You spent hours researching the company, rehearsed your answers, and asked smart questions. You walked out of the interview feeling like you nailed it.

Then you sent a thank-you email. Something like: “It was great to meet you. I’m very excited about the opportunity and look forward to next steps.”

And just like that, you missed a huge opportunity to close the deal.

Too many job seekers treat the follow-up as a courtesy to signal interest and show you know the social script. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: at the senior level, everyone who makes it to the final round is prepared, credentialed, and poised. The interview itself is often not enough to separate the winner from the runner-up. Your follow-up can make the difference and be your most powerful persuasion tool.

Set Yourself Up During the Interview

The power of the follow-up depends on information-gathering during the interview. Bring a detective’s mindset, where curiosity is key. Ask great questions – those that both help you understand what they need and give you an opening to share how you can help them.

And, as the interview is wrapping up, use these two questions to surface any issues with your candidacy:

1. Just so I’m clear about what you’re looking for, I’m curious as to how I compare with the other candidates.
2. How do you feel about moving my candidacy forward in the process?

These questions make some candidates uncomfortable. But there’s a well-worn sales principle that applies here: the sale doesn’t begin until you find out what their objections are. If you don’t know their doubts, you have no shot at addressing them.

Hiring managers respect executives who ask for and can handle candid feedback. If they share a concern, you’ve just been handed the most valuable information. In fact, many of my clients have turned a “no” into a “yes” based on this feedback.

Write an ”Impact Email,” not a Thank You note, to Gain Advantage

A well-crafted Impact Email influences their decision-making. It demonstrates the ability to synthesize a complex conversation, identify what matters most, and communicate it clearly. These are core executive skills. It also tells them you’ll bring that same rigor and follow-through to the role itself.

Address their objections directly. If they express any hesitation about your experience, motivation, or fit, respond in a positive way, without reinforcing the objection. If they wondered whether your experience translates to their industry, explain why it does. If they questioned whether you’d be satisfied with the role’s scope, reinforce your motivation.

Reconnect your experience to their specific problems. Show them how a particular challenge maps directly onto something you’ve solved. Bring up things you forgot to bring up, or that you didn’t emphasize enough. Show them you heard them – use words like “You…” and “Your…”

Tell a short version of your best story. If you shared a strong example in the interview that landed well, you may want to reinforce it, as this repetition helps your message to stick. Or bring up one they haven’t heard that would resonate.

Reinforce your enthusiasm for them – the organization, team, or mission. If something they said genuinely moved or interested you, say so. Show them you “get” them. Authentic enthusiasm addresses one of the most common concerns about executive hires: whether they will be engaged or out the door in a year.

Case Study

My client Ben had a great series of interviews for a Chief Commercial Officer role. He was feeling good about his chances. In the final round, he met with the CEO, Sarah. Ben thought the conversation was going well, so he was surprised by Sarah’s answer to the “How do you feel about moving my candidacy forward?” question. Sarah said, “Frankly, I’m not going to move you forward. The CCO needs a strong analytic background to steer the business development team, and I don’t feel yours is strong enough.” Caught off-guard, all Ben could say was “I’ll address this in my follow-up.”

In his Impact Email, Ben emphasized his analytic skills and the data-driven decision-making that led to many career successes. He also did something else: he proposed analyzing a dataset they would send him and delivering recommendations. A week later, the CEO responded with a spreadsheet filled with sales data. Ben delivered the analysis and then got on the CEO’s calendar to discuss the results.

In this next meeting, they had another very positive conversation. At the end of it, Ben asked the same question, “How do you feel about moving my candidacy forward?” This time, the CEO said she felt great about it. Ben then asked: “How do I compare with the other candidates?” Sarah said, “You’re one of the top candidates, but I have another candidate who’s done this exact same job before, so I’m leaning towards her.”

So, Ben wrote another Impact Email. In it, he couldn’t say he had held the CCO role before. What he did instead was emphasize a specific competitive advantage he possessed, which more than compensated for this.

He got the offer.

The Bottom Line

In a good interview, you learn a lot: what’s keeping them up at night, what they’ve tried that hasn’t worked, gaps they’re hoping to fill, skepticism about your candidacy, and where they’re genuinely excited about what you could bring. You’ve gathered a detailed brief on what they need. And then you say, “Thanks for your time”? No. Influence their decision-making with an Impact Email.

