The 70/30 method
In a senior job search most people work hard and measure the wrong thing. They count applications, check job boards every morning, rewrite their CV for the fifth time. The method I use with clients comes from years of hiring on the other side of the table, and it became a set of written rules when I applied it to my own transition. It has seven principles and one filter.
Principle 1
Roughly seventy per cent of your time goes on people and thirty on job ads. At senior level many roles are never advertised, and those that are often already have a strong candidate by the time they appear. Time spent talking to the right people pays back more than time spent filling in forms.
Principle 2
A recruiter presenting you to a client has a few seconds. If they cannot describe you in one sentence, they move on to the next profile. So we work on two directions at most, chosen deliberately, rather than seven different roles kept open just in case. A broad target produces a message that speaks to no one.
Principle 3
First, search firms, approaching the partners of the right practice rather than internal recruiters. Second, the hidden market: private equity backed companies, operating partners, foreign companies entering the country. Third, interim and fractional assignments, which for an experienced executive are a real channel and sometimes the fastest route to a permanent role.
Principle 4
An ad seen on an aggregator should be checked on the company's own website or applicant tracking system before you apply. Many are closed, duplicated or months old. Aggregators tell you a role exists. They should not decide whether you apply.
Principle 5
Your first message to a headhunter or a CEO decides whether there will be a conversation. One request per message. Never an unsolicited CV. Never the word opportunity in a first contact. When a conversation goes quiet you need a fresh reason to get back in touch, because a generic follow up is easy to ignore.
Principle 6
Every contact and every application has a next action with a date. The list of people outlives individual processes: someone with no role for you today may have one in six months, or may introduce you to someone who does. Without a tracker a search becomes a collection of memories and good intentions.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Person and role | Who they are, which company, and why they matter to your search |
| Channel | Search firm, hidden market, or interim and fractional assignment |
| Status | Where the conversation stands: to contact, message sent, meeting held |
| Next action | The concrete thing to do, written so it takes ten minutes |
| Date | By when. A line without a date is a line that has stopped |
Principle 7
The number of applications sent tells you little. What counts is new conversations opened each week and first interviews. If after three weeks at full pace no first interview comes, the problem is rarely volume. It is positioning, and that is where we go back to.
Before anything else
There is a risk I often see in experienced managers: changing company without changing the criteria used to choose it, and finding yourself two years later in the same situation with a different logo. I call it the hamster wheel.
Part of the work is making that filter explicit. What the next role must have, what it must not have, what you are willing to trade. Questions about company culture belong in interviews, and they help you decide whether to accept, not whether to apply.
Thirty minutes to understand where you are, what you are looking for and whether the way I work suits you. If I am not the right person, I will tell you.
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