widen the talent pool, embrace shared tools, defend as seriously as they attack and invest for the long term. The executives that lead them understand the value of trust and carry a healthy respect for the competition; they treat their careers as a continuous learning process where success is earned every day, not deserved.

Download the full insight, including FAQs below.

2 minute read

AI is now deployed in at least one function in 88% of organisations. Yet 56% of CEOs report capturing neither revenue nor cost savings from it.   The gap between AI deployment and business value is rarely caused by the technology itself. It is more often the result of a missing strategic framework that links AI investment to business priorities, measurable outcomes and executive accountability.

Crucially, this is not a middle-management execution issue. It sits at the top of organisations, where strategic direction, prioritisation and ownership of outcomes are set. In many cases, AI is being deployed without the level of executive clarity required to convert activity into value.

This challenge is now showing up at the leadership level. In an exclusive Rialto survey of professional clients, supported by feedback from our strategy consultants and executive career coaches, the single biggest capability gap threatening executive relevance was said to be the inability to connect AI to commercial strategy. Forty-four per cent of respondents named it as their primary concern.  Nothing else came close.

What AI strategy actually means

Strategy, in this context, is not a slide deck or a digital transformation roadmap. It is the answer to four specific questions that every board should be asking at a minimum and every C-suite executive should be able to answer clearly:

1. What commercial problem is AI solving, and for whom?
2. Which measurable outcomes define success, and over what timeframe?
3. Who is accountable for delivery, and how is that accountability embedded in leadership reviews?
4. What governance structure ensures that AI decisions are made with appropriate oversight?

Through its work with senior leadership teams, Rialto has consistently observed that organisations unable to answer these four questions often struggle to convert well-intentioned AI experimentation into a defined route to measurable business value.

Once these foundations are established, organisations are better positioned to address the practical challenges of implementation, including managing governance, accelerating decision-making and cross-functional collaboration.

The question for any executive reading this is whether their ability to align AI with commercial objectives, set measurable outcomes and govern for results is visible to the people who make decisions about leadership, succession and future organisational capability. In a market increasingly shifting from experience-based to skills-based evaluation, boards are asking not only what leaders have achieved, but whether they possess the capabilities required for the next phase of growth and transformation. Demonstrable AI leadership capability is rapidly becoming one of those differentiators.

Download the full insight, including FAQs below.

Once an executive transition is underway, the question about when and how to use AI shifts from strategic to operational. How much should you lean on it? Where does it genuinely save time and sharpen your approach? And where might it quietly undermine the credibility you have spent a career building?

Used with clear intent, AI can add genuine value in the early stages of a transition that previously cost executives considerable time and effort. The gap between executives who use it effectively and those who do not is less about the tools themselves and more about the clarity they bring to the task. The executives getting the most from AI are specific about what they are asking it to do. They use it to pressure-test positioning, compress research, prepare for interviews and sharpen the consistency of their personal brand narrative. They treat it as a thinking partner, not a ghostwriter. They rarely ask it to produce anything they actually intend to send.

Nor do they entirely trust it – and with good reason. They know it is a useful preparation and sense checking tool, but it can never (at least in its current capabilities) offer the nuance, industry and sector knowledge or emotional intelligence required in senior-level decision-making.

There is also a quieter but important consideration: data exposure. Feeding full career histories, board-level experience, compensation details or strategic thinking into public AI tools carries risk. For executives operating under NDAs, fiduciary duties or sensitive market conditions, this is not a marginal concern and should be understood before the first prompt is used.

Rialto consultants support professionals seeking or considering an executive transition to understand where AI genuinely adds value and where caution is required. We help clients identify and address capability gaps, strengthen executive positioning and build a robust, defensible narrative that meets the expectations of senior hiring processes.  AI can and should be used during an executive transition, but understanding where it strengthens the process and where human judgement, experience and relationships remain irreplaceable. That judgement cannot be reliably outsourced to Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini.

Does GenAI open new opportunities – or limit them?

Multiple sources consistently point to 70-80% of senior executive roles never being publicly advertised. They are filled before they reach the open market through networks, trusted relationships and retained search.

AI tools are built for visible markets. They can help you compete in the 20-30% of roles that are publicly posted. They have no meaningful access to the rest.

Executives who spend a transition optimising their profile for job boards while neglecting relationship-building and strategic visibility are severely limiting their options and reach.

Non-executive and portfolio career conversations rarely begin with a CV; they start with an introduction, often years before a board seat becomes available. Internal moves, whether a promotion, a lateral step across a portfolio or a repositioning after restructure, are decided by sponsorship, political capital and the visibility you have already built. Neither responds to keyword optimisation.

Where AI becomes a liability in Executive Transition

Recruiters and boards are increasingly alert to AI’s levelling effect, where almost anyone can enhance language, polish positioning and inflate perceived capability. As a result, candidates can no longer assume that an immaculately polished application will secure an interview.

UK research by CV Genius found that 80% of hiring managers dislike AI-generated CVs and cover letters, 74% can spot an AI-written job application and 57% are less likely to hire applicants who appear to have used AI tools. At senior level, where search professionals are specifically assessing authenticity, cultural fit and the distinctiveness of a leadership narrative, generic AI buffing will often see even brilliant candidates rejected at the first review.

Importantly, recruiters do not have the time to deconstruct a narrative to separate substance from polish. Where AI has inflated positioning beyond lived experience, candidates risk being exposed at interview when depth, specificity and judgement are tested under pressure.

The texture of real leadership experience is difficult to fabricate. When asked to describe a transformation initiative, a credible executive can move beyond outcomes to the reality of execution: the stakeholder resistance encountered along the way, the trade-offs made under pressure, the moment board confidence nearly shifted, or the individual whose support proved harder to secure than anticipated. These details are not embellishment but the structure of credible leadership narrative.

AI-generated accounts, by contrast, tend to be smooth. They are logically coherent but lack resistance. They describe what was achieved, but not what was navigated. Experienced panels listen precisely for that difference – the friction, the constraint and the judgement calls made under ambiguity.

This is also where the gap between narrative and lived experience becomes most visible. Human coaches and advisors play an important role in helping executives surface and articulate this underlying complexity – ensuring that achievements are grounded in context, not just presented as outcomes.