Robert Hellmann | June 3, 2026

In a job search, time can be your scarcest resource; if you’re not focused on the highest-ROI actions, it’s easy for weeks to quickly pass with no offers, especially at senior levels where the roles are fewer. You can jump-start your results with a strategic approach to prioritization. So, what to do first when you can’t do everything?

Rather than relying on gut feel or defaulting to whatever lands in your inbox first, try evaluating each job search activity against three criteria, each scored on a scale of 1 to 3:

• Ease and speed of completion (3 is easiest/fastest)
• Usefulness in your search (3 is most useful)
• Urgency and time-sensitivity (3 is most urgent/time-sensitive)

Add the three scores together to get a priority number between 3 and 9. The higher the total, the more that activity deserves your attention today.

This isn’t about being rigid. It’s about having a quick mental filter so that when you sit down for 90 minutes of job search time, you spend it on what matters most.

When you apply this scoring method, a natural hierarchy emerges — five tiers that can guide your daily and weekly planning, across 15 job-search-related activities.

Tier 1: Do These First (Score: 8)

Three activities consistently rise to the top:

• Preparing for and attending high-value meetings or interviews.
• Following up after those meetings.
• Reaching out to the hiring manager (or their boss) when you spot a relevant job posting. That is, go beyond just applying (and competing with 1,000+ applicants) to get their attention. If you do this the ‘right” way, either cold or via an introduction, you can get a 50%+ response rate.

These all share the same profile — they’re highly useful (3) and time-sensitive (3), while requiring moderate effort (2). An interview you’re underprepared for is an opportunity wasted. A follow-up sent a week late loses its impact. For a posting you noticed but didn’t act on, the role may get filled. When any of these are on your plate, they come first.

Tier 2: The Engine of Your Search (Score: 7)

The next tier includes four activities that are equally useful but less time-sensitive:

• Reaching out to your network and their connections.
• Reaching out to the right search firms to get on their radar.
• Keeping in touch with existing contacts through check-ins and updates.
• Conducting LinkedIn searches to build a network that can secure introductions and valuable meetings.
• Revisiting your job search marketing plan, e.g., to expand your list of target organizations, pivot to another job target, or revise your pitch.
• Setting up and/or reviewing job posting search alerts, on LinkedIn for example.

These are the activities that keep your pipeline full. They may not have the same “do it today or lose it” urgency as Tier 1, but neglecting them for too long will leave you with nothing in Tier 1 to act on. Think of these as the engine that generates future interviews and opportunities.

Tier 3: Situational Priorities (Score: 6)

Here’s where individual circumstances start to matter. They all score a 6 — solid, but not universally top priority.

• Applying to job postings.
• Attending the right association events.
• Going to industry conferences.

Applying to postings, for example, scores high on urgency (listings expire) but lower on ease (tailoring a strong application with a cover letter takes time) and moderate on usefulness (response rates from online applications are notoriously low, especially for senior roles). Association events and conferences can be tremendously valuable for the right person in the right context, but they require time investment and don’t always yield immediate results. Your ranking of these activities may shift depending on your seniority, industry, pipeline, and the role you’re seeking.

Tier 4: Conditional Value (Score: 5)

• Cold outreach to obtain meetings or interviews with hiring decisionmakers when you don’t know there’s an opening.

This one sits in its own tier. It can be a powerful tool — particularly if you have a compelling value proposition that will genuinely capture someone’s attention. But without that hook, cold outreach can consume significant time with an unpredictable return. If your value proposition will resonate, move this up your list. If you’re sending generic requests, your time is probably better spent elsewhere.

Tier 5: Long-Game Investments (Score: 4)

• Pursuing speaking opportunities.
• Writing LinkedIn articles.

These score lowest in day-to-day priority — not because they lack value, but because they take time to execute and have an uncertain payoff.

That said, these activities can climb in importance all the way up to Tier 2 if you need to build your professional credibility when entering a new industry, pivoting to a different function, or competing against candidates with more visible track records. A well-placed article or speaking engagement can differentiate you in ways that a resume cannot. Consider these strategic investments rather than daily priorities.

Putting This to Work

The power of this framework isn’t in the specific scores — you should adjust them to reflect your own situation. The power is in the understanding of all the things you can be doing to land offers, and the discipline of asking three simple questions before you spend your time: How easy is this? How useful is it? How urgent is it?

