EXECUTIVE REDUNDANCY · HEADHUNTERS INTERNATIONAL
Made Redundant as an Executive: What Should You Do in the First Ninety Days?
Redundancy at director level is a decision about a balance sheet, and most executives spend the first fortnight reading it as a decision about them. That misreading drives the panic applications in week two and, by month four, the offer accepted because the silence had become unbearable. The first ninety days go better when the exit is explained in two calm sentences and the search runs to a written plan, with the record rebuilt before anyone outside sees it. Mark Ross spent thirty years on the hiring side of senior appointments, and Headhunters International now does that work for the executive.
The call was booked as a catch-up with the chief executive, and somebody from HR was already in the room when you joined. Forty minutes later a settlement agreement was in your inbox, with a date by which to take legal advice. You drove home the long way. For a week the phone kept ringing with colleagues who had heard, some kind, some curious, and then it went quiet. Your partner asks each evening, carefully, whether anything came in today. You have rewritten your LinkedIn headline twice and deleted both versions.
What happened was structural. A new owner merged two head offices, or a strategy changed and your role sat on the wrong side of it. The decision was usually modelled on a spreadsheet weeks before anyone told you, and it would have been made about whoever held the post. Treating it as a verdict on your ability is the mistake that costs most in the months that follow.
The stakes: what the wrong acceptance costs
An illustrative commercial director with a total package of £180,000, made redundant when a private equity owner merged two businesses. He applied widely from the first week, heard little, and accepted the first offer that came, in month five. The person and every figure are fictional.
| Illustrative figures | £ |
|---|---|
| Previous total package | 180,000 |
| Months out of work before accepting a role | 5 |
| Package forgone over those five months | (75,000) |
| Role accepted in month five: same title, narrower remit | 150,000 |
| Shortfall against previous package, per year | (30,000) |
| Shortfall over three years | (90,000) |
| Pension contributions forgone on the shortfall at 8% | (7,200) |
| Cost against the previous package over three years and five months | (172,200) |
His settlement payment is left out, because it was owed for the old role whatever he did next. The larger cost sits outside the arithmetic. His new chief executive turned out to want a deputy, and within fourteen months he was looking again, now explaining two exits. Most of that was set in motion in the first fortnight, when forty applications went out under a headline that made a restructure sound like a dismissal.
Why a restructure reads as a verdict
Executives are used to being judged on results, so a removal arrives sounding like one. The language of the meeting makes it worse: "the business has decided", "your role is no longer required", a script checked by lawyers before it was read aloud. Behind it there is usually a cost model. A new owner wants one head office where there were two, and someone in finance has already worked out the saving.
From the hiring side the consequences of the misreading are easy to see. An executive who believes he has been judged tries to disprove it fast, with dozens of applications and the open to work banner in the first fortnight. Readers looking for calm see urgency instead. Chairs notice an executive who explains the exit at length, with an edge in his voice.
Then the silence starts to do its own damage. A senior vacancy that goes quiet has usually been paused, filled internally, handed to a search firm or was never really open. Greenhouse data reported by the Wall Street Journal in April 2025 put 18 to 22 per cent of active online job postings in the ghost category, with no live hire behind them. After a month of hearing nothing from adverts like those, many executives begin to accept the verdict they invented, and a lesser offer starts to look like rescue.
The first ninety days, period by period
A search without a plan drifts. With no target list and no weekly review, the approach that failed in February goes out again in June with the same wording. The table below is the order Headhunters International works to. It front-loads the thinking and holds back anything public until there is something worth showing.