The risk of getting this wrong also extends well beyond a single interview process. The executive search ecosystem is small, interconnected and highly conversational. A candidate who has over-claimed, or who under-delivers under scrutiny, can remain visible within a network where reputational memory is longer than most executives assume.

Where AI is relevant in an active transition

AI is a legitimate and increasingly powerful tool in executive transition. Used well, it can help senior leaders reduce time spent on preparation, structure thinking and improve efficiency in parts of the executive transition process. However, its value lies in complementing, not replacing, the judgement, challenge and contextual insight provided by experienced executive transition advisors and coaches.

At Rialto, many of our consultants have themselves operated in senior leadership positions. That experience matters. Executive transition is rarely just about producing stronger documents or preparing for interviews; it is about navigating complex career decisions, market realities, leadership positioning and personal transition with clarity and credibility. AI can support elements of that process, but it cannot replicate lived executive experience, market intuition or the depth of challenge that comes from an experienced advisor who understands both leadership and transition first-hand.

CV and LinkedIn optimisation. AI can be effective in helping executives test the clarity of their narrative and improve readability so that it lands with an audience that spends seconds, not minutes, reading it. It can flag inconsistencies in language, improve compatibility with applicant tracking systems and help you crystallise a complex career history into coherent positioning.

At senior level, however, effective positioning requires more than polished language. Executive coaches and transition advisors help ensure that a profile reflects genuine leadership substance, market relevance and strategic differentiation, rather than simply producing a more refined version of generic executive language.

Research and market intelligence. AI can compress the research phase of a job search considerably. It can map board and leadership team structures, analyse sector trends, summarise publicly available company information and support hypothesis-building around target organisations; tasks that previously took days now take hours.

For an executive building a credible, sector-specific case for their next move, this is time well spent. However, as above, it should never replace investment in human relationships. Experienced executive advisors bring contextual understanding that AI cannot access: insight into leadership dynamics, board priorities, organisational culture, succession considerations and the informal market signals that often shape senior hiring decisions before roles become visible externally.

Interview preparation AI can also act as a useful initial partner when preparing for interviews. It can help structure responses and test articulation of strategic thinking.

However, executive interviews are rarely assessments of technical answers alone. Senior hiring processes evaluate credibility, judgement, self-awareness, resilience and leadership presence under pressure. Experienced coaches help executives prepare for these dimensions through challenge, feedback and informed perspective grounded in real leadership experience, something AI cannot authentically replicate.

Personal brand development. AI can help executives build the consistency and strong identity that makes them discoverable to the right recruiters and influencers across LinkedIn, thought leadership content and board-facing narrative. For leaders with strong underlying credentials who have never invested time in communicating them effectively, this is a meaningful accelerant, but it is only part of the story.

Strong executive brands are not built through polished content alone. They are built through credibility, clarity of leadership identity, track record and differentiated perspective. AI can help refine articulation, but it cannot create the underlying substance that ultimately distinguishes senior leaders in competitive markets.

Across all of the above four uses, the executives getting the most from AI treat it as a thinking partner rather than an authority. They use it to sharpen thinking, test positioning and accelerate preparation, while relying on experienced human counsel to challenge assumptions, interpret context and support the deeper strategic decisions that shape long-term career trajectory.

Executive Transition Support with Rialto

Ask an AI tool how to land your next executive role and you will get a credible-sounding answer in seconds. Ask a Rialto consultant the same question and the first response will usually be a different question: what are you actually trying to build, and what are you willing to leave behind or invest in to achieve it?

Rialto works with leaders navigating executive transition, AI driven transformation and organisational change. We help clients understand where AI adds value, and where it introduces unnecessary risk or distortion.

Our consultants bring contextual market knowledge, network access and the kind of long-term professional relationship required at senior level: the ability to challenge narrative, interpret market signals and support decision-making beyond the next role.

If you are in an active transition and want support navigating the tools and the process, we would welcome a conversation.

You may also be interested in reading our insight, Should Executives use AI to Plan their Careers?.

Frequently asked questions

Can recruiters tell if you have used AI to write your CV? Often, yes. UK research suggests that around three quarters of hiring managers can identify AI-generated job applications, and over half are less likely to progress candidates who appear to have leaned heavily on AI tools. At executive level the risk is higher because search consultants are specifically looking for distinctive voice, authenticity and lived experience that AI struggles to fabricate convincingly.

How do I find executive jobs that are not advertised? Around 70-80% of senior roles are filled through networks, trusted referrals and retained search before reaching public job boards. The most reliable route is to invest, well before a transition, in relationships with search professionals in your sector, peer networks and board contacts. Visibility through considered thought leadership, board memberships and a credible LinkedIn presence also helps you appear on shortlists you never see advertised.

Can AI help me prepare for an executive interview? Yes, for structuring thinking and practising articulation. It can help you anticipate questions, practise articulating your strategic thinking and pressure-test your answers. However, it cannot replicate live human evaluation. Preparation should therefore always be tested through real conversation with experienced professionals who understand the constantly changing expectations of the audience you will face.

Artificial intelligence is now more routinely being used by executives to support career exploration, positioning and executive transition planning. From CV refinement to market research and narrative development, its use is no longer experimental. However, its usefulness in senior-level decision-making remains far less clear.

Among Rialto clients navigating executive transitions, two concerns are raised consistently: whether recruiters can detect AI-assisted applications, and whether AI should be trusted to design an executive career strategy.

The short answers are: they can so use it appropriately; let it provide insight, but never rely on it unthinkingly.

Both questions reveal something important about where executives currently are with these tools: curious, cautious and not entirely sure where the line is. That uncertainty is understandable. AI tools have become genuinely sophisticated, but the marketing around them has consistently outpaced the honest conversation about their limitations. Getting this wrong at senior level carries real consequences, particularly in the face of structural downward pressure in parts of the job market.

How AI should be positioned in executive career planning

A few things are worth holding in mind:

1. AI is genuinely useful for initial testing of your positioning, accelerating research and refining your personal brand narrative as an executive. The moment you let it generate your story or your decisions, you lose the clarity and authenticity that define genuine leadership.
2. Executive transitions rarely follow on-paper logic. They involve identity, emotion and personal circumstances as much as logistics. Up to half of executive transitions are later viewed as failures or disappointments, rarely due to technical capability, but more often because of mismatch, which can be exacerbated by the use of AI .
3. At senior level, AI should be seen as an input into thinking, not a substitute for human thinking.