On any given day, scan your list of possible activities, run them through this filter, and start at the top. Your job search time is limited. Make every hour count.

Robert Hellmann | April 27, 2026

You’re putting in the hours – Zooms, Coffees, Handshakes – and yet your calendar is full of meetings that have gone nowhere. Weeks pass with no interviews and a growing sense that your effort isn’t getting results.

The issue isn’t that you’re not networking enough; it’s that your strategy needs adjusting. These three fixes will ensure you land more interviews while optimizing valuable job search time.

Meet Only with the Right People

Not every contact deserves a meeting. You’ll see a far better return on your time by reserving meetings for people where the face-to-face connection genuinely moves the needle. Prioritize:

Hiring decision makers: The people one or two levels above your target role—the ones you’d actually work for—get top priority. Right behind them: HR leaders/internal recruiters and search firms who control access to opportunities.

The well-connected: If you don’t already have a close relationship with someone who can introduce you to hiring leaders, a high-quality meeting can motivate that person to open doors. Warm introductions are a tried-and-true path to interviews.

The candid advisor: Some people are worth meeting because they’ll give you honest feedback—on how you’re presenting yourself, whether your value proposition resonates, or whether you’re targeting the right roles and organizations.

For everyone else, simply email them about your search, or request an introduction when you see they’re connected to someone you want to meet on LinkedIn. And don’t overlook your “weak ties.” Research has shown that these peripheral contacts are often more helpful in landing interviews than your strong ones. Play the numbers game to win.

Make Every Informational Meeting Count

A rule of thumb: the goal of any informational meeting is to walk away with another meeting that (if it’s not the interview itself) gets you closer to an interview. To hit that bar, run through this checklist:

Is your job target clear? Too many executives hedge, positioning themselves broadly because they don’t want to miss anything. The result is the opposite of what they intend. When your message is watered-down for any one target, your contacts struggle to advocate for you. They can’t picture where you’d fit on an org chart. Plus, you’re effectively asking them to do the hard work of translating your background into specific opportunities. That’s your job, not theirs.

Are you delivering a compelling one-minute pitch? A well-crafted networking pitch can transform a polite courtesy meeting into a real conversation.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. One of my clients landed a meeting with the CEO of a mid-sized company through a mutual connection. Within seconds, it was obvious: the CEO was going through the motions as a favor, and only half-paying attention. So my client said, “Why don’t I take a minute to share my background, and then I’d welcome a conversation.” She launched into her pitch. As she was speaking, the CEO started making more eye contact, leaning forward with increasing interest. When she finished, the CEO said, “Wow—you’re the real deal,” and began asking her questions, then launched into a discussion about the company’s challenges. This conversation led to an interview.

Are you acting like a detective? Curiosity is your most powerful tool. Ask probing questions. Dig into their organization’s challenges. Look for problems you can solve. And do your homework beforehand—review their LinkedIn connections, read up on recent company news, and come prepared with informed questions.

Are you ready to pivot if the door is closed? Sometimes a great conversation ends with, “You’re impressive—too bad we didn’t talk six months ago when we needed someone like you.” When that happens, shift the conversation to your broader search. One of the most effective moves: share a one-page job search marketing plan. Say something like, “I understand your company isn’t an option right now. Given that, I’d welcome your perspective on my larger search. I just emailed you my marketing plan—what do you think?“

The plan should make it easy for them to help. Include your target role, the types of organizations you’re pursuing, your core value proposition, and a list of target companies if you think they may recognize the names. That last element is surprisingly powerful: seeing actual company names jogs people’s memories about who they know.

Are you following up? If someone does you a favor, send a thank-you note that reminds them what they offered: “Thanks again for offering to introduce me to Sarah at Acme.” If they express genuine interest in you for their organization, send something stronger—what I call an “Impact Email” designed to reinforce your value and influence their decision-making.

Keep in Touch to Get Interviews

Landing meetings is only half the game. The other half—the part too many jobseekers neglect—is staying in contact. Your goal should be to stay top of mind, so that if they come across an opportunity, they think of you.

During a search, touch base with key contacts at least once every six weeks. No need to think too hard about an excuse for reaching out again. A short, simple “Hello and Update” email works. Or, share an article they’d find interesting, “additional thoughts” since your last meeting, or congratulations on a milestone.

The bottom line: meet only the “right” people, make every conversation count, and follow up. If you prioritize quality over quantity while optimizing your valuable time, interviews will start to happen.

