Thirty years on the hiring side of the table produces a particular view of how senior careers actually work — which is often quite different from how the advice literature says they work.
The pieces collected here are drawn from that experience. Each one addresses a specific decision, a specific inflection point, or a specific information asymmetry that senior professionals encounter and often handle without adequate context.
No motivational content. No listicles. No recycled frameworks.
Executive Insights. One Perspective.
Between 70 and 80 percent of senior roles are filled before a job advertisement is ever written. What that market is, how it operates, and why preparation — not activity — is what gets you into it.
Read the article → Senior Interview Preparation C-Suite and Board-Level Interview PreparationAbove £150k, the competency framework recedes and something harder to prepare for takes its place. What changes at board level — and why the techniques that worked at £80k actively work against you.
Read the article → Executive Career Documents Why the Two-Page CV Breaks at Senior LevelThe two-page CV was built for a screening process that does not exist at board level. A hiring-side breakdown of exactly where the format fails — and what the senior market actually needs from a career document.
Read the article → Career Strategy Career Inflection Points — The Moments Senior Careers Turn OnThe invisible ceiling. Redundancy. The sector pivot. The move to non-executive work. These moments are predictable — and the professionals who navigate them well are the ones who prepared before the moment arrived.
Read the article → Executive Search Ghosted By Headhunters — Why the Call That Felt Like Opportunity Goes SilentThe promising call goes quiet. Most senior professionals assume they weren't right for the role. Usually they're wrong. Five reasons headhunters go silent after a promising approach — and the four questions that protect your time before you invest it.
Read the article → Senior Hiring Process The Reference Call — What Happens After You Leave the RoomBy the time the hiring committee calls your reference, they have already formed a view. References at senior level are not verification — they are narrative confirmation. What that means, what goes wrong, and how to protect a process you have spent weeks building.
Read the article → Offer Negotiation What's Actually Negotiable in a Senior Job Offer — Where the Real Flexibility SitsBase salary is almost always the least flexible component. The remuneration committee approved the band before your first interview. LTI vesting, pension, notice periods, role scope, and sign-on structure are where the real negotiation happens.
Read the article →"The hiring market is an information asymmetry problem. The best candidates don't always win. The best-prepared candidates do."
Mark Ross Roberts FMVA, CBCA · Headhunters InternationalWork With Mark Directly
Every service at Headhunters International is delivered personally by Mark Ross Roberts. If the perspective in these articles is useful, the advisory services put it to work directly on your career.