The challenges of recruiting a Business Unit Director for your growth

A Business Unit without a director is a profit center drifting off course. Operational decisions pile up, strategic trade-offs are postponed, and profitability erodes month after month. The cost of a vacancy at this level is not measured in salaries — it is measured in lost market share.

The Business Unit Director combines skills that are rarely found in a single profile: strategic vision, P&L management, leadership of multidisciplinary teams, and strong field proximity. In Belgium, these rare profiles are not easy to find.

Our expert approach to Business Unit Director recruitment

Archetype headhunts Business Unit Directors in high-performing companies. We target operational leaders who have proven their ability to grow a P&L independently.

Our assessment covers all dimensions of the role: financial rigor, ability to translate group strategy into an operational action plan, leadership in change contexts. We also test political intelligence — a BU Director who cannot navigate a matrix organization will not survive. The fit with your executive management and your values is verified. 3 candidates. That’s it.

Profiles and sectors of intervention

Our Business Unit Director recruitment mandates cover sectors where operational autonomy is vital:

• Industry: BU Directors able to manage production sites and commercial teams simultaneously.
• Healthcare: profiles who master regulatory constraints and long innovation cycles.
• Tech/SaaS: BU Directors used to scaling product lines from 0 to several million in ARR.

Subsidiary of an international group or mid-sized company structuring its divisions: we recruit the profile who takes the reins and delivers results.

Business Unit Director recruitment expertise across Belgium

From Brussels, we deploy our BU Director mandates across the entire Belgian territory, with regular interventions in Antwerp and Liège.

The Business Unit Director in Belgium often operates in a multilingual and multicultural environment. The ability to unite Flemish and Walloon teams around common objectives is a selection criterion we assess from the very first interview.