Robert Hellmann | April 8, 2026

You’ve spent years building a robust professional network. You’ve cultivated relationships with peers, mentors, and industry leaders. So when you signal that you’re exploring new opportunities, you expect your network to perform. Yet too often, promising conversations dissolve into silence. Warm introductions never materialize. Emails go unanswered.

This isn’t a reflection of your professional standing. It’s a design problem: you’re making it too hard for people to help you. The fix is straightforward. Make it easy. Here are three ways to do so.

Ask To Write to Their Contact Directly

When you reach out to a contact seeking an introduction to a decision-maker, a common response goes something like this: “Absolutely — send me your resume and I’ll forward it to see if there’s interest.”

It sounds helpful, but rarely is.

The fundamental problem: you’ve just handed over control of your own job search to someone with a dozen other priorities. Even the most well-intentioned contact may not follow through — because the timing isn’t right for their colleague (the chances they need your resume at any given moment are small), because it slipped off their radar, or because the introduction they made on your behalf didn’t do you justice.

The solution is to reclaim the driver’s seat. When a contact offers to pass your resume along, respond with something like:

“I really appreciate it. To save you time, could I reach out to your colleague directly and simply mention that I was referred by you? I’m also looking to build a relationship for opportunities now or down the road, so I would rather not forward a resume that implies I need a job quickly. Would this work?”

This proposal removes the burden from your contact while giving you control over the pitch. It also avoids the resume-forward trap — a resume implies “please hire me now,” when your real goal is to get an informational meeting with a decision-maker and then keep in touch for future opportunities or get additional referrals.

Half of your networking contacts will agree, and now you can use their name to gain attention: “Subject: Referred by [Contact], re: [Topic].”

But what about the contacts who want to make the introduction themselves?

Send a Forward-Friendly Email to Network Contacts

Many contacts will respond with something along the lines of “Let me reach out to them first to see if they’d be interested in speaking with you.” In that case, offer to send them a forward-friendly email.

This move dramatically improves the likelihood that they will actually follow through, because you’ve reduced their effort from 15 minutes spent figuring out how to pitch you to just 2 minutes of forwarding. You’re also improving the odds that their contact will want to meet with you, since you can include a field-tested pitch explaining why a conversation could be mutually beneficial.

The content is virtually the same as the “Referred by…” email; just start it differently:

“Subject: Introduction to Katherine Johnson, re: BigCo

Dear Rosalind,

Thanks for offering to forward my information to Katherine. As discussed, below I’ve shared my background and why I believe a meeting could be mutually beneficial.”

One important note on content: resist the urge to attach your resume unless there’s a specific opening you’re pursuing. Instead, use your LinkedIn profile as your “low-key resume.” The impressive content in your thoroughly filled-out profile will drive credibility without signaling desperation.

Share a Clear Job Target with Your Network

Too many executives prolong their searches because they position themselves too broadly, not wanting to miss an opportunity. The problem: your network finds it harder to advocate for you when your message is watered down across multiple job targets. Worse, you may be asking your contacts to do the heavy lifting of translating your varied background into specific opportunities. That is your job, not theirs.

One client came to me after a long, frustrating search. I quickly saw the issue: she was pitching herself to her network as open to Partnerships leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies, COO roles at startups, or Commercialization roles at any company. Three quite varied targets, not connected by a strong theme, led to ineffective messaging. Once we prioritized, she re-launched her outreach with a focused, powerful pitch for COO roles at startups. Within weeks, the interviews began to materialize.

A narrow pitch may feel counterintuitive — but it’s what makes your networking more effective, since people can refer you more easily when they see you clearly in a specific role.

The Bottom Line

Your network wants to help. Your job is to make that help feel effortless — not like a second job. Write the emails they can forward, or email their contacts directly. Do the targeting they shouldn’t have to. And keep yourself in the driver’s seat. The opportunities will follow.

Robert Hellmann | April 8, 2026

In an increasingly challenging job market, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Whether you’re navigating your current role (from the C-suite on down) or pursuing your next opportunity, self-marketing in your career is no longer optional—it’s essential.

Here are three high-impact ways to do it.

On the Job: Create a Five-Second Pitch

Your five-second pitch is a short, natural way to spotlight your value in unexpected moments—with your boss, their boss, senior leaders, key stakeholders, or in meetings. The goal is to spark interest and create career-boosting opportunities.

