The Australian Board Market Is Not What Most Aspiring Directors Think It Is

News · Board careers

1 September 2026 · 10 min read · Kylie Hammond

Why qualifications, applications and a good executive career are not enough to build a serious board portfolio

There is a misconception taking hold in the Australian executive market that concerns me.

More executives than ever want to serve on boards. In principle, I think that is a very good thing. Australian boardrooms need renewal. They need different thinking, contemporary commercial experience and directors who understand the enormous technological, workforce, regulatory and geopolitical changes confronting business.

But alongside that increased interest, an industry has developed around telling people that becoming a board director is relatively straightforward. Complete a company director course. Write a board CV. Apply for some advertised positions. Attend a few networking events. Start calling yourself “board ready”.

Then wait for the appointments to arrive.

After more than two decades working in executive and board search, I can tell you that the Australian board director market does not work like that.

Not even close.

A company director qualification can educate you about being a director. It does not appoint you as one.

There is a significant difference between being technically capable of serving on a board and being sufficiently compelling, credible and connected to actually be appointed to one.

That distinction is where many aspiring directors come unstuck.

Board recruitment is not executive recruitment

One of the first things an aspiring director needs to understand is that the board market is an ecosystem in its own right.

It does not behave like the executive employment market.

In executive recruitment, there is still a reasonably visible market. Jobs are advertised. Recruiters carry vacancies. Companies publish opportunities. Candidates apply and are assessed.

At board level, much of the real market is far less visible.

In my experience conducting board searches and working with directors for more than 20 years, I would estimate that somewhere around 70 to 80 percent of the opportunities that ultimately arise for established directors are influenced by relationships with chairs, existing directors and the broader board ecosystem.

That doesn’t necessarily mean somebody simply appoints a friend. Good governance demands considerably more than that.

It means that when a board starts thinking about succession, a capability gap, an upcoming retirement or the type of director it might need in 12 or 18 months, conversations frequently begin long before there is anything resembling an advertised vacancy.

Names start circulating.

Who do we know? Who has seen this problem before? Who understands this industry? Who would work well with the CEO? Who has the judgement? Who could eventually chair the committee? Who do we trust?

That last question matters enormously.

Boards are dealing with capital, reputation, strategy, executive performance, regulatory exposure and sometimes the survival of the organisation itself. Trust therefore plays a much larger role in board appointments than many aspiring directors appreciate.

You are not simply competing for a vacancy. You are competing to become one of the names people think of before the vacancy exists.

That requires an entirely different strategy.

The uncomfortable truth about competition

There is another reality that doesn’t get discussed enough. The aspiring director market has become incredibly crowded.

At Tiger Boards, it is not unusual for us to receive hundreds of approaches and enquiries from aspiring and existing directors, and at times the volume can exceed 1,000 in a week.

Many of these people are talented, accomplished and perfectly well-intentioned. Their colleagues have told them they would make a terrific board director. They may have completed governance education. They may have spent 20 or 30 years building a successful professional career.

But none of those things, by themselves, create a compelling board proposition.

A board seat is one of the most senior appointments that can be made within an organisation. Particularly at the larger commercial end of the market, boards are not looking for somebody who is simply competent.

They can choose from an enormous pool of talent.

They are looking for people with judgement, credibility, commercial depth, governance capability and a track record that gives the chair confidence that this person belongs around the table.

That creates a difficult reality for executives who have spent years being told how successful they are.

You may have been an excellent executive. You may have run a substantial division. You may have reported to the CEO. You may even have been the CEO.

That doesn’t automatically make you the strongest candidate for a board appointment.

You leave one talent pool and enter another

This is perhaps the hardest part of the transition for very senior executives.

When you move from the executive talent pool into the non-executive director talent pool, to some extent you go back to the beginning.

You have to earn your stripes again.

I have seen highly accomplished executives struggle with this because they understandably assume their executive standing will transfer directly into equivalent standing in the board market.

Sometimes it does.

Frequently it doesn’t.

You are now competing against people who may already have chaired companies, served through IPOs, acquisitions, capital raisings, restructurings, regulatory crises, and CEO transitions. They may have spent ten or fifteen years building relationships with chairs, investors, and other directors.

The former CEO entering the board market may have an exceptional executive résumé but still be the inexperienced director in that particular talent pool.

There is no shame in that.

But there is considerable danger in refusing to recognise it.

Your executive career gives you the raw material for a board career. It does not automatically give you a board career.

The transition needs to be designed.

Being an expert is no longer enough

Another misconception I see frequently is the belief that deep expertise in one particular field provides an automatic entry point into the boardroom.

Cybersecurity is a good example.

A cybersecurity executive may reasonably think: boards are worried about cyber risk; therefore, boards need cybersecurity directors.

Possibly.

But the board isn’t hiring a consultant.

A director may bring deep expertise in technology, cybersecurity, people and culture, capital markets, legal, healthcare, mining, ESG, or another specialist field. That expertise can absolutely be the reason somebody initially attracts attention.

Once appointed, however, they are a director of the whole organisation.

They need to understand financial statements. They need commercial judgement. They need to understand risk, strategy, capital allocation, executive remuneration, regulation and fiduciary responsibility. They need to know when to challenge management and, equally importantly, when not to.

Modern boards increasingly need specialist knowledge, but they need that knowledge to sit within a much broader governance and commercial capability.

An Australian media discussion of board composition made this broader point precisely some years ago: “No modern board can afford to be homogenous.” The argument was that effective boards require both breadth of skills and depth of experience to set strategy and scrutinise organisational performance.

That principle has only become more important.

A company director course is education, not admission

I strongly support governance education.

Anyone serious about serving on substantial boards should understand their legal and fiduciary obligations and continue developing their governance knowledge throughout their board career.

But we need to stop confusing education with marketability.

