Every senior hire passes through the same five stages. Knowing which one a company is in tells you exactly what your move is — and whether there is still a move to make.
A role is funded before anyone is told it exists.
The departure becomes visible before the replacement search does.
The brief takes shape internally; a search firm may be briefed.
Longlists are built from people already known to the searcher.
By now, a shortlist usually exists.
Someone has decided the company will spend the money. Nothing exists yet: no brief, no title, sometimes not even certainty about what the job is. Almost nobody outside the executive team knows.
What you can do: nothing directly, and that is fine. This stage matters because it explains why the next one arrives so fast.
A departure happens, or a new function is created. This is the first moment the situation becomes visible from outside the company — before the mandate, before the search firm, before the advert, usually by weeks and sometimes by months.
What you can do: this is the window. There is no shortlist to be excluded from and no process to be late for. A conversation here is not an application, and it does not compete with one.
The brief takes shape internally. A specification is written, a search firm may be briefed, and — crucially — the first two or three names get mentioned. Those names come from memory and from the network in the room.
What you can do: you want to be one of the remembered names, which is a function of work you did before this week. If you know somebody inside, this is the moment their mention is worth most.
Longlists get built, mostly from people already known to the searcher. If a retained firm is running it, they are working their own database and network first, because that is what they are paid for.
What you can do: reach the searcher rather than the company. You are now a candidate in a process, and the process has a gatekeeper.
By the time a senior role reaches a job board, a shortlist usually exists. The advert may be genuine, a compliance requirement, or a backstop because the quiet route did not produce anyone.
What you can do: apply, and understand the odds you are accepting. You are being compared against people who arrived with an endorsement attached.
Most job-search advice is about being excellent at stage five. Most of the leverage is at stage two.
Not every hire runs cleanly through five stages. Some collapse into one week; some die at stage one and never resume; some restart with a different title after four months. The sequence is a way to reason about where you are, not a timetable you can set your watch by.
A senior seat emptying is a fact worth acting on — and it is not a vacancy. Reading the difference is what separates useful early intelligence from wishful thinking.
Read → The reverse job searchThere is a window between a seat becoming real and a shortlist existing. Arriving inside it is worth more than any improvement to your CV.
Read → Where Brinksignal fitsNot a job board, not a recruiter, not a coach. What the platform actually does, and the two jobs it exists to do.
Read →A short call, your target list, and an honest answer about whether this fits how you are running your search.