Example:

Julie, an SVP client two levels below the CEO at a middle-market company, stepped into an elevator and found herself face-to-face with the CEO, with whom she had limited interaction. He asked, “Hi Julie—how are you doing?”

She could have replied, “Fine—how are you?”

Instead, she used the five-second pitch we came up with and said: “Really good—now that I’ve wrapped up our workflow management project.”

The CEO replied, “Sounds interesting—tell me more.” The conversation ended with the CEO saying: “We may want to roll this out company-wide. Let’s set up a meeting and include your boss.”

Result: One five-second pitch created unexpected visibility—and a meaningful career boost.

In a Job Search: Don’t Brag. DO Inform.

In every job-search marketing channel—your resume, LinkedIn profile, emails, networking conversations, interviews—you need to communicate not just your responsibilities but what you accomplished, sharing specific results in the process.

Many professionals (especially senior leaders) resist this because it feels like bragging. it’s not: you’re giving your audience information they need to make the best decision. And, helping them to evaluate you accurately of course helps you to stand out from the competition. To illustrate, here are three contrasting ways to represent a resume bullet:

• Responsibility: “Led the Corporate Development team in identifying M&A opportunities.”
• Bragging: “Excel at leading Corporate Development teams in identifying profitable M&A opportunities.”
• Informing (and far more powerful): “Led the Corporate Development team in identifying a dozen M&A opportunities; 80% closed, all met or exceeded KPIs.” Same experience. Very different impact.

Think broadly about your network, and get the word out.

From research, weak ties can often be more helpful than the people you know well in landing job search/career opportunities. So, think expansively about your network; aim to let 200 people know about your job search. This number isn’t hard to achieve if you include professional colleagues you haven’t spoken to in years or even decades, family and friends, former classmates, association members, and so on. Your LinkedIn network can be a source of ideas for whom to contact.

For example, one of my clients reached out to a former classmate she hadn’t spoken with in 18 years; the outreach led to an interview at the company where her former classmate worked. Another client decided to blind-copy his neighbor, whom he didn’t know well, on an email to his family, friends, and “weak ties” about his search. It turned out that his neighbor’s husband’s brother’s wife worked for the CFO of a global Fortune 500 firm, one of his target companies. He received an introduction to the CFO and got an interview.

Contact them by email, so they can easily forward your information. In the email, share: 1) your job target, 2) your value proposition for your job target (your pitch), and 3) where you are looking to add value; list specific organizations that they might have heard of, as seeing these names will help them remember who they know.

Bottom Line

If you don’t proactively communicate your value, you’ll miss opportunities or even risk a layoff, as others will fill in the gaps—often incorrectly. So, bring a marketer’s mindset to your career.

Robert Hellmann | December 29, 2025

When helping clients optimize their resumes or LinkedIn profiles, I often use AI prompts to refine the content. Here are seven prompts to create stand-out content so you get more interviews, plus one that you shouldn’t use. Note: some of the prompts are long, as you get better results with specificity. Also, my go-to AI chatbot is usually ChatGPT (free unless you use it excessively), but feel free to experiment with others.

For writing your resume (can also be applied to your LinkedIn profile)

1. To identify the words and phrases that will resonate with your target audience: “Give me a frequency count of the most common job-related keywords and phrases in the following three job postings, excluding keywords that aren’t job-related, such as conjunctions like ‘and’. Here’s posting #1:  … Here’s posting #2: … Here’s posting #3:  …” Note: for this one prompt, the Claude and Perplexity chatbots give better results than ChatGPT.
2. For when you don’t have job posting examples: “Give me a frequency count of the most common job-related keywords and phrases for roles with the following (or similar) job title: …”
3. For a resume that appeals to more than one job target: “Compare the most common job-related keywords and phrases for the following two roles: ‘SVP of Finance, reporting to the Global CFO, in a Fortune 500 media company’ and ‘CFO at a late-stage media startup’. Highlight areas of overlap and differences.” (Change the targets to fit your situation.) This prompt will help create a resume and LinkedIn profile that appeals to both targets, and/or resumes tailored separately for each of the two targets.
4. If you want to make a career/sector change or go for a different type of role: “I have X years of experience as a CRO in the Y industry. I want to apply for a role as a GM or Head of a Business Division with full P&L responsibility. What transferable skills can I highlight? What gaps, if any, do I need to address?” Optional add-on: “Here is the role I want to apply for:…”

