Lisa MacMillan:

There’s a particular kind of phone call I keep getting lately the sort where a senior comms or marketing leader rings me from Brussels, London, Dubai or Singapore sounding like they’ve just survived a mild existential crisis.

“Lisa… I’ve been looking for months. This has never taken this long. What is going on?”

A few hours later, I’ll hear the opposite from a hiring leader:

“We’re hiring but can’t find anyone. Where is everybody?”

It’s like the same play performed by two different casts each convinced the other has the easier script.

The truth?

The world is in flux. Economically, politically, culturally and senior hiring reacts exactly like humans under stress:
it hesitates, overthinks and sometimes forgets what it was doing altogether!

This is not a hiring freeze.

This is a crisis of clarity.

Organisations are trying to define what they need at the exact moment candidates are trying to understand where they fit. Everyone is waiting for someone else to blink first.

Across regions, the story is the same (with different accents)

EMEA
Caution everywhere. Timelines drift. Priorities change mid-brief. Roles reappear under new titles (“No no, this one’s totally different…”).

GCC
Transformation moving faster than hiring cycles can keep up. Teams being reorganised in real time. You almost need a seatbelt.

APAC
Mobility has dropped. Leaders are weighing cost of living, visas, and whether moving now is a stroke of genius or madness.

The talent hasn’t disappeared the confidence has.

And when both sides are cautious? The whole market moves in slow motion.

Roles have evolved faster than job descriptions

Today’s senior comms and marketing leaders sit at the intersection of:

stakeholder diplomacy

and

“can you just fix everything while you’re here?”

…all at once.

And yet half the job descriptions still read like they were written in 2018 before AI, before hybrid, before the world restructured itself six times.

No wonder there’s misalignment.

For candidates: You’re not being overlooked

You’re not being ignored.

The brief is still forming around you.

Stakeholders are tweaking, rewriting, second-guessing.

Sometimes mid-process.

Sometimes mid-interview.

Your value hasn’t evaporated.

The market is just reorganising itself.

What matters now is narrative clarity – not perfection, not over-optimisation.

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

For organisations: alignment is the accelerant

A slow process rarely comes down to a weak shortlist.

**It’s usually because:**three stakeholders want four different things,
the role sits between teams that don’t talk to each other

Momentum returns the moment everyone agrees what the role actually needs to deliver today.

Not the fantasy hybrid “unicorn”.

Just clarity.

Movement will return but not the way it used to.

Hiring cycles always come back. They always have.

But the next wave won’t be driven by panic or volume.

It will be driven by confidence and clarity:

Leaders will move when organisations articulate direction clearly.

Organisations will hire more decisively when they understand the true scope of modern leadership.

And the ones who step into these roles will be the people who can bring stability, judgement and direction when things still feel uncertain.

This isn’t a frozen market.

It’s a market mid-transition.

And transitions are uncomfortable, but also where the next chapter of leadership emerges.

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