Using AI to support executive career planning

1. Clarify what you actually want from the next stage

Authenticity and honesty in career planning are essential to avoiding destabilising wrong steps. This starts with working through difficult questions: what you really want and need from a role, what you are willing to offer, where your limitations may be at this stage of your career and where you see yourself in five to ten years.

Is this the right time for a leap upwards? Will the role offer the right level of challenge? Are you moving into a declining sector out of urgency, when you might be better to pause, reskill or pivot into a growth area?

These are precisely the conversations Rialto consultants are having weekly with senior leaders across sectors. Do get in touch if we can support you in this way.

AI can help structure these questions, but it cannot interrogate your assumptions with the depth or challenge required at this level. (Read previous insights on High Performer to Executive Leader and High Stakes Executive Career Pivots.)

2. Interpret market reality and timing

Understanding market conditions is critical. The UK senior job market has tightened sharply. ONS data shows vacancies at their lowest level since early 2021, with 2.5 unemployed people per vacancy. What sustains executive relevance in this environment is AI-ready leadership capability and nuanced emotional intelligence, which boards are now actively assessing, not generic and indistinct AI-generated responses.

In this environment, timing and positioning matter as much as capability.

AI is genuinely useful for stress-testing your positioning, accelerating research and refining your personal brand narrative as an executive. It can support rapid research and scenario testing, helping you map sectors, roles and emerging trends.

However, interpretation – what is relevant to your specific profile and trajectory – remains a human judgement, not an AI one.

3. Assess your transferable authority

The executives who build resilient careers in the AI economy share certain characteristics that have nothing to do with their CV software or responses to Gen AI prompts.

They understand their transferable authority: what they have achieved, but also the specific credibility, network and strategic perspectives that are genuinely transferable across contexts.

They invest in their visibility within the markets where the next opportunity is most likely to emerge. They have relationships with search professionals, peers and board members that exist before any transition begins.

And they have worked through the harder questions about the kind of role they want to do next, the conditions in which they perform best and the sectors and organisations where their capabilities will be genuinely valued.

While AI can help refine how this is articulated, it cannot build the underlying capital.

4. Validate decisions through trusted advisors or executive career coaching

Executive transitions are rarely technical exercises. They are high-stakes decisions involving identity, confidence, timing and risk.  This is where trusted advisers, mentors or coaches play an essential role: challenging assumptions, identifying blind spots and grounding decisions in lived market experience and emotional intelligence.

At senior level, career progression is not purely linear – and nor should it be. The strongest executive transitions often emerge from a combination of deliberate planning and opportunistic recognition – the ability to identify moments where a role, challenge or organisation presents a unique intersection of timing, capability and unmet need.

A move will rarely fit neatly into a pre-defined trajectory, but a well-timed and considered one should enhance an individual’s distinctive position in the market over time.

The role of trusted external counsel is to test these decisions with objectivity: to distinguish between momentum and opportunity, between reactive change and strategic advantage, and between short-term appeal and longer-term positioning strength.

A large language model does not have the context, the professional relationship or the emotional range to navigate any of that alongside you.

What AI Cannot Replace in Executive Leadership and Career Planning

Emotional intelligence and context cannot be automated. Leaders of high-performing teams consistently identify emotional and social intelligence among the most important success factors and as human capabilities that technology cannot replicate.

Boards and search committees know that organisational growth and security depend on hiring genuine AI talent: executives and senior leaders who can navigate AI transformation, not just those who can show they are familiar with AI tools.

There is a meaningful difference between a leader who has used ChatGPT to polish their profile and one who can articulate a credible, considered position on workforce transformation and organisational redesign.

Executive Career Planning with Rialto

At Rialto, we help clients identify exactly where AI tools add value and where to step back.

Our consultants bring contextual market knowledge, network access and the kind of long-term professional relationship that career strategy at senior level actually requires.

If you are thinking seriously about your next move, or about building the kind of executive career that will remain relevant as the AI economy matures, we would welcome a conversation.

(See our companion insight, Using AI in an Active Executive Transition – and Where It Can Trip You Up.)

Frequently asked questions

Should I use tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude to help plan my career?

For research, stress-testing your positioning and understanding the markets where your capabilities are most valued, yes. For generating your strategy, your narrative or your decisions, no. The executives who get the most out of AI treat it as a thinking partner that sharpens their own thinking, rather than a content generator that does the thinking for them.

Will AI replace executive search?

No. Executive search at the most senior level is built on relationships, judgement and the ability to assess cultural and strategic fit. AI tools support search consultants with research, scheduling and shortlisting, but the core work of senior search remains human and relational. If anything, the rise of AI is increasing the value of trusted human advisers, not reducing it.

What is AI-ready leadership capability and why do boards care about it?

AI-ready leadership capability is the ability to lead an organisation through AI transformation. It includes making sound judgements about where AI should and should not be embedded into decision-making, redesigning workforce structures and roles, and bringing leadership teams and boards through the change. Recent UK research from the CIPD shows that boards are now actively assessing for this in senior hires. Familiarity with AI tools alone is no longer enough.

Why Leadership Transitions Are Harder Than They Look

4 minute read

Many successful executives are promoted for technical excellence, commercial results and operational delivery but the transition to an executive leadership role requires an entirely different mindset, capability set and level of self-awareness.

Many successful executives are promoted for technical excellence, commercial results and operational delivery.

They are the people who manage complexity, win clients, drive growth and consistently deliver results. It is therefore understandable that organisations look to these individuals when building their leadership pipeline.

The assumption is simple: if someone can perform at that level, surely they can lead others who do the same.

It is a reasonable assumption — and it is frequently wrong.

The skills that create a high-performing specialist are not always the same skills required for executive leadership.

The executives most vulnerable during this transition are rarely the mediocre performers. They are often the high performers: the specialists and experts who have spent years perfecting the capabilities that built their reputation, only to find that some of those same capabilities can become obstacles to continuing growth.

The challenge is not a lack of ability.

It is recognising that success at one level does not automatically prepare someone for success at the next.

