Executive Career Guidance · Principal-Led
For senior professionals who are done guessing.
You are good at your job. The record proves it. So the thing that has stalled, or gone hollow, or stopped making sense makes no obvious sense, and nobody around you can tell you why. This is where you find out.
Direct to Mark Ross. A reply within 24 hours. ross@headhunters-international.com
The real conversation
I will not pretend to know what you are going through. I have probably watched it before.
Some of the people who come to me know exactly what they need. A salary review they cannot afford to lose. A board interview they have never faced. A move they have one shot at and cannot get wrong.
Others arrive with something harder to put a name to. A career that reads well on paper and feels wrong from the inside. A suspicion that the next promotion will not fix what is actually broken. A quiet sense of having drifted, and of the drift getting harder to reverse the longer it runs.
Both are real. Both need the same thing, which is not encouragement. It is someone who has watched how these decisions get made and can tell you, plainly, what is happening to you.
That is what this is. A confidential conversation with someone who has spent thirty years in the room where career decisions are made, on both sides of the table.
The thing nobody names
Why you cannot see it.
You have spent a career being read by other people. Boards, panels, recruiters, your own chair. Every one of them formed a view of you, and not one of them was ever paid to tell you what that view was.
That is the whole problem, and it is structural. The recruiter is paid by the employer. The panel is buying. Your own team is too close, and your friends tell you that you are brilliant, which you already know and which does not help.
Somewhere in that silence you started reading the stall as a verdict on you. It usually is not. It is a decision made in a room you were not in, by people with no reason to explain it afterwards.
I have sat in that room for thirty years. I know what gets said once the candidate leaves it. The value in what I do is not sympathy. It is that I can name the thing nobody else in your process is paid to name.
Who this tends to be
This might be you.
Situation 01
Stalled, and you cannot find the block.
The credentials are strong, the track record is real, and the momentum has gone. You cannot see the thing holding you, which means you cannot move it.
Situation 02
In transition, and harder than you expected.
Your choice or someone else's, you are in the market and finding that knowing how to do the job and knowing how to win it are different skills, and nobody ever taught you the second one.
Situation 03
Preparing for something you cannot fumble.
A salary review, a board interview, one conversation that decides the next ten years. Thirty days here shapes a decade.
Situation 04
Lost rather than stuck.
You built the career on momentum, the next promotion and the next logical step, and stopped asking whether any of it was going somewhere you would have chosen on purpose. The longer you stay on a path you picked by default, the harder the one you would have chosen becomes to reach.
Situation 05
In a fight that is draining you.
A difficult chair, a boardroom that has turned, a peer working against you. The problem is not your capability, it is the ground you are standing on, and every week without a strategy is a week it costs you more.
Situation 06
You have tried coaching and it did nothing.
You paid someone who made you feel heard and left your position exactly where it was. You are sceptical. Good. I would rather work with a sceptic than someone who will believe anything.
What makes this different
Most coaches have never sat in the room where the decision gets made. I have.
Most career coaches have never worked in the commercial world they coach people to survive. They have studied the frameworks and passed the certifications. They have never held a role where a bad quarter cost them half a team, or where a board dispute put their own name on the line.
I have run two careers at once, both at the top end. Thirty years in international executive search, and alongside it a career in mergers and acquisitions, the kind of work where a deal lives or dies on a single conversation and the pressure does not let up until it closes. Between the two I have assessed thousands of professionals and sat inside the rooms where the money and the appointments actually get decided. I learned, from watching it happen again and again, what separates the people who move up from the people who stall. It is rarely talent. It is almost always positioning.
That is also why I see things before they surface. A role appears in public weeks after the decision to fill it started, and it started in a private event, a deal completing, a chair losing patience, a succession coming due. I have spent a career on the inside of those events. So when I tell you the search has stalled for a reason that has nothing to do with your worth, I am not reassuring you. I am telling you what I have watched happen to people exactly as capable as you.
That reality sits in the room when I work with you. I will not ask how a situation made you feel. I will ask what it cost you, what leverage you had, and whether you used it. If you did not, we fix that.
I also know that if you are running on four hours' sleep and a glass of wine to come down each night, the strategy is beside the point, because the engine underneath it is failing. I will not pretend that away. If the person is not working, the career will not either.
In their words, under their names
What clients said.
Repositioned after age bias · secured a senior role
Mark Ross was a turning point in my job search. He helped me completely reframe my approach, rewrite my case studies so they told a results-driven story, and reach the hidden market through tailored outreach. His coaching played a big role in helping me land my current role.
