Executive job search in Saudi Arabia: strategy and positioning
An executive job search does not work the way the searches before it worked, and the most common mistake is running the old one harder.
Below this level, roles are advertised, applied for and won. At this level they are heard about, discussed and offered. There is a shortlist before there is a shortlist — a handful of names someone can vouch for — and your job is to be on it before it exists. Volume does not help here. Applying to forty senior roles is not a strategy; it is a signal.
This page is the strategy. The document is executive CV review, the selection process is executive interview coaching, and deciding what the next move is for — which should come first — is executive career coaching.
ICF ACC · MBA · Riyadh · Arabic and English
The four channels, honestly sized
1 — People who know your work. The largest source of senior moves and the least systematic. Somebody is asked "who should we be talking to?" and says your name, or does not.
2 — Search consultants. Real, important, and misunderstood. They work for the client, not for you. Being useful to them is the whole relationship.
3 — A direct approach to someone with a problem you can name. Underused and occasionally decisive. Not "do you have anything" — a specific observation about a specific problem, to a specific person.
4 — Advertised roles. The smallest channel at this level and the most competitive. Worth applying to, worth not building a search around.
The ratio is the point. If your search is ninety per cent channel four, you are running a mid-career search at executive level, which is why it is producing nothing.
The fifteen-conversation plan
An executive search is not an application campaign. It is a small number of good conversations, chosen deliberately.
Write down fifteen names. People who know your work, know your sector, or know the people who do. Not your closest friends — the ones with reach.
Sort them into three tiers:
| Tier | Who | What you say |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Trusted, 4–5 people | Would protect your confidence absolutely | Everything: that you are looking, what you want, what you are worried about |
| 2 — Useful, 6–8 people | Know your work and know others | That you are "thinking about what is next" and what you are for — no urgency, no employer names |
| 3 — Reach, 3–4 people | Search consultants, sector connectors | A positioning conversation, not a request |
Then actually have them, two a week, over two months. Each one ends with the same question: who else should I be talking to?
This is the whole strategy at this level, and it is uncomfortable because it feels slower than applying. It is not slower. It is the only channel with real throughput.
Your positioning line
Every one of those conversations needs one sentence. Not a summary of your career — a statement of what you are for.
Four archetypes cover most executive appointments: build, fix, scale, stabilise. Pick one. Claiming all four is the commonest senior positioning error and it makes you nobody's obvious candidate.
The example below is written for this page. It is an illustration, not a real person.
Vague: "I am an experienced executive with a background in operations and transformation across several sectors, and I am open to the right opportunity."
Positioned: "I stabilise industrial operations through ownership change. Three of those now, most recently a nine-hundred-person business through an acquisition with no loss of key contracts. What I am looking for is the next one of those — ideally somewhere the transition has already started and is not going well."
The second version is repeatable. The person you said it to can say it to someone else accurately, which is the entire mechanism by which senior names travel. The first version cannot be repeated because there is nothing to repeat.
Test it: say it to someone, and a week later ask them to say it back. What comes back is what is circulating.
Working with search consultants
The most misunderstood relationship in a senior search.
They work for the client. Not for you, and not against you. Their asset is judgement about who fits, and their risk is putting forward someone who does not.
Be useful, which means be precise. A consultant who can describe you accurately in one line will remember you. One who cannot will not, regardless of how impressive the conversation was.
Say what you are not. "I am not the person for a growth mandate in a market I do not know" makes you more credible, not less, and it is the single most under-used move in these conversations.
Do not oversell availability. "I am open to the right thing" is enough. Urgency reads as a problem to be diagnosed.
Ask two questions: what are you seeing in this sector, and what would make someone like me an easy or a hard sell? The second one produces genuinely useful information and almost nobody asks it.
Expect long silences. They contact you when a relevant mandate exists. Nothing between mandates means nothing, not disinterest.
Stay in touch lightly — twice a year, with something useful rather than a check-in.
Running a search discreetly
Most executive searches are confidential, which changes the mechanics rather than preventing them.
Your profile can do search work without announcing anything. A precise description of your specialism is findable; an availability signal is visible to your employer: LinkedIn profile optimization.