The Promotion Paradox: When Performance Stops Being Enough

A transition into executive leadership requires a fundamental shift.  A highly capable functional leader may excel within their area of expertise but find that moving into a broader executive role requires a different level of strategic influence, enterprise thinking and leadership capability.

The best technical expert may not yet be equipped for the wider commercial demands of executive leadership.  For example, a finance leader who has excelled operationally may need to develop a different approach to strategic influence.  A successful sales leader may need to move from personal delivery to creating the conditions where others can succeed.

The issue is rarely intelligence, ambition or commitment.  The challenge is that promotion is often granted based on past performance, with an assumption that the individual will naturally grow into the role.  Some do but many do not.

The very qualities organisations reward — technical mastery, personal drive, high standards and proven delivery — can become limitations at executive level if they are not consciously examined and adapted.

The Leadership Behaviours That Hold High Performers Back

The most common challenge is continuing to operate in the way that created previous success.  High performers are often used to solving problems themselves. They are fast, reliable and capable of finding solutions quickly.

However, at executive level, success depends less on personal contribution and more on building capability in others.  When leaders continue to solve every problem themselves, they unintentionally limit their team’s development and reduce their own   capacity to focus on strategy.  Closely linked to this is the pull towards operational detail. Execution matters, but executive leadership requires the ability to step back, scan the horizon and create direction for the organisation.

High performers can also struggle with accepting that others may approach work differently. The standards that built their own success can unintentionally create dependency, where teams perform well but remain reliant on the leader’s involvement.

The transition requires moving from being the person who delivers the answer to the person who creates the environment where better answers emerge.

The Real Challenge: A Shift in Leadership Identity

The move from high performer to executive leader is not simply about learning new skills.  It requires a renegotiation of professional identity.

Leaders must shift:

• From individual delivery to collective success.
• From expertise to judgement.
• From control to trust.
• From operational execution to strategic influence.

Delegation becomes critical.  Executives must become comfortable allowing others to lead areas they previously owned themselves. This can feel uncomfortable, particularly for individuals whose reputation has been built on personal excellence.

Influence also becomes increasingly important.  At executive level, outcomes depend less on formal authority and more on trust, alignment and the ability to influence across the organisation.

Perhaps the greatest adjustment is learning to operate with ambiguity.  The further leaders progress, the fewer clear answers exist. Time horizons lengthen, complexity increases and decisions must often be made without complete information.

Executive leadership requires judgement, perspective and the confidence to navigate uncertainty.

The Role of Executive Coaching in Leadership Transition

Formal leadership programmes provide valuable knowledge and frameworks, but successful executive transitions also require deeper reflection and behavioural change.

Executive coaching creates the space for leaders to understand how they are experienced by others, identify behaviours that may no longer serve them and develop the self-awareness needed to operate effectively at a higher level.

The most successful leaders are those willing to seek objective challenge before problems emerge.  They recognise that reaching executive level is not the end of development. It is the point where continued growth becomes even more important.

Becoming a True Executive Leader

The transition from high performer to executive leader is one of the most significant inflection points in a career.  The leaders who successfully make this shift are not necessarily those with the strongest track records. They are those with the self-awareness to recognise what they need to leave behind, the willingness to develop new behaviours and the ability to create impact through others.

Executive success is no longer measured by what one person can achieve.  It is measured by the capability they build, the decisions they make and the lasting impact they create through their teams.

Download the full insight below.

The Leadership Tensions at the Heart of AI Transformation

Ask most senior leaders whether they feel on top of the AI transformation agenda and the honest answer is likely to be no. The scale of what is being asked is unlike anything in their experience. It is not one capability gap, but several converging at once. Each urgent, none clearly prioritised.

That is the difficulty with how AI transformation is often framed. The conversation tends to produce a list: AI fluency, governance, workforce redesign, commercial translation, systems thinking, speed, ethics. The implicit message is that all of it matters and all of it is needed now. For many executives, that feels less like clarity and more like overload.

The more useful question is not just what matters, but what matters most, and in what order.

Across leadership teams, a pattern is emerging. The organisations struggling to convert AI ambition into results are not those lacking investment or intent, but those unable to prioritise the tensions that sit at the heart of transformation. Two in particular stand out, because they consistently expose the gap between confidence and readiness.

Speed vs Governance:

Boards asked what they want from their leadership in an AI-augmented organisation are highly likely to prioritise speed, telling leadership to move faster; decide with less information; deploy ahead of competitors. In a market where AI capability is evolving faster than strategy cycles, the instinct to prioritise pace is understandable.

Investment patterns reflect this urgency.  Deloitte’s 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise report, drawing on over 3,000 senior leaders across 24 countries, found that 84% of organisations increased their AI budgets last year, with the dominant talent strategy being the acceleration of AI fluency across the workforce.

What the same data also shows is that the investment is not converting. Only one in four organisations have moved 40% or more of their AI pilots into production. Just 20% report high preparedness on talent. Revenue growth from AI remains an aspiration for 74% of organisations against a reality for just 20%. Fewer than half are making significant adjustments to their talent strategies, and more than a third are using AI at surface level with little or no change to existing processes.

It means money is going in, transformation is not coming out.

Moving quickly is not the same as moving effectively. The gap between the two is where executive reputations are currently being made or damaged.

This is where governance re-enters the conversation, however, often too late and misunderstood. The term itself still carries unhelpful connotations: compliance, overheads, constraint. As a result, it is frequently deprioritised in favour of visible momentum.

The evidence, however, points in the opposite direction. Organisations where senior leadership actively shapes AI governance consistently realise greater value than those that delegate it. Governance is not a brake on speed; it is the condition under which speed becomes safe, scalable, and defensible.

The regulatory environment has made this explicit. Frameworks such as the EU AI Act, alongside existing regimes like the UK’s Senior Managers and Certification Regime, are formalising accountability for AI outcomes. This is no longer abstract. If systems fail, whether through bias, data exposure, or flawed decision-making, the organisation is liable, and leadership is accountable. “The model did it” is not a defence that regulators or courts will accept.

Recent cases have reinforced this reality.

In February 2024, Air Canada was found liable after its AI chatbot gave a grieving customer incorrect information about bereavement fares. The airline argued the chatbot was a separate legal entity responsible for its own actions. The tribunal rejected this entirely. The case has since been cited across multiple jurisdictions as the moment the accountability gap in AI deployment became legally indefensible.

