Breaking Boundaries: How Cross-Industry Executive Search Drove Innovation in a CTO Hire for the Property Sector
Challenging Convention in Executive Search
In technology executive search, the most transformative searches often begin with a client brave enough to ask an unconventional question. Recently, a forward-thinking property sector client approached Opus Resourcing with precisely that kind of question: “What if the CTO we need isn’t in our industry at all?”
The Property Tech Paradox
Property represents one of the world’s largest asset classes, yet when it comes to digital innovation—particularly AI integration and e-commerce sophistication—the sector has lagged notably behind. Our client, a progressive organisation in the property space, had identified a critical challenge: the traditional talent pool within their industry simply didn’t possess the blend of skills their transformation required.
They weren’t looking for someone who understood property technology as it exists today. They needed a leader who could bring the digital maturity, AI expertise, and customer-centric thinking that other sectors had already mastered—and apply it to reimagine what property could become.
Why Traditional Searches Fail Innovation
Most C-level technology searches follow a predictable pattern: identify candidates with direct sector experience, prioritise those who “understand the business,” and hire from within the established talent pool. It’s safe. It’s logical. And increasingly, it’s limiting.
For organisations seeking genuine transformation, this approach often perpetuates the status quo. If everyone in your talent pool has solved the same problems in similar ways, how do you access breakthrough thinking? How do you leapfrog competitors when you’re all fishing in the same pond?
Our client understood this paradox. They needed confidentiality—both to protect their strategic intentions and to explore candidates who might not otherwise consider a move into property. This required a retained search approach that could operate discreetly while casting a deliberately wide net across unexpected sectors.
The Cross-Pollination Strategy
We began by analysing not where property sector CTOs typically come from, but where the specific capabilities our client needed had already been proven at scale. Four sectors emerged as prime hunting grounds:
- Travel & Global Accommodation – The travel and accommodation sectors have pioneered digital transformation at a massive scale, managing complex inventory systems, dynamic pricing algorithms, and personalised user experiences across global markets. Leaders in this space understand the intricacies of connecting physical assets with digital platforms, managing marketplace dynamics, and creating seamless booking experiences—challenges that directly parallel the evolution of modern property technology.
- E-Commerce – E-commerce leaders have perfected digital customer journeys, personalisation engines, and seamless user experiences at scale. More importantly, many have navigated complex mergers and acquisitions, integrating disparate technology platforms while maintaining business continuity. They understand rapid scaling—taking organisations from startup to enterprise, managing exponential growth in users, transactions, and data. These executives have built platforms that handle complex transactions and create emotional connections through digital interfaces—all challenges that forward-thinking property companies now face.
- Fintech – Financial services underwent their digital revolution years ago, developing AI-driven decisioning, predictive analytics, and regulatory compliance within innovative frameworks. Fintech CTOs understand how to balance innovation with risk, scale platforms rapidly, and leverage data as a strategic asset—precisely the maturity property sector needs.
- SaaS Platforms – Software-as-a-Service leaders have built scalable, multi-tenant architectures with obsessive focus on metrics, user adoption, and continuous improvement. They think in terms of platforms, not projects—a mindset shift that’s essential for property companies building digital ecosystems rather than point solutions.
The Executive Capabilities That Transfer (And Why They Matter More)
What we discovered through this executive search reinforced a crucial principle: at the C-level, sector-agnostic leadership capabilities often outweigh industry-specific knowledge. The senior leaders we engaged brought:
- Strategic Architecture Thinking – The ability to envision and build integrated digital ecosystems, not disconnected tools. This comes from experience creating platforms that scale across diverse use cases.
- Practical AI Implementation – Not theoretical AI knowledge, but hands-on experience deploying machine learning for personalisation, prediction, and automation in production environments with real customers and real consequences.
- Digital-First Product Mindset – Understanding that technology isn’t a support function but the core of how modern businesses create value. This perspective is second nature in e-commerce and SaaS, but still emerging in property.
- Change Leadership – Perhaps most critically, the ability to transform organisational culture alongside technology. Every executive we considered had led teams through significant digital transformations, building the technical and human capabilities simultaneously.
The property sector knowledge? That could be learned. These foundational leadership capabilities couldn’t be taught quickly—they required years of building, failing, iterating, and succeeding in digitally mature environments.
What Made This Approach Succeed
Several factors enabled this cross-industry strategy to work:
- Client Courage – Our client’s leadership team is committed to evaluating candidates on capability rather than sector resume. They were willing to invest time in helping the right person understand property, rather than trying to teach digital maturity to a property veteran.
- Compelling Vision – We could offer senior executives something rare: the opportunity to be genuinely pioneering. Rather than incrementally improving an established e-commerce platform, they could architect digital transformation in a sector hungry for innovation.
- Retained Partnership – The confidential, retained nature of this executive search allowed us to have exploratory conversations with exceptional C-level leaders who weren’t actively looking to move, and certainly weren’t scanning property sector job boards. We could build relationships, share vision, and ultimately present opportunities that aligned with career-defining challenges.
- Rigorous Assessment – We didn’t simply look for “digital skills.” We evaluated how executives had navigated ambiguity, built teams in transitional environments, and balanced innovation with pragmatism. We assessed cultural fit alongside strategic capability.
The Broader Lesson for Traditional Sectors
This search illuminated something larger than one successful placement. It demonstrated that traditional sectors facing digital disruption have a strategic choice: compete for the limited pool of digitally sophisticated leaders within their industry, or access the deeper talent pools of sectors that have already navigated similar transformations.
Property isn’t alone in this challenge. Manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, education—numerous industries are discovering that the CTOs, Chief Digital Officers, and innovation leaders they need may currently be optimising checkout flows, building AI recommendation engines, or scaling SaaS platforms.
The competitive advantage increasingly belongs to organisations brave enough to look beyond industry boundaries. To ask not “who has done this role in our sector?” but “who has solved the problems we’re facing, regardless of where they solved them?”
When to Consider Cross-Industry Recruitment
Cross-industry searches aren’t appropriate for every role, but they become essential when:
- Your industry is in the early stages of a transformation that other sectors have already navigated
- The skills you need are scarce within your traditional talent pool
- You’re building something genuinely new rather than optimising existing systems
- Leadership and cultural transformation are as important as technical delivery
- You can articulate a compelling vision that attracts candidates to the challenge, not just the sector
For senior technology leadership in particular, the ability to think differently—to bring fresh perspectives unburdened by “how we’ve always done it”—often delivers more value than deep sector expertise.
The Path Forward
As we concluded this search, our client didn’t just gain an exceptional CTO. They demonstrated to their organisation, their board, and their market that they’re serious about transformation. They sent a signal that innovation, not convention, would drive their future.
For Opus Resourcing, this assignment reinforced our belief that the best recruitment outcomes emerge when clients are willing to challenge assumptions and recruiters are willing to do the difficult work of translating vision across industry boundaries.
The future of work is increasingly fluid, with talent flowing across sectors toward compelling challenges rather than remaining confined within industry silos. Organisations that recognise this reality—and have the courage to act on it—will access levels of capability and innovation that their more cautious competitors simply cannot reach.
Innovation doesn’t come from hiring people who think like everyone else in your industry. It comes from bringing in leaders who’ve already solved tomorrow’s problems in yesterday’s cutting-edge sectors.
Opus Resourcing specialises in strategic technology executive search across sectors, with particular expertise in identifying and engaging transformational leaders for complex, confidential searches. If your organisation is facing a talent challenge that requires looking beyond traditional boundaries, we’d welcome the conversation.