Explore every episode of the podcast The Job Hunting Podcast
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to Build a Portfolio Career Without Starting Over, with Kate Dillon | 22 Sep 2026 | 00:51:59 | |
Episode 344 - Career change after 40 does not have to mean abandoning everything you have built. In this conversation with Kate Dillon, we explore portfolio careers, small career experiments, transferable career capital and how to create more professional options without making an unnecessary leap. There is a particular kind of career dissatisfaction I see frequently among experienced professionals. They are successful by conventional measures. They have seniority, expertise, a respectable salary and two or three decades of professional history behind them. Yet increasingly, they feel uneasy about the idea that the next ten or fifteen years of their working life should look much like the last ten or fifteen. The problem is that many people interpret this uneasiness as evidence that something dramatic needs to happen. They imagine leaving their employer, retraining completely, launching a consultancy, buying a business or finally pursuing the idea they have been quietly carrying around for years. Then reality intervenes. There is a mortgage, children at university, aging parents, a lifestyle built around a certain income, and a professional reputation that took a long time to establish. This is where the conversation about career change can become unnecessarily binary. Stay or leave. Corporate career or entrepreneurship. Employment or consulting. Security or freedom. My conversation with Australian lawyer, strategist and entrepreneur Kate Dillon offered a much more useful possibility: perhaps the next stage of an experienced professional's career does not require abandoning what came before. It may instead involve building outward from it. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Why Employers Ask About Salary So Early | 08 Sep 2026 | 00:45:35 | |
Episode 243 - Salary is one of the most uncomfortable parts of the job search, especially when employers ask for expectations early in the process. In this episode, compensation consultant Matt McFarlane explains how companies think about pay, salary bands, job titles, negotiation, and what experienced professionals need to understand before naming a number. Few moments in a job search create as much discomfort as the salary question. It often appears too early, too bluntly, and too impersonally. A candidate is completing an online application, still unsure whether the role is a genuine fit, and suddenly a form asks for salary expectations or current compensation. For experienced professionals, especially those in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, that question can feel less like an administrative step and more like a trap. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Confidence Is Overrated. Here's What Actually Gets You Hired. | 26 Aug 2026 | 00:33:07 | |
Episode 342 - What if confidence isn’t the thing holding you back? I’m sharing what I’m seeing in the job market right now, from executive presence and relatability to why being more human may be your biggest advantage in the age of AI. Confidence has become one of the most common explanations experienced professionals give me when their careers stall. “I need to be more confident.” “I’ve lost my confidence.” “I don’t think I come across confidently enough in interviews.” I hear versions of these statements every week from people with 15 or 20+ years of professional experience. They have managed teams, delivered complex projects, advised executives and built careers that demonstrate considerable competence. Yet when they enter a job search or begin aiming for a more senior role, confidence suddenly becomes the diagnosis. Increasingly, I think we may be diagnosing the wrong problem. The professionals who stand out today are not necessarily the people projecting the greatest certainty. Often, they are the ones who communicate with enough self-awareness to be credible, enough courage to be visible and enough humanity to be memorable. And in an employment market increasingly saturated with AI-assisted communication, those qualities may become considerably more valuable. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| How Financial Stress Shapes Your Career Decisions | 11 Aug 2026 | 01:00:16 | |
Episode 341 - Financial stress can change how we assess risk, negotiate, job search and plan our next career move. Carrie Joy Grimes, founder and CEO of WorkMoney, joins me to discuss financial runway, career transitions, money anxiety and how to make better decisions when your income or employment suddenly feels uncertain. When experienced professionals lose their jobs, one of the first questions I ask is not about their resume, LinkedIn profile or network. I ask about money. How long can you afford to be out of work? The answer matters because a job search conducted with six months of financial runway can look very different from one conducted with six weeks. Financial stress has a way of turning a career decision into an emergency. Suddenly, the goal is no longer to find the right next role. It is to make the discomfort stop. That distinction came up repeatedly in my recent conversation with Carrie Joy Grimes, founder and CEO of WorkMoney, a U.S. nonprofit focused on helping working people improve their financial lives, and author of The Joy of Money: How to Do More With and Feel Better About Your Money, No Matter How Much You Have. “Financial stress isn't a thing that we walk around saying, ‘I'm financially stressed right now,’” Grimes told me. Instead, she described it as something that gradually weighs on us until we become accustomed to operating under pressure. That pressure can have consequences well beyond our bank accounts. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Career Visibility Without Becoming a LinkedIn Influencer | 28 Jul 2026 | 00:48:30 | |