| Period | What to do | What not to do |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 and 2 | Take advice on the settlement agreement from your own solicitor. Write down the facts of the exit, with dates, while they are fresh. | Apply to anything. Post open to work. Announce the exit before the wording has been agreed with your former employer. |
| Weeks 3 and 4 | Settle the departure narrative, consistent with your reference. Start the value excavation: every achievement with a base, a period and a source. | Send out the old CV with the old title as its headline. Take a quick chat with every recruiter who rings. |
| Weeks 5 and 6 | Settle direction: the five-year position and the level you are aiming at. Build the criteria you will score every option against. | Let the first offer decide the direction for you. Put permanent, interim and non-executive roles on one profile. |
| Weeks 7 and 8 | Write the Career Memorandum, an executive CV and a one-page biography. Update LinkedIn once, so it matches them. | Post open to work a second and third time. Rewrite the profile every week in response to silence. |
| Weeks 9 to 13 | Build the target list from companies with something changing, such as a new owner or a new chief executive. Write to the person who owns the problem. Review approaches and replies every week. | Measure progress by applications sent. Repeat a failed approach with the same letter. |
Weeks one to four look quiet from outside, and that is deliberate. In Mark Ross's experience, executives who struggle in month six were often among the busiest in week two, sending applications before the narrative or the CV was ready.
Who has told you what to do next, and what do they gain from it?
Within days of the meeting you will have heard plenty of advice. Each piece comes from someone whose position shapes it.
The outplacement provider
was paid for by the employer that made you redundant, as part of the exit package. Its brief usually asks for help back into work, and progress tends to be measured by a role found. Whether that role suits the next five years of your career is a question the brief rarely sets.
The search consultants who ring in week one
are paid by client employers. Some are calling about a live brief. Others are refreshing a database while you are easy to reach, which helps them more than you, because a consultant's value to a client rests on finding people who are hard to move.
Your network
of former colleagues and friends rates you and wants to help. Their introductions are worth having once you know exactly what to ask for, and in the first fortnight you rarely do.
The settlement lawyer
sees many executives a year at exactly this point, and is the right person for the agreement. Take your advice on its terms from your solicitor and from nobody else, Headhunters International included. The lawyer's brief stops at the agreement, though, so what you hear about the months after it tends to be general: take a break, do not rush.
None of them is acting in bad faith. Each is answering the question set by whoever pays them, and nobody in that list is paid by you to plan the search itself.
The departure narrative: one or two sentences, said without flinching
Every reader of your CV, and every chair across a table, will want to know why you left. If you do not give them a short factual account, they will write their own, and theirs is rarely kind. The narrative is the first document Headhunters International settles, before the CV, because everything else has to agree with it.
- Facts only. What changed in the business, and when. Leave out how it felt.
- Name the structural cause. A merger, a sale, a new operating model, a cost programme. Readers recognise these at once.
- Keep it the same every time. A recruiter in March should hear the account your referee gives in May.
- Match the reference. Agree the wording of your exit with the referee you plan to use, so the two accounts do not drift apart.
- Stop, then move forward. After the second sentence, talk about what you want next.
This worked example was written for this page and is illustrative.
The version that flinches. "It's a long story. The new CEO came in with his own ideas and, to be fair, there were some politics, and I think in the end they wanted someone more aligned with the new direction, although the numbers in my division were actually the best in the group."
The version that holds. "The business was bought by a private equity owner last year and merged with its sister company in March. After the merger the group needed one commercial director, it kept the one from the larger business, and my role went in June."
The second version is shorter, and a chair who hears it rarely asks a follow-up question about the exit.
Two first ninety days, illustrated
These examples were written for this page to show the kind of finding the work produces. They are not records of real clients. Headhunters International never publishes client names or details.
Chief operating officer, logistics, after an acquisition
Starting point. Role removed four weeks after a larger rival bought the business. Thirty applications in three weeks, a headline reading "Open to new opportunities", and two interviews where he spent the first ten minutes on the exit.
What the work found. His account of the exit took four minutes and named the new chief executive twice. Three integration results he had led were written on his CV as projects he had "supported".
What changed. The narrative was cut to two sentences and the applications stopped. With the integrations now leading his CV, approaches went to businesses that had bought a competitor in the past year, reviewed every Friday.
Outcome. Approaches went to fourteen businesses. Five replied, and two chief executives met him in week eleven to discuss a role neither had advertised.