Tier 1 people are told; tier 2 people are not. "Thinking about what is next" is a normal thing for a senior person to say and does not travel as news. "I am leaving" does.
Do not change your public profile dramatically. A three-year-dormant profile rewritten in one evening is noticed by more people than any setting you can adjust.
Process conflicts happen here more than elsewhere because the market is small. Ask early how a search firm is handling confidentiality, and say plainly who must not be contacted.
Before you start: checklist
- [ ] I can state what I am for in one sentence, and it names one archetype
- [ ] Someone else has repeated my positioning line back to me accurately
- [ ] My CV's page one works alone
- [ ] A two-hundred-word biography exists, written properly
- [ ] My public profile and my CV say the same thing about titles and dates
- [ ] I have fifteen names, tiered
- [ ] I know what I will say if my current employer asks me directly
- [ ] I know my account of my last transition, and it would survive a reference call
- [ ] I have decided what I am not looking for, and I can say it
- [ ] I know what I would do if nothing lands for nine months
Item 8 is the one that ends processes late. At this level references start early and informally, and an inconsistency between your version and a former colleague's is the most damaging thing available.
Item 10 is not pessimism. Senior searches take longer than people plan for, and having an answer removes the pressure that makes candidates accept the wrong role in month seven.
Timelines, honestly
Months, not weeks. A senior process commonly runs through a search consultant, a hiring executive, a panel, sometimes a board or nomination committee, and a reference process that starts before you expect it.
Silence is structural. Committees meet monthly. Approvals wait. A slow answer is usually about their calendar, not about you.
Two or three live conversations is a healthy pipeline at this level, not a thin one. Comparing it to a mid-career funnel is how senior candidates talk themselves into panic.
The first three months produce the conversations; the second three produce the processes. If month four has produced nothing at all, the problem is usually the positioning line rather than the effort.
In the Saudi market
The senior market is a network, and it is small enough to be navigable. Fifteen well-chosen conversations genuinely can reach most of the people who decide in a given sector, which is not true in a larger market.
Government-linked entities, funds and portfolio companies are a distinct channel with their own timelines and governance. Treating them as interchangeable with private-sector employers is the most common miscalculation at this level: government to private sector covers what actually differs.
Board and nomination-committee stages are common in listed companies, government-linked entities and larger family businesses, and they extend timelines rather than complicate them.
Discretion is a practical constraint, not a preference. Word travels, and how you conducted a search is part of what people know about you afterwards.
Expect the process to run in both languages, sometimes within one stage — a board conversation in Arabic and a technical discussion in English is normal.
Family-business roles have their own question: whether the mandate you are being offered has actually been agreed internally. Asking who else has to support it is legitimate and revealing.
Common questions
How many applications should I be making?
The wrong measure. Count conversations, not applications, and count the ones where the other person could repeat your positioning line afterwards.
Should I approach search firms or wait?
Approach, once, with a positioning conversation rather than a request. Then let them come to you when a mandate fits.
I have been looking for six months with nothing.
Check the positioning line before the effort. A search producing conversations but no processes almost always has a positioning problem; a search producing no conversations has a channel problem — you are in channel four.
Should I use a CV at all at this level?
Yes, and a biography as well. Both are routed from executive CV review.
Is it a problem that I am currently employed?
No, and it is usually an advantage. What is a problem is being unable to say what would make you move.
I was let go. How do I run a search?
The same way, with one addition: a short, unembarrassed account of what happened that you can say the same way every time. Vagueness costs more than the fact.
Recruiters keep sending me roles below my level.
Then your positioning line is not landing, or it is not specific enough for them to place you accurately. Fix the line, and tell them plainly what you are not.
Start with the line
Write one sentence: what you are for, one archetype, with one piece of evidence in it. Say it to someone this week, and ask them a week later to say it back.
What comes back is your search. Everything else — the CV, the conversations, the consultants — is distribution for that one sentence.
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Saad Al-Wuqayan
Career & Executive Coach — ICF ACC, MBA
Saad Al-Wuqayan coaches professionals and executives in Riyadh. Nearly two decades across engineering, business development, financial leadership as a CFO and government transformation sit behind every session.
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