Contrast this with Robinhood’s approach to its AI-powered financial crimes investigation system, which built validation agents checking every output, full audit logs for regulatory explainability, and human oversight at every decision point. The result was a 20% efficiency gain in investigative workflows and a system that regulators can audit and leadership can defend.

The widely cited ruling by the airline chatbot providing incorrect customer information made clear that organisations cannot distance themselves from the actions of their AI systems. By contrast, organisations embedding oversight, auditability and human validation into AI decision-making are demonstrating that governance and performance are not in conflict, they are mutually reinforcing.

The leadership challenge, then, is not choosing between speed and governance. It is recognising that without governance, speed is fragile and often undermining.

Workforce restructuring vs responsibility.

If the speed-versus-governance dynamic is the most visible leadership tension in AI transformation, the workforce question is another that demands urgent and considered attention.  However, it is sometimes overlooked in the rush to drive efficiency savings through automation.

The economic logic for using AI to redesign operating models is clear. Automation, consolidation, and more AI-enabled roles can materially improve efficiency. On paper, the case is straightforward.  In practice, this is where financially rational decisions become leadership risks.

Organisations too often focus on those whose roles are removed or redefined, neglecting to mitigate the impact on those who remain. Organisations that restructure without a credible people narrative do not simply lose the people who leave, they can lose the confidence of those who remain.  With that, they may lose discretionary effort, institutional knowledge and the informal networks that transformation depends on.

The efficiency gain may be delivered, but the capability to build on it is often diminished.

This is where many transformation programmes quietly underperform. The structural change is achieved, but the conditions required for sustained performance are weakened in the process.

The capability required here is not empathy as a soft skill, it’s the ability to make difficult structural decisions with clarity and pace while maintaining the conditions under which high-performing people choose to stay and contribute. That combination is rarer than boards generally acknowledge and its absence is one of the less visible but more consequential reasons AI transformation programmes underdeliver.

There is a further dimension that receives less attention at board-level. The executives being asked to lead workforce redesign are themselves operating in an environment of considerable personal uncertainty. The roles being automated, consolidated or redefined are not exclusively below them in the hierarchy. For some, the capabilities that built their careers are among those the market is beginning to discount. This is a dynamic Rialto sees consistently in its work with senior leaders in transition – the difficulty of driving change with conviction when the ground beneath your own position is also shifting. Navigating it requires a degree of psychological clarity that technical upskilling alone does not provide.

This is not a reason to slow the pace of change. It is a reason to be deliberate about which leaders are positioned to drive it and what support the organisation is providing to those who are not yet there.

What This Means for Executive Leadership

The tension between speed and governance is often framed as a trade-off: move fast or govern well; compete or comply. Similarly, workforce transformation is framed as a structural exercise: redesign the model and execute.

The organisations that are translating AI investment into sustained value are not those choosing one side of these tensions. They are those whose leadership teams are resolving them, treating governance as an enabler of speed and workforce decisions as both structural and human challenges that must be addressed simultaneously.

PwC’s 2025 Responsible AI research found that 60% of executives said governance boosts ROI and efficiency while 55% reported improved customer experience and innovation as a direct result of responsible AI practices. Yet nearly half acknowledged that turning those principles into operational reality remained a challenge. The value of governance is appreciated, but many organisations are falling short when it comes to embedding it across functions and departments.

The organisations building resilience, innovation and enduring growth into their business models through AI transformation are those that understand which elements are load-bearing right now and need direct attention.

For most, that includes governance, workforce credibility and accountability for how restructuring decisions are made and experienced.

This is also where a more grounded view of executive readiness is needed. In ongoing work with senior leaders, and through current research into executive AI relevance, a consistent picture is emerging: confidence in certain areas, genuine gaps in others and a broader recognition that the demands are arriving faster than preparation.

The leadership task is to distinguish between what is urgent, what is foundational and where the risks of inaction are compounding in ways that are not yet visible on the surface.

A More Focused Question

For executives navigating this evolving landscape, the immediate question is whether they are prioritising the right tensions and addressing them in the right order.

The organisations that will look back on this period as a point of competitive advantage are unlikely to be those that moved fastest in isolation. They will be those where leadership teams made structural decisions at pace, embedded governance early and managed workforce transition without eroding the human foundations of performance.

One of the consistent challenges at executive level is the absence of an external reference point: a clear view of how peers are interpreting the same pressures, where they are placing emphasis, and where confidence diverges from actual readiness.

This is precisely the focus of current Rialto research into executive AI relevance. Through ongoing work with senior leaders, and a structured survey designed to capture how leadership teams are prioritising capability, risk, and investment, we are seeing an increasingly clear picture of where organisations are actually placing weight, and where the most material gaps sit.

The survey will provide a dataset which is missing in the current market. Findings will be shared in aggregated form with contributors, offering a more grounded view of how peers are navigating these same tensions, how they perceive and manage priorities. It will enable leaders to gain a clearer picture of how they fit into the broader landscape, both in terms of their own professional development and their organisational readiness.

For most, AI transformation is not constrained by awareness or ambition.  It is constrained by effective prioritisation in the face of the overwhelming pace of change and competing challenges.

At the centre of it all, the difference between progress and underperformance increasingly comes down to a single capability: the ability to decide what matters most and act on it first.

The survey remains open for a limited time and takes just five minutes. More details can be found here: Executive Relevance in the Age of AI.

When and How to Navigate Strategic Career Changes

For most senior leaders, an executive career pivot is seldom top of their radar. They might be pushed by a redundancy, a restructuring or the slow realisation that the organisation they have given ten years to is no longer the one they joined. By that point, options are typically narrower, and career options are considered under pressure, which can restrict salary negotiations and change the narrative from intention to escape.

While the thought of restarting in an entirely new industry or making an executive career pivot can appear daunting, the risks of failing to acknowledge a rapidly changing market are higher. A planned pivot can also reignite motivation, purpose and satisfaction in ways that staying put cannot.

This matters especially to anyone working in a sector or function undergoing structural, not cyclical, contraction. With the unpredictable advances of AI, all senior leaders should be scanning the near horizon for signs of decline in their own sphere while laying the foundations for a career pivot, as often the time and actions required for this can be underestimated.