HR director, retail, after a restructure
Starting point. Role removed when the group centralised its people function. Within a fortnight a former boss offered her an interim role at a smaller business, and she was minded to accept it to end the uncertainty.
What the work found. Scored against criteria she had written herself, the interim role came out below her priorities on scope and on the chance of a permanent seat. She had been weighing it against the silence, rather than against what she wanted.
What changed. She declined it warmly and kept the relationship. Direction was settled on a group people director role, and approaches went to chief executives in their first year in post.
Outcome. In month four she accepted a permanent people director role at a business with a new chief executive, on a package close to her previous one.
How the work runs
Every engagement goes through four stages before anyone outside is approached, and in a redundancy most of the value sits in the first two.
- Value. Your achievements, excavated and quantified with a base, a period and a source, until there is a record a buyer can check.
- Direction. A five-year position and the level you are aiming at, settled before a nervous first offer settles it for you.
- Criteria. A scoring framework built from your own priorities, so every option is measured the same way, the early ones included.
- Positioning. The departure narrative, the Career Memorandum, an executive CV and a one-page biography, written to agree with each other.
The Foundation Programme covers those four stages. When the documents are ready, The Private Office can take the search to market through Reverse Headhunting: a target list of companies with something changing right now, and direct approaches to the person who owns the problem, reviewed weekly so nothing repeats by accident.
Who does the work
Mark Ross Roberts, founder of Headhunters International, does the work himself. He has spent thirty years in senior executive search, putting together shortlists and writing the candidate reports a board reads, and in M&A, where he sees the change of owner or strategy months before a role appears. His qualifications include the FMVA and CBCA from the Corporate Finance Institute and Wharton Executive Education programmes in executive presence and in neuroscience in leadership, and he is the author of four books including STAR Success. Headhunters International is paid by the executive, and by nobody else.
How to start
Email Mark Ross at ross@headhunters-international.com with a line on what happened and when. He replies himself, and the first conversation establishes where the ninety days should start, which stage the work begins at and what it would cost. Nothing is payable until you decide to go ahead.
Questions executives ask after redundancy
What should I do first after being made redundant as a director?
Take advice on the settlement agreement from your own solicitor and write down the facts of the exit while you remember them. Hold off on applications and public announcements until the departure narrative is settled, because the first fortnight sets the tone for the rest of the search.
Should I post open to work on LinkedIn after redundancy?
At senior level it usually signals urgency to readers who are looking for calm, and posting it repeatedly makes that worse. Update the profile once, when your positioning documents are ready, and let approaches to named people do the work.
Can Headhunters International advise on my settlement agreement?
No. Take advice on the agreement, its terms and its wording from your solicitor. Headhunters International works on what comes after it, including making sure the departure narrative and your reference agree with each other.
How do I explain redundancy at a senior interview?
In one or two factual sentences that name the structural cause and the date, said the same way every time. Then move to what you want next.
How long does it take to find a new executive role after redundancy?
It varies with level, sector, direction and how the search is run, and no adviser can promise a timescale. Headhunters International does not. What can be controlled is the order of work, and executives who settle the narrative and the documents first tend to waste fewer months on channels that were never going to reply.
Should I take the outplacement my employer has offered?
It costs you nothing and can be useful, particularly for practical support. Because your former employer paid for it as part of the exit, ask what its brief covers, and whether anyone in it will plan a search for the role you want next.
Sources: Greenhouse data on ghost job listings, reported in the Wall Street Journal, April 2025.
Read next
Related guides from Headhunters International
- Executive career pivot: how a move into a new sector or function gets read at the first screen.
- Outplacement vs reverse headhunting: who pays for outplacement, and what its brief leaves out.
- Why have headhunters stopped calling?: how search finds people, and why leaving a role takes you off the list.
One email, principal to principal
Write to Mark Ross at ross@headhunters-international.com. He replies himself.
Email Mark Ross