Interview
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 MoreSenior Leaders Communication Distortion
There is a communication pattern I see repeatedly in senior leaders and it costs them more than they realize. It shows up in interviews. In boardrooms. In high-stakes presentations. And most of the time, the person doing it has no idea. It’s over-qualification. “This might not be the right answer, but…” “I could be wrong…
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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