Midlands

Birmingham & Midlands executive search and headhunting specialists

Our Birmingham office serves clients and candidates throughout the Midlands, from Stoke-on-Trent, Derby and Nottingham in the north to Coventry and Worcester in the south, and from Dudley and Wolverhampton in the west to Leicester and Northampton in the east. Sitting at the centre of the national transport network, the region is well placed to benefit from, and to contribute to, the long-term growth of the UK economy.

The leadership brief in Birmingham has broadened with the city itself. Birmingham City Council is the largest local authority in Europe, and the public and service economy around it is substantial, taking in a division of the telecommunications group BT, the transport operators National Express and Birmingham Airport, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, and three universities in the University of Birmingham, Aston University and Birmingham City University. The professional services core around Colmore Row supports the accountancy, legal, banking and property firms that advise the region, while the arrival of HS2 at Curzon Street has drawn sustained investment into the eastern side of the city centre. Beyond it, the West Midlands manufacturing belt remains one of the deepest in the country, running from the Jaguar Land Rover supply chain through the Black Country engineering base, with Rolls-Royce and the food and beverage brands Cadbury and Diageo long established in the region.

An economy of that breadth creates a particular difficulty for employers. The executives capable of leading an organisation through expansion, transformation, or succession are almost always in post and performing well, which places them beyond the reach of advertising. Our approach to executive recruitment in Birmingham is to research the market thoroughly, identify those individuals wherever they sit, and approach them directly and in confidence, rather than waiting to see who applies.

The leaders we appoint from Birmingham

Stone Executive appoints at board and senior management level across Birmingham and the West Midlands. Most mandates concern a small number of positions where the calibre of the individual materially changes the performance of the organisation, whether that means leading it outright, controlling its finances, or running its operations.

• Chief Executive and Managing Director appointments for privately owned, private equity-backed, and group-owned organisations, supported by our CEO recruitment practice.
• Chief Financial Officer and Finance Director appointments, including first-time appointments in scaling organisations and succession planning within established groups.
• Chief Operating Officer, Operations Director, and Plant or Site Director appointments across single-site and multi-site remits.
• Commercial Director, Sales Director, and Marketing Director appointments for consumer and business-to-business organisations.
• Technical, Engineering, Supply Chain, HR, and IT leadership at director level.
• Chair, Non-Executive Director, and senior advisory appointments to regional and national boards, through our board-level practice.

Sector leadership sits alongside those functional appointments. Manufacturing and engineering organisations across the region look for operational leaders who have run a plant through change and not simply managed one in steady state. Professional services firms in the city generate consistent demand for senior finance, risk, and client-facing leadership. Health, education, and public sector organisations require leaders able to combine governance discipline with commercial judgement, which is a rarer combination than the volume of appointments would suggest. Where the people agenda leads the brief, our HR executive search practice appoints Chief People Officers and HR Directors for organisations across the West Midlands.

Sectors we serve across Birmingham and the West Midlands

Our Birmingham office works across the sectors that define the regional economy: advanced manufacturing and engineering, business and professional services, health and social care, education, and the wider public sector. The same disciplines carry into construction, technology, financial services, consumer goods and services, and travel, hospitality and leisure.

Advanced manufacturing and engineering remains the anchor. Aerospace, defence and security, automotive, and engineered components all hold significant sites across the West Midlands, and the operational and commercial disciplines that apply inside them carry through the industrial supply chain surrounding them. Our manufacturing practice works across that base, and our appointment of a European product leadership position for the machine tool manufacturer Yamazaki Mazak at its Worcester headquarters is characteristic of the technically demanding briefs the region produces.

Business and professional services form the second pillar, and the firms clustered around the city centre generate steady demand for leadership in financial, tax and assurance work, in legal services, and in the advisory practices that sit alongside them. Our business and professional services practice covers that market. Health and social care, education, and local government complete the picture, with the acute trusts, the universities, and the multi-academy trusts of the West Midlands all appointing executive leadership on the same competitive terms as the private sector.

Employers comparing providers of executive recruitment across the West Midlands are usually weighing two different propositions. One is a contingent model that draws from the executives already looking. The other is a retained headhunt that reaches the leaders who are not. For a Managing Director or a Finance Director appointment, the difference in the resulting shortlist is rarely marginal.

Why a Midlands presence matters

A headhunting practice with a genuine Midlands presence appoints better regional leaders than a London-only firm, because senior networks in the West Midlands are built locally and over time. Knowing which organisations are performing, which leaders are ready to move, and who can credibly open that conversation is regional knowledge, and it cannot be assembled from a database at short notice.

Network is the first advantage. Our consultants have worked the Birmingham and West Midlands market for the best part of two decades, and the relationships that produces reach the individuals who never appear on a shortlist elsewhere. Because the region sits at the centre of the country, mandates regularly extend into Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and the East Midlands, which reflects how senior careers here actually move.

Discretion is the second. Senior appointments in a business community the size of Birmingham are rarely private for long, and an executive will not risk a confidential conversation with a firm that lacks a proven record of handling one properly. Our searches are conducted quietly from first approach to offer, which protects the client, the candidate, and the incumbent where a succession is involved.

Credibility is the third, and it is often decisive. A high-calibre executive who is settled and well paid takes the first call seriously only when the person making it understands their market. Consultants who know the organisations, the competitors, and the operating realities of the region can hold that conversation, and among the executive search firms in Birmingham competing for the same leaders, that credibility is what secures the meeting. It also underpins honest advice on the brief itself, including when a position needs reshaping before the search begins, and it sits at the centre of our approach to retained executive search.

Our Birmingham executive search process

Our Birmingham executive search process is a retained, research-led sequence in four stages: brief and market map, discreet approach, assessment and shortlist, and appointment and onboarding. One named consultant carries the engagement through to the appointed leader’s start date, with our in-house research team behind them, and a standard assignment runs eight to twelve weeks from briefing to offer acceptance.

The timetable below is what we work to on a standard assignment. It’s published because a client planning a leadership appointment deserves a date to plan against.

• Weeks 1 to 2: brief and market map
• Weeks 3 to 6: discreet approach and initial assessment
• Weeks 7 to 10: shortlist presentation and client interviews
• Weeks 10 to 12: offer, negotiation, and acceptance

We work directly with the chief executive, the chair, or the shareholder who owns the appointment, then map the relevant market and the adjacent ones worth reaching into. Every approach is made personally by a consultant, and nobody is contacted before the proposition has been agreed. Four to six candidates are presented, each with a written profile and our independent assessment. At this level a notice period commonly adds a further three to six months, and we stay in contact with both parties throughout it.

Track record

Stone Executive has operated as a retained headhunting practice for twenty years, has completed more than 1,000 senior appointments across its sector practices, and was recognised in the Financial Times’ UK’s Leading Recruiters 2024. That record sits behind our Midlands office, and our headhunters in Birmingham work across every commercial sector and functional practice the firm covers.

In assessing candidates we go beyond credentials and experience alone, looking for individuals whose capabilities, leadership style, and values align with what the organisation actually needs, because that alignment is what produces appointments that deliver lasting impact and long-term success. Every search is retained and led personally by a named consultant, rather than passed between a sales contact and a delivery team.

Recent appointments from our Birmingham office include Managing Director and Finance Director positions for privately owned manufacturing and engineering organisations, operational leadership for industrial and supply chain businesses across the West Midlands, and senior appointments for professional services firms and public sector organisations in the region.

FAQs

To discuss a senior appointment in Birmingham or across the Midlands, please contact our team on 0121 737 1635.