Business Unit Director Recruitment in Belgium

Archetype recruits Business Unit Directors for SMEs, mid-sized companies and subsidiaries of international groups in Belgium. These are executives who take ownership of a P&L: a business line, a product range or a market segment, with its revenue, its margin and its teams. We have specialised in Sales, Marketing and Management roles since 1993. Every search runs on a retainer, with fees agreed before the start in a written proposal. Allow 12 weeks on average, with a six-month replacement guarantee. Tell us about the business unit you need to fill and you will receive our proposal within 48 to 72 hours.

Business Unit Director presenting the unit’s results to two colleagues — A Business Unit Director answers for the revenue and margin of a whole business line.

What a Business Unit Director actually does

The title varies from one company to the next: Business Unit Director, Business Unit Manager, Division Director, Head of BU. What they share is the P&L. A Business Unit Director answers for the revenue and margin of the unit, decides where investment goes across products or markets, and leads teams that are not all commercial: sales, product marketing, and sometimes production, logistics or technical service. They report to a CEO, a Managing Director or group management.

The role is often confused with Sales Director. A Sales Director runs the selling: volumes, pricing, pipeline and the sales team. A Business Unit Director runs a whole business, sales included. If your real problem is the performance of your sales force, the right hire is probably a Head of Sales or Sales Director, and it is far cheaper to find that out before the search than after it.

Business Unit Director, Sales Director, Country Manager or Managing Director: a decision grid

On paper these four roles overlap. In practice they answer for different results and are hired from different talent pools. Use this grid to decide before you write the job description or the brief.

Which leadership role should you hire?
Criterion	Business Unit Director	Sales Director	Country Manager	Managing Director
Scope	One business line, product range or segment	The sales function	One country on behalf of a group	The whole company
Answers for	Revenue and margin of the unit	Revenue, pricing, pipeline	Local results and the relationship with head office	Overall results and strategy
Teams led	Cross-functional: sales, product marketing, operations depending on the case	Salespeople and sales managers	All local functions, often in a matrix	The executive committee
Reports to	CEO, Managing Director or division management	CEO or Managing Director	Regional management or head office	Shareholders, board of directors
The right choice when	Each business line must defend its own margin	The problem is sales performance	A group is opening or taking back control of Belgium	The company needs overall leadership

If your role fits two columns at once, the brief is not stable yet. Our first call is there to challenge it before any search begins. For the neighbouring roles, see Country Manager recruitment and Managing Director recruitment.

When to hire a Business Unit Director

The CEO is still making the day-to-day calls for a business line that has grown, and has no time left for the rest of the company.
One business line shows a margin that nobody defends at executive committee level.
A group is creating a division, or has acquired a company that must be integrated without losing its customers.
The previous director has left and the interim, covered by another executive, keeps dragging on.

We’re specialists: Sales, Marketing, Management. Not generalists. When a generalist agency recruits a Sales Director, they read the CV. We know the actual job: the real trade-offs between prospecting and farming, what it means to lead a distributed trilingual team across the Benelux, how to build a commercial strategy that holds in complex B2B. That field-level understanding is what separates a placement that lasts from one that breaks at 18 months.
The Archetype method, since 1993

How we assess Business Unit Director candidates

At this level a CV describes what a team achieved. Our job is to isolate what the candidate decided personally: which investment they fought for, which activity they shut down, how they protected margin when volume fell. The in-depth interview goes back over those decisions one by one, and the KOAN personality test completes the picture.

We have used KOAN for thirty years. It reads three dimensions: competencies, drivers, and behavioural dynamics, meaning how someone reacts under pressure, in a team and in the face of change. For a Business Unit Director that third dimension matters a great deal, because they lead teams unlike themselves, often inside a matrix organisation. Where the stakes justify it, we also run a pre-hire assessment of your finalists, with role-plays, a case study built on your business and a spoken debrief.

Our method, from first call to onboarding

The first call is used to understand the need and challenge the role. Within 48 to 72 hours you receive our proposal. Between the two calls we produce a needs summary, the list of open questions, a scorecard for the role, a sourcing strategy and an employer branding proposal. On average the assignment is signed 12 days after first contact. The search then follows five steps:

In-depth briefing: scope of the unit, margin targets, organisation, salary range.
A written sourcing strategy for the assignment, built around direct approach of executives currently in post.
Structured screening: in-depth interview and KOAN test.
Detailed presentation of finalists, with scorecard, interview transcripts and a validated job description.
Follow-up before, during and after the hire, onboarding included.

Fees, timeline and guarantee

Our fees are set before the search starts and appear in the written proposal you sign. They depend on the management level of the role, the languages required, the technical complexity and the difficulty of the assignment. We only work on retainer, never on success fee: you commit to the assignment, and we see it through to the end, however long it takes. More than 75 to 80% of our assignments are completed through to placement.

Allow 12 weeks on average between signing the assignment and the candidate signing, followed by their notice period. We follow the onboarding through the first three months, and a six-month replacement guarantee applies if the candidate leaves.

A trilingual firm covering all of Belgium

A Business Unit Director in Belgium often leads Dutch-speaking and French-speaking teams and reports in English. We run our searches in French, Dutch or English. 48% of our assignments take place in Flanders, 26% in Brussels, 16% in Wallonia and 10% in the Netherlands. Archetype is a member of Federgon, holds the Quality Label Recruitment Search Selection, and won Talent Business Innovation of the Year 2025 for its ethical use of AI. Nearly half of our assignments are initiated directly by business leaders: CEOs, Managing Directors and founders.

About Archetype

Archetype is a Belgian family business founded in 1993 by Marc Diamant and now co-managed with Davy Diamant and Steve Diamant. A member of Federgon, it won Talent Business Innovation of the Year 2025 for its ethical and structured use of AI.

Frequently asked questions about Business Unit Director recruitment

What is the difference between a Business Unit Director and a Business Unit Manager?

Often none: both titles describe the person who answers for the revenue and margin of a unit. In some groups the Business Unit Manager runs a smaller unit or reports to a Business Unit Director. We set the real level of the role on the first call, based on scope rather than title.

How is a Business Unit Director different from a Sales Director?

A Sales Director answers for sales performance. A Business Unit Director answers for the P&L of a whole business line, sales included, and also leads non-sales functions such as product marketing or operations.

How much does it cost to recruit a Business Unit Director?

The fee is agreed before the start, in a written proposal sent within 48 to 72 hours of the first call. It depends on the level of the role, the languages required, the technical complexity and the difficulty of the assignment. We work on retainer, without success fee, with a six-month replacement guarantee.

How long does the search take?

12 weeks on average between signing the assignment and the candidate signing. The candidate’s notice period comes after that.

Can you assess an internal candidate for the role?

Yes. We also assess employees being considered for internal promotion, with our assessment method: in-depth interview, role-plays and case study, competency analysis and the KOAN test, followed by a spoken debrief.