Career Narratives with Doug Lester – Details, episodes & analysis

If your job search is taking too long and you’re a mid or senior-level leader, your gut may be telling you it’s time to broaden your appeal. To have a more general and therefore more appealing positioning. Don’t do it! Host Doug Lester explains, from a recruiter’s perspective, why broadening your positioning could be a big mistake. 

👓 Read the original post on Substack

👉 Visit Craft Your Narrative on Substack

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom

Is your LinkedIn headline your job title and company name? If so, you're taking a big risk. Host Doug Lester shares why, based on his experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter and a coach to more than a thousand MBA alumni. And he offers an alternative approach that more effectively communicates your personal narrative.

🤓 Read the original Substack post

🎙️ Episode 8: Tips for a LinkedIn Headline That Communicates Your Narrative

🎙️ Episode 9: How to Write an Effective LinkedIn About Entry

🎙️ Episode 10: How to Write LinkedIn Experience Entries That Support Your Narrative

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom

You should think twice about reaching out to an executive recruiter you don't already know and have a relationship with. Host Doug Lester explains why, based on his experience as an executive recruiter at a top search firm, reaching out to recruiters directly can potentially create self-inflicted career wounds that limit your advancement opportunities.

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom

Have you ever been concerned that executive recruiters weren't calling you enough (or at all) or were calling about roles you weren't interested in? If so, then host Doug Lester shares five strategies for getting on the radar screens of recruiters for the right opportunities. They're based on his experience as a senior associate at a top executive search firm.

Resources mentioned:

🎙️ 1: What's Your Narrative?

🎙️ 8: How to Communicate Your Narrative in Your LinkedIn Headline

🎙️ 9: How to Write a LinkedIn About That Supports Your Narrative

🎙️ 10: How to Write a LinkedIn Experience Entry That Answers 3 Key Questions

🖥️ Blog: Network with Your Competitors, Be More Attractive to Executive Recruiters

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom

If you're a mid or senior-level MBA and want to advance your career, then executive recruiters are probably going to play a part in your narrative. To keep you from making some of the same incorrect assumptions he did, host Doug Lester shares what he learned as a senior associate at a top retained executive search firm. He pulls back the curtain on search firms, so you don't have to make some of the same mistakes he did when he was climbing the corporate ladder.

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom

Have you made less progress advancing your career than you had wanted to this year? Or maybe no progress at all? If so, host Doug Lester shares a little social media psychology and a realization from his own life experience that could help you identify and get past your roadblock so you can move forward.

Check out The October Theory of Changing Your Life in the Wall Street Journal (may require a subscription)

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom

If you're in your 40s or 50s, have you ever been advised to drop the dates from your education entries and remove a few of the earlier roles from your LinkedIn profile and resume? Trying to soft-pedal or hide your age and level of experience can actually work against you getting the aspirational senior roles that might be the best fit at this point in your career. Host Doug Lester shares his experience as a coach to MBA alumni and a former executive recruiter to make the case. 

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom

If you want to craft a compelling work-life narrative, you need to stay focused on work that yields the stories you want to be able to tell about yourself.

But truly important and impactful work tends to happen over time.

So to keep yourself on track, you set arbitrary due dates for key milestones... and then you miss them. And then you reset your due dates — and do it again and again. It's not just inefficient. It can make you feel bad.

There's a better way to keep the momentum going and feel better about yourself in the process. Host Doug Lester shares a tip he originally picked up from Carl Pullein, the productivity guru.

Check out Carl's work and offers at carlpullein.com.

And make sure to consider Carl's Time Sector Method course, which is the basis of Doug's entire project and task management system.

Note: These are not affiliate links. They're just helpful.

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom

If you've ever felt you nailed an interview, especially for a senior role, but you didn't get the call-back, there may be a problem with your storytelling, even if you're using the classic STAR method. Host Doug Lester has prepared thousands of MBA leaders for career-defining interviews, and he's noticed that even some of the best storytellers fail to do one critical thing. Find out if you're missing it, too, and what you can do to fix it.

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom

If you've ever felt less than confident in a career networking conversation, you're not alone. Host Doug Lester shares a tip he picked up as an executive recruiter that helped him feel more confident and be more effective when he was networking for a living. It can help you, too. 

🎧 Take control of your narrative and advance your career — subscribe to the podcast!

🤔 Need a thought partner with experience as a Fortune 100 hiring manager, an executive recruiter at a top firm, and a coach at Harvard Business School? Schedule a Career Strategy Session with Doug

❎ Avoid making 3 common mistakes with executive recruiters

📸 Improve your executive presence on Zoom