This insight considers which leaders need to be moving urgently, which should be building a mid-term plan now and how the transition can be executed in a way that preserves rather than abandons the authority built over a career.

The rewards, the challenges and the cost of staying

A well-executed pivot, made at the right time, can boost careers in several ways: driving salary growth rather than compression, maintaining upward trajectory and reinforcing the psychological security that comes from operating in a market where your skills remain in demand.

However, sector credibility does not transfer automatically. A Chief Commercial Officer who has built their reputation in physical retail will not be viewed as equivalent in B2B fintech on day one. Regulatory frameworks differ, commercial models and vocabulary differ, and the pace and style of decision-making in growth sectors often contrasts sharply with that of large, established organisations. Without at least baseline fluency in the target sector, executives risk a step down in both seniority and compensation. Equally, a pivot that appears reactive rather than intentional weakens the narrative before conversations have even begun.

Against this, the cost of staying continues to compound. According to the CIPD, employer hiring intentions in early 2026 remain at an unparalleled low while the supply of permanent candidates has been growing for three consecutive years. In a softening market, executives in contracting sectors face increasing competition for a shrinking pool of senior roles from peers who have stayed for the same reasons.

A global survey of C-suite executives found that nine out of ten leaders report workforce overcapacity of up to 20% in legacy roles, alongside shortages in AI-critical skills. The executive who waits is accumulating experience that the market is progressively devaluing.

Industries in Decline: Where Executives Should Consider Moving Now

Traditional retail. According to the Centre for Retail Research, the sector shed close to 400,000 jobs in just two years across 2024 and 2025, with 17,349 store closures recorded in 2025 alone. Retail sales volumes still stand more than 2% below pre-pandemic levels, and business rate relief has been abolished entirely from April 2026. Online retail accounts for around a quarter of UK sales and consumer habits shifted structurally during the pandemic in ways that have not reversed. For senior executives who remain in traditional high street retail, the window for a proactive pivot is genuinely narrow.

Legacy financial services. Restructuring is more advanced than many inside it acknowledge. More than 5,000 UK bank branches have closed since 2015, with 432 closures in 2025 alone. Finance job postings dropped 38% in 2025, with AI replacing roles in compliance, reporting and customer service. Salary acceleration is now concentrated almost entirely in professionals who combine finance expertise with digital, automation and risk control capabilities, while traditional operations roles that lack tech capability are experiencing stagnant or declining pay. Decline is most pronounced in branch network management, traditional wealth management and middle-office processing. COOs and CCOs have more transferable authority and more time; branch and processing leaders have less of both.

Legacy media and print. Print circulation has fallen continuously for two decades and the advertising model that sustained broadcast has been structurally disrupted. Executives in traditional media face a specific challenge: the skills they have built – editorial judgement, audience understanding, content commissioning at scale – are genuinely valuable in content-driven technology businesses and brand strategy. But the sector identity requires active management in any pivot narrative.

Sectors in mid-term structural decline: plan now, move by choice

Traditional professional services. Management consulting, legal services and accountancy firms built on time-and-materials billing are not in immediate crisis, but the writing is on the wall. PwC identifies finance, HR, IT and internal audit as areas where AI agents are ripe for automating complex, high-value workflows. The runway is longer than in retail or legacy banking, but it is finite.

Parts of the HR and marketing functions. Chief HR Officers are at a fork: the function weakens as onboarding, learning and screening are automated, or it evolves toward strategic workforce ownership and accountability for human-AI collaboration. Those who have built their careers primarily around operational delivery are at medium-term risk but can reposition within receptive organisations in growth sectors. Marketing directors whose value rests on execution rather than brand strategy or commercial leadership face the same trajectory.

The career growth sectors: where executive demand is running ahead of supply

Fintech. The UK fintech market is estimated at $21.4 billion in 2026, growing toward $43.9 billion by 2031 at a 15.4% annual rate. Lloyds’ Financial Institutions Sentiment Survey, published in September 2025, found that 59% of institutions now see measurable productivity gains from AI, up from 32% a year earlier, with over half planning to increase AI investment in 2026 and nearly half having already established dedicated AI teams. The sector attracted $3.6 billion of UK investment in 2025, second only to the US, and continues to draw executive talent because it is one of the few financial markets actively building rather than rationalising. What it cannot easily manufacture is executives who understand regulated environments, manage complex stakeholder relationships and carry the commercial credibility that the sector requires. That is precisely what two decades in legacy financial services produces.

Sustainability and the green economy. Latest date from the ONS estimates there were 652,100 full-time equivalent employees in UK green jobs in 2024, up 27.8% since 2015. Financial services recorded the highest year-on-year growth in green hires in 2025, up 16.3%, and more than half of green hires now sit in non-green job titles, reflecting how functions such as operations, finance and commercial leadership are being greened rather than replaced. Eighty per cent of sustainability employers plan to hire in the next twelve months and 75% are prepared to hire someone who does not possess all the required skills, intending to upskill them instead.

AI-enabled services and AI governance. LinkedIn data shows AI has already created 1.3 million new roles globally, and the surge in Head of AI positions across the UK reflects a decisive move toward embedded AI strategy and leadership. AI Engineer topped LinkedIn’s 2025 UK Jobs on the Rise list, while more than half of the fastest-growing UK roles did not exist 25 years ago. Executives who can govern AI deployments – who understand accountability, liability and the regulatory frameworks being built around them – command structural premiums that pure technical roles do not.

When to reframe and when to reskill

One of the most common and costly mistakes executives make when planning a career pivot is treating reframing and reskilling as the same thing. Confusing them leads either to unnecessary investment in new credentials, or to relying on narrative alone where real capability gaps exist.

Reframing is required when the underlying capability already exists but its relevance to the new sector is not visible to the hiring market. A retail CCO with twenty years of complex multi-stakeholder commercial experience does not need to learn those skills again in fintech. They need to reframe that experience in the vocabulary of the new context, making the connection explicit and demonstrating why it matters.

Reskilling, in contrast, is required when genuine gaps exist that reframing cannot close. A commercial leader moving into sustainability needs knowledge of frameworks such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and TCFD. Entry into AI governance demands an understanding of accountability, liability, and emerging regulation. These are not superficial gaps and hiring managers in these fields will identify their absence quickly.

