Job Search
Staying Confident Through Rejection
A client asked me yesterday how he’s supposed to stay confident after the fifth “we went in another direction.” I don’t think he liked my answer. But here’s what I told him. And I told him. You’re not supposed to. Staying confident through five straight rejections in a senior job search isn’t resilience. That’s denial. What…
Read MoreYour Introduction Matters
A senior director called me last month. She’d been looking for six months. 52 applications. 4 interviews. 0 offers. The first thing she said on our call was, “I think I’m just too senior for the market right now.” I hear some version of that sentence almost every week. Here’s what was actually happening: she…
Read MoreMomentum doesn’t start until action does
You’re not stuck in your search. You’re busy avoiding it. There’s a version of job search activity that feels productive but creates zero forward movement. I see it constantly — especially in senior leaders who are disciplined, high-achieving people in every other area of their lives. It looks like this: Avoiding in a senior search…
Read MoreHaving to Prove You’re Great at Your Job
Nobody talks about the specific exhaustion of being great at your job and still having to prove it. That’s the part of a senior job search that doesn’t get enough airtime. You’ve led teams. You’ve driven results. You’ve navigated the hard stuff — budget cuts, reorgs, underperformers, ambiguous mandates. You’ve done it with your name…
Read MoreStop Over-Explaining
Most senior leaders don’t lose offers because they’re underqualified.They lose them because they over-explained. I’ve sat on the hiring side of thousands of interviews over 20 years. And the pattern at the Director level and above is remarkably consistent. The candidates who don’t move forward aren’t the ones who lack experience. They’re the ones who…
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