Every recruiter who has ever sent a CV into the print and packaging sector has claimed to specialise in it. The claim is easy to make; the reality is harder to verify. After spending more than a decade building genuine expertise across our five sector verticals, we have a clear view of what sector specialism actually means in practice — and why it produces materially different outcomes for both clients and candidates.
What Genuine Sector Specialism Looks Like
Genuine sector specialism means knowing the people, not just the job titles. It means understanding who is commercially credible at Sales Director level in flexographic packaging, not just being able to search LinkedIn for ‘Sales Director Packaging’. It means knowing which businesses are genuinely investing and growing, and which are struggling — so that when you position an opportunity to a candidate, your market intelligence is current and reliable. It means having relationships that were built over years, not just connections made yesterday on a social media platform.
At Chad Harrison International, our consultants operate within defined sector verticals. We do not operate as generalists who will work on any role across any sector. This is a deliberate commercial choice — one that limits our addressable market but increases the quality of what we deliver within it. The consultants who work on print assignments have spent years building knowledge of the commercial print supply chain, the businesses within it, and the senior talent that moves through it. The same applies to packaging, POS, marketing services and promotional merchandise.
How Specialism Delivers Better Outcomes
The difference in outcome between a specialist search and a generalist one is most visible in the candidate pool. Generalist recruiters access the people who are available — the ones who have responded to job boards, accepted a LinkedIn InMail, or are already in an agency’s database. Specialists access the people who are best — including the many senior professionals who are performing well in their current role, have no presence on job boards, and will only engage with an approach from someone whose sector knowledge and personal reputation they respect.
This matters because in the senior hiring market, available and best are not the same thing. The best candidates in print, packaging and the associated verticals are employed, performing, and selective. They engage with specialist recruiters they trust. They do not respond to generic outreach from generalists who couldn’t identify the difference between a commercial print business and a contract packaging operation.
Our Track Record
More than 70% of our placements in the past three years have been with candidates who were not actively looking at the time of approach. These are people who were performing well in their roles, were not on job boards, and engaged with an approach from Chad Harrison International because of the quality of our market intelligence and the depth of our existing relationship. That access — to the non-looking senior population — is the core of what genuine sector specialism delivers.
If you’d like to understand more about how we work on a specific assignment, we’d welcome the conversation.