Neither path requires going back to university. Targeted programmes such as Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership, the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute’s sustainable finance credentials and the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment all offer targeted routes. For AI governance, structured programmes at London Business School, INSEAD and several UK universities move a CV from interesting to credible.

Forward-facing companies are looking for leaders with that rare sweet spot of relevant experience, transferable credentials and evidence of prior expertise – or at least active interest – and personal investment in the context, not a generalist who has acquired a certificate or a reputed executive from a FTSE company who lacks, or is unable to demonstrate, such qualities and insight into what matters now.

Deciding on an Executive move: Under pressure, and with time

In both scenarios, developing a coherent, credible narrative is crucial. An executive who can articulate precisely why they are moving, what they have built and what it translates into in the new context will consistently outperform one with a stronger CV but a vague or reactive story.

Under pressure, the priority is to identify and protect transferable authority. Map the three or four capabilities that are genuinely sector-fluid that the target sector demonstrably values. Be visible in the right networks before the formal job search begins. Overall, UK job postings remain 19% below pre-pandemic levels, but demand persists in technology systems and solutions, software development and civil engineering. The executive who targets specific pockets of genuine demand is better placed than one searching broadly. This may require a dispassionate external perspective from a coach or mentor who understands what the market is currently seeking.

With more time, the core strategy is to build genuine presence in the target sector before making any formal move. Take advisory or non-executive roles in relevant organisations or develop a visible point of view through writing, speaking or participation in relevant forums. The most effective networking is built around genuine intellectual engagement with the questions the sector is working through, not simply a presence within it.

How to audit transferable authority ready for an Executive Pivot

Before beginning any serious pivot, separate what you have done from what capability that demonstrates, then test whether that capability has a market in the target sector. For example, a retail CEO who has managed 200 stores and grown market share from 8% to 12% has also built the capability to hold large, complex commercial relationships under cost pressure. Properly articulated, that is exactly what a scale-up technology business needs from its leadership.

The audit has three stages: list significant achievements; translate each into the underlying capability it demonstrates; test whether that capability is valued in the target sector and in what vocabulary. The gap between stages two and three is the reframing task. Genuine absences are the reskilling task. LinkedIn research shows that 56% of UK professionals are open to a role in a new industry, yet 20% worry they lack the skills needed for the future. Self-assessment of transferability is notoriously unreliable. An external perspective from a coach or adviser who understands both the source and destination sectors closes that gap faster and more reliably than internal reflection alone.

Future of Executive Careers: Trends Shaping Career Pivots to 2030

The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that while 92 million roles may be displaced by 2030, 170 million new roles will be created, a net gain of 78 million, with demand concentrating in technology, sustainability, care and human-centred services.

The executives who will command premium compensation in the years ahead are not necessarily the most experienced, or even the most skilled. They are the ones who read the structural signals early, moved with intention rather than under duress, and arrived in growth sectors with a coherent account of what they had built and why it mattered in the new context.

That window remains open but it narrows with each quarter spent waiting for conditions to improve in sectors where they will not. The evidence is consistent: planned pivots preserve authority and trajectory; reactive ones compress both. The market rewards positioning, not hesitation.

The question for every senior leader in a sector facing structural rather than cyclical change is not whether a transition will eventually be required. It is whether, when that moment arrives, they will be choosing from a position of strength or scrambling from one of constraint.

The executives of tomorrow are making that choice today.

UK and Europe Executive Market Trends Amid Economic Uncertainty

As Q2 2026 opens, Rialto analysts examine the UK and European executive landscape against a backdrop that has shifted materially since the start of the year. What had appeared to be a gradual stabilisation with modest growth, easing inflation and a credible path to rate cuts after years of shocks and uncertainty has been disrupted by the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East. The implications for business confidence, hiring sentiment and executive value are already being felt and, whenever it may end, it will undoubtedly have long term implications on the global outlook.

This insight examines the current economic data, the state of the executive market and the capabilities that will determine who stays relevant in what is becoming an increasingly selective environment. It finds that AI competence and success is now the single greatest differentiator for performance and value.

UK Economic Outlook 2026: A Recalculated Picture

The UK economy grew 1.4% in real terms across 2025, its strongest performance since the pandemic but below the OBR’s forecast of 1.5% GDP grew 0.2% in the three months to January 2026, with services up 0.2%, production up 1.3% and construction falling 2.0%. Monthly GDP was flat in January, and the Bank of England estimated underlying quarterly growth for Q1 at around 0.1%.

Conflict in the Middle East and Iran’s effective blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has since triggered a significant spike in global energy and commodity prices that could endure well beyond any ceasefire. Fertiliser prices are potentially doubling, the Food and Drink Federation is projecting 9% food inflation by year-end and central banks will be forced to hold rates higher for longer precisely when economies were counting on cuts. None of these pressures reverse the moment a ceasefire is announced.

The OECD revised its UK inflation forecast for 2026 to 4%, up 1.5%, and cut its growth projection from 1.2% to 0.7%, the steepest downward revision of any major economy in its March interim outlook. GDP growth forecasts have been cut to between 0.4% and 0.7%, below the OBR’s pre-conflict forecast of 1.1%. The EY ITEM Club now expects business investment to contract by 0.2% this year.

Rialto director Richard Chiumento said: “The structural reset we have been tracking for the past twelve months has been overtaken by an acute shock on top of a chronic one. Organisations that were managing cautiously through a tight fiscal environment now face renewed inflation, constrained monetary policy and a further compression of confidence. That combination does not create space for hesitation. Leaders need to move faster, not slower.”

The Executive Market: Cooling Becomes More Acute

The UK unemployment rate stood at 5.2% in November 2025 to January 2026, its highest since 2021, with 1.87 million people out of work, up 323,000 over the year. Total vacancies fell 9.5% compared with a year earlier, declining in 15 of 18 industry sectors, with 2.6 unemployed people per vacancy, up from 1.9 a year ago. Regular pay growth fell to 3.8%, its lowest in over five years. The BDO employment index dropped to 93.30 in February, its weakest reading in nearly 15 years. Recruitment firm Robert Walters’ chief executive Toby Fowlston described the current environment as the longest hiring downturn the industry has ever experienced, worse than both the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic.