Completing a company director course does not mean someone is suddenly competitive for major commercial board appointments, any more than completing an MBA automatically makes someone a CEO.

It gives you knowledge.

The marketplace determines whether you have the experience, judgement, credibility and relationships required to use it at the level you are targeting.

This distinction matters because I regularly see people emerge from director education with completely unrealistic expectations about where they should begin.

There is often a pathway.

It might begin with an advisory board. A smaller private company. An investor-backed business. A committee. An emerging company where your experience genuinely fills an important gap.

There is nothing wrong with starting smaller and building a body of evidence.

In fact, for many people, it is the smartest possible strategy.

Then there is the Australian network problem

We also need to talk frankly about something Australians tend to dance around.

Networks matter enormously. School networks matter. University networks matter. Professional networks matter. Private clubs matter. Industry associations matter. Investor relationships matter. Previous board relationships matter. Australian business is a relatively small ecosystem. People know each other. Relationships between chairs, directors, advisers, investors, CEOs, lawyers, accountants and search consultants can extend across decades.

This is gradually changing, and it needs to change further. But pretending these networks don’t exist does aspiring directors no favours.

ABC reporting on Australia’s largest listed companies provides an interesting window into how concentrated the professional director market can become. Research cited by the ABC found that 287 professional non-executive directors held 669 board seats across the companies studied, representing 38 percent of all non-executive board seats.

That tells you something important about the market.

Once people become established and trusted within the board ecosystem, appointments can compound.

The difficult part is breaking into that ecosystem in the first place.

And this isn’t a new discussion. Years ago, Australian commentary on board diversity was already urging chairs to look beyond their “traditional networks” when making appointments.

The market has certainly evolved since then, but networks remain powerful.

Executive search firms are important, but they are not the whole market

Another common strategy I see is the aspiring director who sends their board CV to every major executive search firm and assumes they have now “covered the market”.

They haven’t.

The major search firms play an important role, particularly at the larger listed, institutional and highly governed end of the market.

But they are not high-volume board employment agencies.

My estimate, based on more than two decades working in this market, is that executive search firms account for perhaps 15 percent of Australian board appointments overall. The percentage will obviously vary considerably depending on which part of the market you examine.

The critical point is that the majority of the market sits elsewhere.

And if a major search firm is conducting a high-profile chair or director search, it has the capability to map the market itself.

Korn Ferry does not need 4,000 aspiring directors to email CVs to its reception desk to discover who Australia’s leading CFOs, CEOs, technology executives or experienced directors are.

That is what executive search firms are paid to know.

Your challenge is to have built sufficient market standing that when they map the relevant talent pool, your name appears.

Again, visibility matters.

Reputation matters.

Relationships matter.

Stop waiting for SEEK and LinkedIn to build your board career

Advertised board positions have a place.

There are excellent opportunities advertised through LinkedIn, SEEK, governance organisations, government registers and specialist platforms.

But I would never advise somebody who is serious about building a substantial commercial board portfolio to make advertised applications their primary strategy.

By the time an opportunity is advertised, you are entering the most competitive part of the process. Everybody can see it. Everybody can apply.

The strategic board candidate is working in another part of the market as well.

They are developing relationships with chairs.

They know directors.

They understand which private equity and venture capital firms operate in their sectors.

They are visible to founders, investors and advisers.

They know which businesses are raising capital, preparing for an IPO, restructuring, acquiring, expanding internationally, or approaching a succession point.

They are building relationships before they need them.

The best time to build a relationship with a chair is not the week you discover there is a vacancy on their board.

That is the difference between applying for board jobs and building a board career.

Where I see the greatest opportunity for the next generation

Despite everything I have said, I am actually very optimistic about the Australian board market.

But I think aspiring directors need to look beyond the obvious places.

I am particularly interested in the private company, private equity, venture capital, founder-led and emerging growth company markets.

There is movement.

Capital is moving.

Companies are scaling.

Founders are recognising that they cannot do everything themselves.

Investors want stronger governance.

Businesses preparing for institutional capital need to professionalise their boards.

Companies moving towards IPO need different capabilities around the table.

And, importantly, these environments can sometimes be more willing to look beyond the traditional director establishment and appoint somebody because of the genuine commercial value they can create.

This is where I believe many next-generation directors can earn their stripes.

Not by waiting ten years for somebody to give them permission to join the club, but by finding businesses where their experience is genuinely valuable and building a credible body of board work from there.

We need new directors, but they need a genuine pathway

I have spent a large part of my career working in the trenches of this market.

I want to see new directors coming through.

I want greater diversity of thought.

I want executives from technology, healthcare, energy, mining, consumer markets, transformation, people and culture, artificial intelligence and emerging industries bringing contemporary experience into Australian boardrooms.

But I don’t believe we help anybody by pretending the pathway is easy.

It isn’t.

Building a serious board portfolio takes time. It takes positioning. It takes relationships. It takes commercial credibility. It takes patience. Occasionally it takes swallowing your ego and accepting an opportunity that doesn’t look quite as grand as the executive position you just left.

And it requires understanding the market you are actually entering, rather than the market somebody trying to sell you a director course has described to you.

Board careers rarely happen by accident. The strongest ones are built deliberately, one relationship, one appointment and one piece of credibility at a time.

That is fundamentally why I developed Board Portfolio® and why I have spent so many years helping aspiring and experienced directors navigate this market.

The objective isn’t simply to secure one board seat.

It is to understand where you genuinely sit in the market, identify where your experience has commercial value, build the right board-level relationships, earn your credentials, and progressively create a portfolio that delivers income, impact, and legacy.

The Australian board market is competitive. It is relationship-driven. At times it can still feel like a club.

But it is not impenetrable.

You just need to understand how the game is actually played.

How Kylie can help