Roles we hunt
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Recruitment
In marketing, CMO stands for Chief Marketing Officer (the hospital Career Medical Officer is a different job entirely). A CMO owns how a business wins and keeps customers: brand, demand, pricing input, and the team and budget behind them. Drafts, reporting, audience splits and ad variations used to fill a marketing team’s week. AI now does much of that in minutes, so a good CMO decides which work goes to software, reads what comes back before it ships, and answers for the result in revenue.
How AI has changed the CMO seat
The job now includes marketing’s AI operating model: which tools the team uses, what stays with people, how customer data is handled, and how brand quality holds when output jumps. An established digital business replacing its CMO often finds the last person was hired for the pre-AI version of the job. An overseas company hiring the lead for its Australian division has to decide whether that person picks local tooling or inherits the global stack. Settle that before the search starts.
What does AI fluency look like in a CMO?
With software turning out the volume, a CMO earns their salary on judgement. Test for:
- Marketing spend tied to revenue and margin, in numbers the CEO and CFO accept.
- A workflow they changed with AI, what they kept with people, and what happened next.
- An AI output that went off-brand, and how they catch it now.
- People they kept while those people’s jobs were being reshaped.
Warning signs: a CMO who still talks about AI as a future plan, or one who handed the brand voice to a tool and stopped checking it.
Why is a CMO hard to hire through a job ad?
At CMO level, the people you most want are usually well paid and not looking. Keyword screening makes that worse. The CMOs who have quietly rebuilt a team around AI often don’t use the words a filter scans for. We headhunt rather than recruit: no candidate database, no keyword screening, one client and one role at a time.
For a fuller walk-through of the brief, read how to hire a CMO in Australia. Still weighing it up? See how Headhuntly works or compare with a Head of Digital hire, which is sometimes the better first step.
What does a CMO earn?
Over the last five years Headhuntly has placed 9 roles in its Marketing leadership group (Head of Marketing, Head of Content, CMO, Marketing Director). Base salary ran from $95K to $325K, with a median of $180K.
Based on Headhuntly placements over the last five years. Small sample, base salary only, not a market survey. The full table is in the salary guide.
How does Headhuntly run a CMO search?
Like every Headhuntly executive search, it’s exclusive: one client, one role, complete focus. Before we approach anyone, we define three profiles, your company, the role and the person. If the brief isn’t settled yet, we help you set the KPIs and a 30, 60, 90 day framework first.
Then we go after people who aren’t looking. Based on the Gold Coast, hunting Australia-wide. Overseas too, when the right person is there. A typical search takes 3 to 6 weeks.
We charge 15% of the placed candidate's base salary plus super, plus an engagement fee, the placement fee on signed employment contract, the engagement fee upfront, which we walk you through on the first call. If the placement doesn’t work out during probation, we start the hunt again. The detail is on how it works.
Hiring across marketing more broadly? Our marketing recruitment agency page covers every marketing and digital role we hunt.
Related roles
Questions, answered
How long does it take to hire a CMO?
Expect 3 to 6 weeks for a typical Headhuntly search. The brief is the biggest variable. If the role, the budget and the first-year goals are clear before we start, the search moves faster.
What does Headhuntly charge to find a CMO?
15% of the base salary plus super, paid on signed employment contract, plus an engagement fee upfront, which we walk you through on the first call. If the placement doesn't work out during probation, we run the search again.
Should a CMO be hands-on with AI tools?
They don't need to build anything. They do need to know which parts of the marketing work AI now does well, where it goes wrong, and how to measure it. Ask for examples of changes they've made.
Should we advertise the CMO role instead?
If you want to see who is actively looking, advertise. If the person you want is doing well somewhere else and not reading job ads, a headhunt is the way to reach them.
Hiring a CMO?
Tell us about the role. We’ll tell you straight whether it needs a headhunt, and what the search would look like.