The energy price shock now threatens to intensify these pressures. Higher costs will squeeze margins, reduce hiring budgets and accelerate the turn towards automation and offshore resourcing already trending before the conflict. The April 2026 minimum wage rise to £12.71 per hour, and employer National Insurance increases already in effect, add further to the cost of employment at a moment when businesses are least able to absorb it.

AI Hiring Is Bucking the Trend

Overall UK job postings sit 27% below their pre-pandemic baseline, but postings mentioning AI have climbed to 127% above it. Around 7.5% of UK job postings contained AI mentions in mid-Q1. In several fields with striking declines in overall postings, including marketing, HR and accounting, posts mentioning AI have more than doubled. The category with the highest share of AI-related postings is data and analytics at 47%, followed by software development at 41%.

Employers are increasingly expecting workers across a broad range of roles to engage with AI as a routine part of the job. For executives, this is now the baseline of assessment. Boards asking about AI governance, algorithmic accountability and value realisation are looking to leadership, not technology, for answers.

Sectors and Skills in Demand

Engineering was the only sector in the KPMG/REC survey to report stronger demand for permanent staff in February 2026, driven by defence spending, infrastructure investment and the energy transition. The conflict that has complicated the macroeconomic outlook has also reinforced the urgency of energy security investment and the demand for leaders who can deliver complex programmes across contested political and regulatory terrain.

Executives skilled in risk, regulatory change and cost transformation remain in demand in financial services. Cybersecurity and digital infrastructure are still attracting investment regardless of broader hiring freezes. Private equity has sharpened its lens: operating partners and interim executives with restructuring and rapid performance improvement experience are valued.

European Executive Job Market Trends 2026: From Fragmentation to Shared Shock

In our Q1 2026 insight, we noted a Eurozone broadly improving but unevenly, with Germany wrestling with industrial contraction, Spain and Italy seeing executive vacancies well above pre-pandemic levels, and the EU’s regulatory complexity rewarding executives with cross-border fluency. That picture has now been overtaken by a shared external shock.

The OECD cut the Eurozone growth forecast by 0.4% to 0.8%. The ECB projects 0.9% growth, with Q2 activity expected to fall close to zero. Interest rates were held in March, abandoning the cuts markets had anticipated, while the Eurozone inflation forecast was raised by 0.7% to 2.6%.

Germany’s energy-intensive industrial base makes it especially susceptible. The defence spending narrative offers longer-term relief but will not offset the near-term squeeze on chemicals, automotive and manufacturing. Chemical and steel manufacturers across the EU have already imposed surcharges of up to 30% to offset surging costs, with economists warning of the risk of permanent deindustrialisation in some sectors.

Spain and Italy retain structural momentum, but the shared energy shock has compressed the gap between strong and weak performers. Cross-border regulatory fluency, AI governance capability and the judgement to advise boards on which investment programmes to protect and which to defer are all commanding a higher premium than three months ago.

Governance, compliance and sustainability roles are also in demand as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive enters full enforcement, affecting approximately 50,000 companies according to the European Parliament.

Compensation: Sophistication Over Scale

The Indeed Wage Tracker recorded 4% year-on-year posted wage growth in February 2026, the lowest level in four years. With inflation expected to exceed 3% through mid-year, real-term gains are likely to remain limited, reinforcing a shift in how organisations structure senior remuneration in a constrained environment.

Rather than increasing base salary, employers are turning to more targeted, performance-linked reward. Signing bonuses, equity participation and long-term incentives are becoming more common, particularly where critical leadership capability must be secured without adding fixed cost.

For executives, this is a more exacting and evidence-based market. Compensation is increasingly tied to demonstrable outcomes relating to value creation, cost optimisation, revenue growth and transformation delivery, making the ability to evidence impact as important as experience.

Career Strategy for Executives in for Q2 2026: How to Stay Competitive

The Middle East conflict has added genuine unpredictability to a market already structurally recalibrating. Where some organisations were tending towards paralysis, they now risk making hasty pressure driven decisions that hollow out long-term capability in pursuit of short-term cost reduction. Executives who can help boards hold the line and make the case for investing in the right capabilities while others retrench will be well positioned when conditions stabilise.

They must also demonstrate credible authority over how AI should be deployed, governed and measured to remain relevant. Executives who cannot show this are already at a structural disadvantage in assessment processes, regardless of sector. (For a deeper examination of what this requires in practice, see our previous insights including What it actually takes to make AI work and AI is changing everything: how to stay ahead.)

The executives who will make ground are those who treat the current environment as a structural context within which to operate, not a minefield to survive.

Four actions define that approach.

Translate volatility into decisions. It is not enough to read the environment accurately. Executives who stand out convert external uncertainty into immediate, organisation-specific choices on capital allocation, workforce shape and operational focus, with the clarity and speed that boards currently lack and urgently need.

Prioritise with precision and reallocate at pace. In a constrained market, breadth is a liability. High-performing executives identify the small number of initiatives that will drive disproportionate value and actively move capital and resource towards them rather than preserving legacy activity out of inertia.

Impose discipline on technology and AI investment. Differentiation comes from linking technology investment to measurable outcomes, challenging weak use cases and ensuring that deployment translates into productivity, cost and/or revenue impact, not just adoption metrics.

Evidence impact in quantified terms. As the market becomes more selective, broad experience carries less weight than demonstrable results. Executives must show consistent, quantified impact, particularly in constrained or volatile conditions.

To read about the US, MENA and Asia regions, all of which are navigating different paths through the challenging economic landscape, click here.

How Executives Can Stay Relevant in a Changing Job Market

As the pace of change accelerates, every executive must think seriously about how to stay relevant, maintain credibility, and secure a strong executive trajectory in today’s market. This requires mastering the fundamentals of leadership while committing to continuous AI learning and digital fluency.

If you are considering how best to position yourself for the next stage of your career or an upcoming executive transition, Rialto can support your journey. You are also invited to join the Rialto AI Business Leaders Circle – a forum enabling members to gain access to the conversations shaping the future of AI, including private briefings in the House of Lords, strategic insights from global AI experts and the chance to influence national policy through the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI.

To find out more, book an appointment to speak to one of our team today.