You Don't Need a Title to Be Who You Are

The same moment keeps showing up in my conversations — usually within the first few minutes of a call with a senior leader navigating a transition.

It sounds something like this:
"I'd ideally want a VP or Senior Director role, but I'm being realistic — I'd take an IC role if I had to."

Or: "I know I don't have CRM experience, so I'm wondering how to position that gap.

Or: "The market is tough, so I'm just keeping my options open."

Every version of this is the same thing. A quiet retreat. A pre-emptive negotiation against themselves — before anyone else even had the chance to.

I've been in recruiting a long time. And this moment — this specific, subtle shrinking — is one of the most common and most costly things I see senior professionals do.

Why the job board feels familiar — and why it's not designed for you

Job boards worked early in your career. You posted, you got calls, you made moves. The system made sense.

But here's the thing: most senior leaders haven't had to actively search for a role in a decade or more. So when a transition hits, it's completely natural to return to what worked before. The board. The application. The resume blast.

The problem is the system wasn't built for where you are now.

The roles that actually fit — CXO, SVP, VP, Senior Director — those live in conversations. In referrals. In someone mentioning your name over coffee with someone else who matters. Most never get posted. And when they do, the person is often already identified. The posting is due diligence.

The board will make you feel busy. It will not find you the right role.

The retreat nobody warns you about

Here's the sneakier thing.

When you're in transition at this level, there's enormous pressure to just do something. To have an answer when people ask how the search is going. To feel like you're moving.

So people start applying. Reframing themselves down. And before long, they're showing up to conversations as someone noticeably smaller than who they actually are.

The painful truth? You probably won't get those junior roles anyway. Any smart hiring manager is going to look at your background and think: overqualified. Gone in six months. A flight risk from day one. And frankly- if you were in the hiring seat- you would think the same thing too.

They're not wrong. You probably would be.

It's not what people want to hear. But it's what I keep saying, conversation after conversation: you're not getting hired for those junior roles. You're too big for them.

You don't need permission to be who you are

This is the part I feel most strongly about.

When people are in transition, a strange thing happens. The confidence that was there — the opinions, the point of view, the forward motion — it all quietly starts to depend on having a structure around it. A title. A company behind the name. A meeting to walk into.

And without that, people go quiet. They stop publishing. Stop reaching out. Stop having takes. They're waiting to “be a title” again.

But here's the truth: A company doesn't make you the professional you are. You already are that leader.

The practitioner doesn't disappear when the job does. The expertise doesn't expire. The judgment, the instincts, the pattern recognition — that's in you. Not in a job description. Not in a title. Not in a LinkedIn banner.

You don't need permission to keep being who you are.

Here's what actually works

This is where I want to get concrete — because the diagnosis is only useful if it comes with a direction.

I know this can feel daunting. You've spent your career being exceptional at your work — not at marketing yourself. These can feel like different skills. They're not. You just haven't had to use them on your own behalf before.

The leaders I've watched move through transitions well share a few things in common. None are secret. All require you to show up as the professional strategist you are — not as someone in search mode.

Go deep with two kinds of people.

• First: practitioners, researchers, and leaders doing the most interesting work in your field right now — the ones pushing the edges of what's possible.

• Second: senior leaders who own the business problems you're built to solve — CEOs, CMOs, CROs, CFOs, PE operators. These are the conversations worth your energy. Real conversations with real people doing real things.

Go in curious, not pitching.

Don't go in looking for a job. Go in genuinely interested in what they're working on — what's shifting in their world, what problems they can't get their hands around, what they're seeing that nobody's talking about yet. You're not pitching. You're being the practitioner you are. And somewhere in that process — not in every conversation, not even in most — you're going to walk into a problem that needs a solution that looks exactly like you. At the very least, these individuals get to have an experience of you and your thinking. That is what speaks - that is what gets remembered and referred.

Show up as the expert you already are.

Have a public point of view. Write the post. Share the observation. Comment with an actual take. You are an expert in your field whether or not you have a desk to sit at. The people who demonstrate that are the ones who get referred into opportunities before those opportunities ever get posted.

Share what you learn.

By going deep into the work and close to the people doing it, you become one of the most connected and informed people in the market. Don't keep that to yourself. Share the insights. Make introductions. Drive value for the people you're meeting. That generosity compounds — and it signals clearly that you are very much still in motion.

A note on working with executive recruiters.

This approach also makes you more productive to work with — including when you're working with a recruiter. The leaders I love working with are the ones who've done this work. Who are deep in the field, clear on what they bring, and showing up as themselves. The individuals that are "open to anything" or willing to flex down just to land somewhere are more difficult. They want to read as “agreeable”. But companies at this level aren't hiring agreeable or open. They're hiring solutions. Leaders. Partners. Experts. The clearer you are on who you are and what you solve for, the better “hero story” can be told on your behalf.

This isn't just about finding your next role

Here's what I want to leave you with — and it's bigger than the search.

Everything above isn't just a strategy for landing your next opportunity. It's a way of operating that will make you sharper, more connected, and more valuable in everything that follows.

The leaders who use a transition this way — going deep in their field, building real relationships with people doing the most interesting work, developing a genuine point of view — don't just find their next role. They show up to it better than they would have otherwise. With external perspective. With current intelligence. With a network that can support them not just now, but across every move and transition that follows.

This is a chance to get clearer on what actually matters to you. To own your professional life more deliberately than the day-to-day grind of a full-time role ever quite allows. To come back not just employed — but elevated.

The market is there. The right role is there. And the version of you who goes into it having done this work is a more valuable, more grounded, more connected leader than the one who just survived the search.

I know it is an investment of time and effort and ego - but you are worth the investment.


Jadey Ryndak is an executive recruiter and career coach at Vocation LLC, specializing in marketing, communications, and go-to-market leadership.

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