A strong CV gets attention. A strategy drives results.
You can have a well-written CV, an optimized LinkedIn profile, job alerts set up across multiple platforms and AI helping you research roles and prepare applications, and still not have a job search strategy.
This matters particularly for experienced managers and executives. At this level, a job search is rarely just about finding relevant vacancies and submitting strong applications. It is about defining where your experience creates the most value, identifying where those opportunities may exist and using several channels to reach them.
Gary Burnison, CEO of Korn Ferry, makes a similar point in his recent article “I Need a Job!”. His starting message is simple: getting a CV into someone’s hands, or uploading it into an ATS, isn’t enough. Candidates need a plan.
Many of his recommendations are also reflected in how we work with senior professionals: understanding what you bring to the market, defining a target, building relationships, using AI deliberately and preparing thoroughly for interviews.
What Does a Job Search Strategy Actually Include?
Technology has made many parts of a job search easier. Candidates can identify vacancies within seconds, use AI to draft application materials or analyze job descriptions and submit applications without ever speaking to another person. The risk is that more activity can look like more progress, even when the underlying strategy is weak.
At Career Angels, we structure the job search process around four steps, supported by KPIs that help assess whether the strategy is working:
- Goal: Is your career goal clearly defined and realistic in the current market?
- USP: What makes you stand out, and why should an employer consider and ultimately hire you?
- Documents: Do your CV, ATS-compliant CV and LinkedIn profile communicate that positioning effectively?
- Market access: Are you generating opportunities through all four job search channels rather than depending on one?
We then measure the results to understand whether the process is producing the expected market response and where adjustments may be needed.
1. Define Your Target and Your Value
Burnison recommends a systematic approach to targeting based on factors such as organization size, industry, environment, way of working and the scope of the desired role. He also distinguishes between a relatively straightforward move, where the focus can be narrower, and a broader career transition, where experience needs to be translated into a different context.
For experienced managers and executives, however, the target usually needs to be defined in more dimensions than job title alone. The same title can represent significantly different scope depending on company size, ownership structure, geography, reporting line, mandate and business situation.
A CFO role, for example, can mean maintaining a stable finance organization, preparing a business for an IPO, supporting an acquisition, restructuring debt, professionalizing reporting in a founder-led company or working with private equity investors. A well-defined career goal therefore needs to specify not only what role you want, but also the type of organization, circumstances and mandate in which your experience creates the greatest value.
The next step is positioning. Burnison starts with self-knowledge: understanding your strengths, accomplishments, motivations and the type of environment in which you perform best. In a job search, that self-knowledge needs to translate into clear market positioning: what combination of experience, results, industry knowledge, leadership scope and expertise makes you particularly relevant to the organizations you want to reach?
An employer isn’t hiring you simply because of your career history. They are hiring your ability to address specific business needs. Having 20 or 25 years of experience isn’t a differentiator in itself. What matters is how that experience translates into value in a specific context.
2. Treat Your CV as a Tool, Not the Strategy
A CV helps you communicate your experience. But it can’t define the strategy for you.
The same applies to LinkedIn. Optimization can improve visibility and make a profile easier to understand, but it can’t compensate for unclear positioning or an unrealistic career goal.
With a clearly defined target and positioning, the CV, ATS-compliant CV and LinkedIn profile can reinforce the same message. Without that foundation, even well-prepared documents may lack a clear direction.
Documents support a job search. They don’t define its direction.
3. Use More Than One Route to the Market
According to Burnison’s article, as many as 70% of positions are filled by internal candidates or through referrals. The article doesn’t provide the methodology behind this figure, so we wouldn’t treat it as a universal market benchmark. The exact percentage may vary, but the broader point remains relevant: formal job advertisements represent only part of the market.
Our own data supports this conclusion. Career Angels’ Job Hunting Report 2025 shows that job ads still matter, but most accepted offers in our data did not come from job ads alone:
- 37% resulted from direct approach supported by networking,
- 27% involved job ads combined with networking and direct approach,
- 16% came through executive search firms as a standalone channel,
- 20% resulted from job ads alone.
Job ads clearly still work. But in our 2025 data, 80% of accepted offers involved another channel or a combination of channels.
This is why our methodology uses four complementary job search channels: direct approach, executive search firms, networking and job ads. The objective isn’t to identify one “best” channel, but to use the relevant ones deliberately.
A job ad may reveal an opportunity, a direct approach may increase visibility, and a network contact may provide validation.
Networking receives particular emphasis in the article, especially the value of relationships built before they are needed. We agree with its importance, but see it as one part of a broader multi-channel approach.
4. Use AI to Support the Process, Not Define It
The article also addresses the growing role of AI in job search, from CV preparation and cover emails to interview coaching and opportunity identification. AI can assist with the process, but the candidate still has to make the strategic decisions.
It can make research faster, analyze job descriptions, support document preparation and help with interview practice. It shouldn’t be relied on to decide whether your career goal is realistic, how you should position your experience or which opportunities are worth pursuing.
If the strategy is weak, AI may simply help you execute it faster.
At Career Angels, we therefore apply a principle of limited trust when using AI in job search: we test tools before recommending them and review their output rather than accepting it as a final answer.
5. Measure What Is Actually Happening
One element is still missing from much job search advice: measurement.
Experienced professionals routinely manage businesses through KPIs, yet often evaluate their own job search through impressions such as “the market is bad”, “nobody is responding” or “nothing is happening”. These observations may be correct, but without data they aren’t yet diagnoses.
It is then difficult to determine whether the market is genuinely unreceptive to your profile, the target is unrealistic, you are contacting too few or the wrong people, your positioning isn’t generating interest or you are receiving responses but not converting them into interviews.
At Career Angels, we recommend tracking two key job search KPIs:
- Response Rate (RR): the proportion of effectively contacted people who respond. A good benchmark is approximately 30% to 50%.
- Interview Rate (IVR): the proportion of effectively contacted people who generate interviews. A good benchmark is approximately 5% to 10%.
“Effectively contacted” means more than sending one message. In our methodology, it means an initial approach followed by a follow-up after approximately 7 to 10 days.
Measurement makes it possible to ask not simply why nothing is happening, but where the problem actually lies. A low response rate may point to targeting, messaging or positioning, while a healthy response rate combined with a low interview rate suggests a different problem.
A structured approach can’t guarantee an immediate offer. It can, however, reduce avoidable errors and make it easier to identify what needs to change. These benchmarks are based on the methodology and job search data we continuously collect from our work with experienced managers and executives. This helps us compare general job search advice with the patterns we actually see in responses, interviews and accepted offers.
Career Management Starts Before You Need a Job
Burnison ends his article with an important reminder: the process doesn’t stop when a new role is secured. Career management, networking and market awareness remain relevant beyond an immediate job search.
The same thinking should begin before a job search becomes urgent, not only after months of unsuccessful applications. The earlier you know what you are targeting, how you create value, how you intend to reach the market and what results your activity should produce, the easier it becomes to distinguish a difficult market from a strategy that needs adjustment. This is equally relevant for professionals who aren’t actively looking today: maintaining market awareness, professional positioning and relevant relationships makes future career decisions easier to manage.
A strong CV can help you execute a job search. It should never be mistaken for the strategy itself.
If you are a manager or executive with at least 10 years of experience and would like to assess whether your current job search strategy, positioning and activity are aligned with your career goals and today’s market, email us at Contact@CareerAngels.eu to book a free, non-binding online Career Consultation.
Sometimes, one conversation is enough to identify what is not working, where the gaps are and what your next steps should be.