For editing your resume (the first two can also be applied to your LinkedIn profile)

1. To ensure well-targeted content: “Provide a gap analysis for my resume relative to the following job posting, highlighting gaps and areas of alignment. Here is my resume…  Here is the job posting…” You can substitute “job title/sector” for “job posting”.
2. To ensure a concise, engaging presentation: “Edit my resume to make the language as concise, impactful, and engaging as possible. Here is my resume…” The changes will often, but not always, improve your resume, so be selective in applying the results.
3. To address formatting: “Create a nicely formatted resume tailored to senior executive or C-suite roles using the following resume content. The format should utilize a common resume font that conveys a conservative appearance. The resulting resume should be ready to send, and suitable for export to Microsoft Word or a PDF format. Here is the resume content…” You can add guidelines for bolding, spacing, a specific font, etc.  The result will get you about halfway there in terms of formatting–you’ll need to do the rest yourself.

What doesn’t work well

“Re-write my old resume for the following job posting. Here is my resume… Here is the job posting…” The AI often won’t emphasize the right things, or be able to add additional responsibilities/accomplishments/skills that would differentiate you (only you know these). The AI also follows rules based on what resume experts have written on the web, which can be a problem as the quality of these “experts” varies dramatically. Note: a significant part of my work involves helping clients craft a powerful pitch and career story within their resume (this is the part that AI does poorly).s.

Robert Hellmann | November 9, 2025

If you’re concerned about job security – hearing rumours, expecting change, or worried about an uncertain economy – don’t wait. Use these seven approaches to either avoid a layoff, make the most of it (yes a layoff can be an opportunity), or set yourself up for a quick move.

First, consider whether a layoff could signal an unexpected opportunity. A well-negotiated severance package could enable you to essentially get paid for your job search. In some cases, my clients received two incomes for a while, the severance income and the new job income. You may have to explain the layoff and resulting gap in your resume to potential employers, but that could be easy if you don’t have a history of job hopping.

If you’re worried about the prospect of a layoff, however, take these measures to safeguard your position while preparing for the worst; you could turn this situation into an opportunity for professional growth.

Keep your skills marketable

Look to land assignments that will increase your value to your current and future employers. Join the right association, one with an active membership and relevant programs, so that you can stay on top of the best practices for your field. Also, consider taking classes that will keep your skills cutting-edge.

Find a niche that can make you expensive to lose

One client faced a merger where 80% of her division’s employees were expected to be let go. The company included her in the 20% retained because she made it known that her prior M&A experience could be leveraged to get the newly merged organization up and running.

Remember your real job

Professionals at all levels sometimes need to remember their real job: to please their boss. If your boss isn’t seeing your value, your days are numbered, no matter how much your team or clients appreciate you. Managing your boss’s expectations is therefore crucial.

One executive was worried about getting let go after his former C-suite boss (whom he worked well with and respected) was forced out, and a new leader was put in place. In situations like this, it’s common for the new boss to want “their people.” To address this concern, my client developed a “managing upward” strategy that ensured he worked toward his new boss’s priorities while communicating his value. It worked; he was the only senior executive who wasn’t replaced.

Have a great pitch and adapt it to your resume and LinkedIn profile

You can have a valuable skillset, but that won’t help much if your current or prospective employer doesn’t know about it. Create a powerful pitch that communicates what differentiates you. Create different versions of this pitch, including a two-minute interview pitch and a 30-second networking pitch. Adapt your two-minute interview pitch to your resume summary section and LinkedIn “About” section.

Also, consider creating a “5-Second Pitch” to share during routine work interactions. For example, one client’s 5 Second Pitch was “…now that I’m leading the workflow management project.” She casually brought this pitch up in a conversation with a senior executive. The executive had not known about her leading this project; this new knowledge led to a big assignment.

Build a network of great relationships within your organization

Have informational meetings with internal hiring decision-makers before you’re let go, while you still have the work email address (you’ll get a higher response rate to your outreach). Let everyone you might want to work for know what your value is, and that you’re thinking of making a move.

In these meetings, adopt the mindset of a detective, asking questions to find ways that you can add value for their team or their colleagues, now or down the road. And crucially, keep in touch so no opportunities slip through the cracks.