The people deciding your next role form an opinion about you before you ever apply. This conversation shows you how to shape it. My guest is Vanessa Errecarte: marketing lecturer at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, consultant, and author of Valuable and Visible. She created one of the only for-credit MBA courses in personal branding in the United States, and she has a message for every senior professional who was taught that great work speaks for itself: the market stopped listening to silent excellence. We talk about why decades of strong work can disappear from view after a redundancy, how recruiters and hiring managers now discover senior candidates before a resume is ever read, and what separates real authority from empty visibility on LinkedIn. Vanessa explains why the advice to simply post more backfires, and why helping people publicly beats talking about yourself. You will also hear the practical layer: her formula for introducing yourself so people remember you, the difference between an influencer's job and yours, what AI can and cannot do for your thinking, and a minimum viable personal brand that takes 1 to 3 hours a week, starting with one LinkedIn post. In this episode, career coach Renata Bernarde and UC Davis marketing lecturer Vanessa Errecarte argue that personal branding is about creating value for others rather than promoting yourself: senior professionals get remembered, referred, and recruited when they publicly help their audience solve problems, because visibility without earned trust produces no career results. Your one thing this week: write one LinkedIn post using Vanessa's formula. Open with a short personal story, connect it to why it matters, then teach a framework of three to five steps your peers can use. As I say at the close of this episode, your expertise can be recognized, remembered and recommended through a little bit of work on your part. Subscribe so next week's episode finds you. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| The 7 LinkedIn Questions My Clients Ask Most Often | 14 Jul 2026 | 00:29:43 | |
Episode 339 - I answer the seven LinkedIn questions my career coaching clients ask most often, from headlines and About sections to recruiter visibility, skills, posting, and making your profile support your next career move. Most experienced professionals know LinkedIn matters. They know recruiters use it, hiring managers check it, and that former colleagues, board contacts, clients, and professional peers may look them up before making an introduction. And yet, many still treat LinkedIn as a digital filing cabinet. A place to store job titles, dates, and old responsibilities. That is a missed opportunity. Your LinkedIn profile is designed to be a record of where you have worked. It is a positioning tool. It should help the right people understand who you are, what you are known for, what problems you solve, and where you may be heading next. This is especially important for professionals in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. By this stage, your career is usually more complex. You may have worked across sectors, held several leadership roles., and you may be changing direction. For example, you may be moving from executive work to board roles, from corporate to consulting, from one industry to another, or from full employment into a portfolio career. If that's the case, your career complexity can be valuable. But if your LinkedIn profile does not translate it clearly, it can become confusing. That is why Episode 339 of The Job Hunting Podcast focuses on the seven LinkedIn questions my clients ask me most often. These are not questions from people who lack experience. They are questions from people who often have a lot of experience, but are not sure how to make that experience visible, searchable, and relevant. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| The 7 Career Questions My Clients Ask Most | 30 Jun 2026 | 00:27:23 | |
Episode 338 - I answer the seven career questions my clients ask most often about visibility, CVs, achievements, career change, age bias, role choice, and career storytelling. My clients don’t come to career coaching because they lack experience. They come because they are trying to make sense of that experience. They have done the work. They have led teams, managed complexity, navigated politics, influenced stakeholders, delivered projects, rebuilt systems, survived restructures, and made decisions under pressure. But when they sit down to explain what they want next, the story often becomes unclear. This is especially true for experienced professionals – those in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. By this stage, your career is rarely linear. You may have worked across sectors, changed functions, taken time out, held several leadership roles, been made redundant, moved countries, started consulting, returned to employment, or begun exploring board opportunities. Your experience may be rich. But rich experience can also be hard to explain. That is why Episode 338 of The Job Hunting Podcast focuses on the seven broader career questions my clients ask me most often. These are not LinkedIn questions. I will cover those in another episode. These are the bigger questions behind a job search, career transition, or professional reset. They are the questions that sit underneath the CV, the interview, the networking conversation, and the search strategy. And if there is one idea I want you to take from this episode, it is this: Your experience does not speak for itself. You need to translate it. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| When You Want to Quit: The Job Search Mindset Shift | 16 Jun 2026 | 00:35:33 | |
