Danilo Melle

At Willis Towers Watson I helped build cyber risk insurance in Italy when that market was just emerging. I then moved to Credit Suisse and Kaleyra, and joined TP Group as Chief Revenue Officer of TP Infinity, later becoming its CEO. I have opened markets from scratch in Asia and worked across Italy, Spain and Portugal, the UK and the United States.

In all these roles a large part of the job was hiring, training and developing sales people and managers, and rebuilding the systems used to assess and pay them. I have worked with executive search firms as a client, when hiring for my teams, and as a candidate. I know what a hiring manager looks for, what convinces them in a profile and what makes them move on to the next one.

For years I have informally helped colleagues, former team members and friends through job changes: deciding where to position themselves, rewriting their profile, choosing whom to contact and how, preparing for interviews. When I went through an executive transition myself I wrote the method down, with clear rules, a tracker and a weekly discipline. Testing it on myself showed me clearly what works and what does not, and that is where this practice comes from.

Today I advise a few technology companies on entering the Italian market, and I mentor on entrepreneurship programmes. Through Manageritalia's Food4Minds I bring career orientation modules to secondary schools, to help young people understand what really happens inside a company.

Why I do this

Changing jobs mid-career, with a solid track record behind you, is unlike any other search. The market is smaller, decisions rest with a few people, and how you present yourself matters as much as what you have done. I enjoy working on this with people who have already achieved a lot and need to show it to the people who matter.

With students the question is different, but the starting point is the same. You choose better after talking to people who do the job every day, and one well-prepared conversation can save years on the wrong path.

The method I use