Look for opportunities to lead

Organizations value leaders, that is, employees who demonstrate a) a vision for improved organizational effectiveness, b) the ability to influence others to get on board with this vision, and c) results. You can lead from any level, you don’t have to manage people to lead. Just look around you and question the business-as-usual strategies, operations, and processes that you see. Incorporate the best practices you learned from your association membership to help you create a leadership vision.

Negotiate the terms of a layoff

If a layoff looks unavoidable, seek to negotiate the following:

1. The severance itself. In most cases, it’s best not to lead with threats of legal action. Instead, look to leverage sympathy with your situation. To that end, identify the person with a combination of a) the most power over the severance terms and b) the most potential sympathy for your situation. This person could be your boss, an HR leader, a prior boss, or someone else in a position of power.
2. The departure date. You may ask them to keep you on the payroll longer, even if your responsibilities are reduced or eliminated. Doing so will enable you to appear employed on your resume, which may make you more appealing to potential employers.
3. An alternative work arrangement. You may ask for an opportunity to consult to support a transition period for a couple of days a week, in addition to receiving the severance they plan on giving you. This approach will provide you with the time you need to do your job search while still enabling you to say you’re employed at the current company.

Lastly, don’t forget to save any useful internal contact information you’ll need for your search.

Robert Hellmann | April 28, 2025

When I help clients (from the C-suite on down) to prepare for an interview, we dive into their pitch, persuasive stories, challenging questions, and more, often via a mock interview. Sometimes, though, there isn’t enough time before an interview to schedule this prep, so I send them a customized version of the following interview preparation checklist:

1. Find out who you’ll be interviewing with, if you don’t already know. Then develop a hypothesis about how you can help each person you’ll be meeting.
2. Prepare interview questions to confirm or disprove this hypothesis. That is, ask questions that can give you more clarity on how you can help them; gain the information you need to “sell” them on your candidacy. The best questions lead to answers that give you an opening to say “that’s something I can help you with.”
3. Share why you want to work there. Come up with a reason that’s stronger/more specific than “I would excel in this role.” Try to incorporate the organization, culture, leadership, business model, or mission. Ideally, your answer will make them feel good about both your motivation and their organization. Find a way to share why you want to work there in the interview, even if you’re not directly asked about this.
4. Think about issues they might have with your candidacy. Then have a strategy for dealing with them (either proactively to pre-empt a concern or reactively if they ask you about a sensitive area). If you get a question that doesn’t enable you to talk about how you can help them, keep your answer as short and positive as possible. Then, try to steer the conversation back to your “how you can help them” and/or “why you want to work there” agenda.
5. Have a well-rehearsed, engaging, differentiating two-minute interview pitch. Use it to answer open-ended questions like “tell me about yourself/experience/background” or even “take me through your resume.”
6. Prepare three great Success Stories and share them in a Problem Action Result (or similar storytelling) format. Bring them in to illustrate your answer to most questions. Sharing a resonant, relevant story is the single best thing you can do in an interview. We humans are wired to remember the imagery in stories, so you’ll be more memorable. Plus, for most interviewers, the best predictor of success is a resonant example of prior success.
7. Prepare answers for questions like “a time you failed,” “your greatest weakness,” “a criticism you received” and “an area of development.” These questions are all similar; they assess your ability to be self-reflective, to learn and grow from experiences. Ideally, pick something that you learned about yourself a long time ago, so you can say you have now fully mastered the issue. One story can often answer all of these questions.
8. Avoid negotiating compensation until after you get the offer. That’s when you have all the leverage, and things that weren’t negotiable before suddenly are. Also, it’s hard to discuss compensation properly before you fully understand the role and therefore the market rate. Prepare to deflect or postpone answering if asked about compensation.
9. Set yourself up to write a great post-interview “impact email” that will influence their decision-making; go way beyond a thank-you note. Leverage the notes you took on the conversation and what they asked about to write this email. In the process, address potential issues with your candidacy.

Robert Hellmann | April 28, 2025

The Thanksgiving-to-New Year period is a great time to set yourself up for a quick job search in the new year. Yes, hiring slows down at many organizations, and many executives take time off, so you’ll see fewer interviews and job offers. BUT those in the office have more time to read your email and speak with you. So, if you’re thinking of making a career move internally or externally, take the opportunity now to get on the radar of leaders who will be making hiring decisions in early 2026.

Also, use this time to create the “infrastructure” for a fast 2026 search, e.g., your job search marketing plan, contact management system, etc.

