Every year, Chad Harrison International conducts a survey of senior professionals across our sector verticals — people we know, people we’ve placed, and people who are part of our broader market network. The survey asks about career intentions, employer expectations, and what would prompt a senior move. The 2026 findings are below.
Career Intentions
27% of respondents described themselves as actively looking or open to the right opportunity. 41% said they were broadly happy in their current role but would consider a move for the right opportunity. 32% said they were settled and not looking. These proportions are broadly consistent with previous years — the actively looking segment has always been the minority of the senior candidate market, and the majority of the best senior hires come from the middle group.
What Would Prompt a Move
The three factors most commonly cited as the primary driver of a potential move were: commercial platform scale (the opportunity to operate at a bigger or more complex level — cited by 41%), equity participation (the prospect of meaningful equity stake in a growing business — cited by 29%), and leadership quality (the opportunity to work with or for a leadership team they could genuinely learn from — cited by 24%).
Salary increase as the primary motivation was cited by only 18% of respondents — consistent with previous years, and consistent with our observation that salary follows from the rest of the career equation rather than leading it. This finding consistently surprises clients who have been led to believe that the senior market is primarily salary-driven.
What Puts Candidates Off
The factors most likely to cause candidates to withdraw from a process were: slow or disorganised recruitment process (cited by 52%), vague or uncommitted business narrative — inability to articulate clearly what the business is trying to build (cited by 44%), and compensation that doesn’t reflect the market (cited by 38%).
The message from these findings is clear: if you want to compete effectively for the best senior candidates, you need a compelling story, a fast and organised process, and current compensation intelligence. None of these are difficult to achieve, but all require deliberate investment.
Employer Expectations
The expectation most consistently cited across all verticals was leadership quality — candidates want to work for and alongside leaders they respect, from whom they can learn, and who will genuinely invest in their development. This matters more to experienced senior candidates than it is often acknowledged by businesses designing offers.
Flexibility, while consistently raised, is now largely treated as a table-stakes expectation at senior level — an absence of reasonable flexibility is a negative, but the presence of flexibility is not in itself a differentiator. What differentiates employers in 2026 is culture, leadership quality, growth narrative and genuine investment in people — not the existence of a hybrid working policy.