Krispian Emert
Senior UX Research Leader · formerly Microsoft, Google, Meta
Stalled search rebuilt after coaching elsewhere had failed
I came to Ross as a total mess. I had spent quite a bit of money on career services, including coaching, only to keep failing. Ross understood me from the beginning. He understood that I needed to learn the language, and how to use it to communicate my background to achieve the goals I wanted.
Dr Rebecca A. Fein
Senior Leader in Informatics, Policy and Population Health
Repositioned during a career transition
Mark demonstrated an incredible ability to understand my goals and provide tailored strategies that helped propel my pursuits. He instilled a confidence in me that pushed me to think beyond limits.
Katherine Samuelson
Health and Wellness Entrepreneur
How it works
Your career is not generic. The work should not be either.
01
Discovery call · 30 min · Free
We talk.
You tell me what is happening. I ask direct questions. By the end we will both know whether there is a fit. If there is, I tell you what the next step is. If there is not, I tell you that too, and point you somewhere better. This is an assessment, for both of us, not a pitch.
02
Diagnostic · 90 min
We go deep.
If we go ahead, this is where we start. Your history, your current position, what is working, what is broken, and what you actually want, which is often not what you first say. Out of that I build a programme made for your situation, not a template.
03
The programme · Scoped to you
We execute.
Some people need two sessions and a specific fix. Some need ten across six months to rebuild the whole thing. It is built around your reality and your timeline, and we agree the shape of it together.
An honest word about cost
The question I put back to you.
Guidance at this level is not cheap and I will not pretend it is. So here is the question I put to everyone who asks about the fee. What is it costing you to do nothing.
If you are sitting fifteen thousand below your market value, that is more than a thousand pounds a month leaving the table, and it compounds into every future salary that gets set against this one. If you are in transition and each month without a role costs you a full salary, the price of getting this right is small against the price of getting it slowly.
I do not publish a fixed fee, because no two of these are the same. Some people need one focused session to solve one problem. Others need six months to rebuild the whole position. We agree the scope together after the diagnostic, and you will know exactly what you are committing to before you commit to anything.
The first call is free. No obligation. If I am not the right person for this, I will tell you.
Straight answers
Frequently asked questions.
What happens on the discovery call?
We talk for thirty minutes. You tell me what is going on, I ask questions, and by the end we both know whether there is a fit. If there is, I explain the next step. If not, I say so directly. No pitch.
Is this therapy?
No. I am not a therapist and I do not work as one. If what you need is psychological support, I will recognise that and point you to the right person. What I do is career strategy, practical and commercially grounded.
I have had coaching before and it did nothing. Why is this different?
Most career coaching fails for one of two reasons. The coach has no commercial experience, or they run every client through the same template. I spent thirty years in the commercial world, and every programme starts from a diagnostic built for you. If the last one felt generic, this will not.
How long does an engagement last?
There is no standard. I have fixed an urgent, specific problem in a single ninety-minute session. I have also worked with people across six months to rebuild an entire position. The diagnostic decides what you need, and we agree the plan together.
Can you help if I do not know what I want?
Yes, and that is often where the real work is. Most people who say they do not know what they want actually do. They are afraid of what it means, or they have been talked out of it. The diagnostic is built to surface it.
In person or remote?
Sessions are over Zoom. I work with people across the UK and internationally.
What if I cannot afford it?
The discovery call is free. If we go ahead I will give you a clear picture of the cost before you commit. I would rather have an honest conversation about budget than let it sit there unsaid.
The evidence
The commercial foundation.
Education
Wharton
Executive Presence and Leadership. Neuroscience in Leadership. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Education
Harvard Medical School
Lifestyle and Wellness Coaching. The disciplined method behind the human side of every session.
Designation
FMVA · CBCA
Financial Modeling and Valuation Analyst. Commercial Banking and Credit Analyst. Corporate Finance Institute.
Practice
Executive Search
Thirty years in international executive search and board-level advisory. The record of watching senior appointments get made.
Practice
Mergers and Acquisitions
A parallel career in M&A, high-value transactions under sustained pressure. Where I learned what a decision costs when it goes wrong.
Published
Four Books
On career strategy, commercial decision-making and professional positioning.
Principal-led. Every engagement personally led by Mark Ross Roberts.
The next step
Thirty minutes. No cost. No obligation. Just clarity.
If you have read this far, something on this page landed. That is worth a conversation. Send me an email, tell me what is happening, and I will tell you honestly whether I can help. If I cannot, I will tell you that. Every engagement I take on starts the same way, two professionals and one honest conversation.
ross@headhunters-international.com · A reply within 24 hours