On a related note, when you’re reaching out to someone in your network whom you don’t know well/at all to request an informational meeting, request or follow up on an introduction, or simply let them know about your search in case they hear something, use these two best practices to improve your response rate.

• Don’t make your email too short. Yes, be concise, but jobseekers from executives on down, in the service of “keeping it short,” often don’t make themselves interesting enough to talk to. I’ve seen countless times over many years the improvement in response when jobseekers add a pitch that differentiates them and includes two to five resonant, bulleted accomplishments.
• Prioritize emails ahead of LinkedIn messages. From client experiences, emails to those you don’t (or hardly) know generally receive far more responses than LinkedIn messages as long as the subject line and initial sentences are compelling. The first seven links in this section of my website can help you find email addresses (or click on the “Resources” tab on my website and then select “Utilities…”).

Robert Hellmann | December 10, 2024

If you’re getting interviews, open to board roles, or building relationships for your business, you’ll want a resonant, keyword-rich presence on LinkedIn.

And yet, too many professionals—from the C-suite on down—leave their profiles mostly blank or filled with generic summaries that don’t resonate.

Why? Because everyone else’s profile looks that way too.

But here’s the problem: You’re invisible to those who could be offering you opportunities. Recruiters, search firms, and many hiring leaders use LinkedIn as their first stop in finding talent. Many prospects, business partners, and investors search their LinkedIn networks as well.

The fix: fill out as many sections on LinkedIn as possible, in a thoughtful, keyword-rich way. And then make sure your LinkedIn settings are not preventing you from being found.

Start with the About and Experience Sections

Many on LinkedIn don’t even have an About section. Make sure you do, as this is where you can summarize or “pitch” your experience to your target audience. For both sections:

• Identify and include the right keywords, i.e., those that your prospects might be using to conduct searches, and make sure they are present in a natural way. Look at other profiles or job postings for ideas.
• Seek to make a great impression so you’ll be contacted. List resonant responsibilities, show results, and name-drop.
• Write these sections just like you would on your resume, while keeping in mind the differences vs. LinkedIn that might prompt you to change some of the language or even add something more personal.
• Don’t worry about overwhelming viewers with content. Only the first three lines of the “About” section and the first two of the “Experience” sections are visible, followed by a link to “…see more”. LinkedIn gives the viewer the option to dig into your background only if they want to. So, if they click on “…see more”, give them what they want.

Pay attention to the Headline, Job Titles, and Skills section

The Headline and most recent job title are usually the only parts of your profile your prospects see in search results, so pay special attention and make them keyword-rich. For example, “Senior Vice President – Marketing” is way more effective than just “Senior Vice President” in helping you show up and get clicked on in searches.

The one place where “keyword stuffing” will actually help you is in the Skills section (you’ll want to include keywords in a more natural way in the rest of your profile or you could get penalized by LinkedIn). For this section, think of every permutation of what your target audience might be searching on, and include those words.

Beyond these sections, click on “Add profile section” to see what other sections you can add that could help you both get keywords in and make a great impression.

Your Profile can serve as a low-key resume

Sometimes sending over your actual resume may feel too pushy or convey an unintended “please hire me now” message, when you just want to get a meeting, regardless. If you thoughtfully fill out your profile, use it instead of your resume by linking to your profile in your emails.

Check your settings to make sure you’re visible in searches

Unless you are facing an unusually challenging situation with your privacy, go to www.linkedin.com/public-profile/settings and turn on all the profile visibility switches. Note: If you’re concerned that adding this additional content will impact privacy, you can always block or remove certain connections. But in general, if you want to be found for opportunities, it helps a lot to make yourself visible on LinkedIn.

Have a Large, Quality Network

While lots of connections can help you be found in searches, the answer is not to connect with everyone. A better approach puts quality before quantity. “Quality” means you know them in some way, even if just a little (like you had a nice exchange of LinkedIn messages), and may be open to helping them; your Home Page Feed will be more useful as a way to stay in touch if you know your network. “Quality” also means better results from LinkedIn’s advanced people searches, since you’ll be able to rely on your 1st degree network for introductions to those 2nd degree connections that show up.

All this said, think broadly about who should be in your 1st degree quality network. Aim for at least 250 people (hopefully much more) to improve your odds of showing up in searches.

Robert Hellmann | September 14, 2024