Episode 337 - Job searching can test even the most experienced professionals. In this episode, I reflect on Sabalenka’s emotional loss at Roland Garros and explain why job seekers need to move from emotional reaction to strategic response after rejection, redundancy, long job searches, interviews, and career setbacks. There are moments in sport when we see more than performance. We see pressure, and the private battle that sits underneath public achievement. That happened recently at Roland Garros, when Aryna Sabalenka lost a match many expected her to win and later said she felt like she wanted to quit tennis. Reports from Reuters and Sky Sports captured the emotional weight of that moment. It was not polished or strategic. It was human. I was watching the interview with my father, and he said something that stayed with me. He observed that Sabalenka has the physical gifts of an elite tennis player. The strength, the talent, the training, the ability. But at that level, the difference is often mindset. That comment made me think about job seekers. Not because looking for work is the same as elite sport, of course. But because both can place people under intense pressure. Both require repeated performance under judgment. Both involve rejection, recovery, comparison, and the ability to reset after disappointment. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Job Hunting in 2026: Mistakes to Avoid | 02 Jun 2026 | 00:26:19 | |
Episode 336 - If I were job hunting now, I would not apply at scale, outsource my voice to AI, or wait until I was unemployed to build visibility. This article explains five common mistakes experienced professionals should avoid and how to make the job search more strategic. If I were job hunting in 2026, I would not start by asking how many jobs I should apply for each week. I would ask a more useful question: what would genuinely improve my odds? That shift matters because the job search has become more efficient and more frustrating at the same time. Candidates can now use artificial intelligence to write resumes, tailor cover letters, prepare for interviews, research employers, and apply for more jobs in less time. Employers are also using AI to screen, sort, compare, and manage applicants. In theory, this should make hiring easier. In practice, it has made the process noisier. A 2026 Robert Half survey found that 67% of HR leaders say AI-generated applications are slowing hiring, 84% of HR teams report heavier workloads as AI-tailored applications increase, and 65% of hiring managers say AI-enhanced resumes make skills harder to verify. This is the paradox of the 2026 job search: job seekers can apply faster, but hiring managers are finding it harder to trust what they read. For experienced professionals, especially those in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, the answer is not to join the noise. The answer is to become sharper, more credible, and more strategic. There are five things I would not do if I were job hunting now. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Job Searching Is a Numbers Game. Here’s How to Improve Your Odds. | 19 May 2026 | 00:57:29 | |
Episode 335 - Most job seekers focus on applying more. But in a tougher market, volume alone is not enough. Kyle Austin Young explains how “probability hacking” can help professionals improve their odds, de-risk career change, prepare better for interviews, and make smarter career decisions. Most professionals do not think about their careers in probabilities. They think in effort. They think, “I have worked hard.” They think, “I have good experience.” They think, “I am qualified for this role.” They think, “If I apply to enough jobs, something will happen.” And sometimes, something does happen. But in a tighter job market, hope is not a strategy. Volume is not always a strategy either. The experienced professionals I work with are often surprised to discover that the most important question is not, “How do I apply for more jobs?” The better question is: How do I improve the odds that the right opportunity will convert into an interview, an offer, and a good career decision? That question was at the centre of my conversation with Kyle Austin Young, the guest on Episode 335 of The Job Hunting Podcast. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| How Headhunters Really Work | 05 May 2026 | 00:50:44 | |
Episode 334 - Executive headhunter Gerard Miles explains how search firms identify, assess, and approach candidates, and what experienced professionals can do to become more visible, relevant, and memorable to the recruiters who matter. Many experienced professionals reach a point in their career where the job market starts to feel strangely opaque. Earlier in their careers, they could apply for advertised roles, hear back from recruiters, attend interviews, and move through a relatively visible hiring process. But at senior levels, the rules change. The hiring process is quieter. The shortlist may be built before a role ever becomes public. And the people being considered are often not actively looking. This is why so many senior executives become frustrated when they approach the job market the same way they did ten or twenty years ago. They update their resume, apply for roles online, wait for responses, and assume that if they are good enough, the market will find them. But executive recruitment does not work that way. In my conversation with Gerard Miles, a headhunter specialising in the games and entertainment sector and co-founder of Mission One, we discussed what really happens behind the scenes in senior hiring. And although Gerard works in a very specific niche, the lessons are not limited to gaming. Replace the word “gaming” with mining, education, retail, health, technology, financial services, or government, and the same principles apply. At the senior executive level, hiring is less about applications and more about relevance, reputation, timing, and trust. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Why Workers Over 45 Are Being Left Behind | 21 Apr 2026 | 01:00:53 | |
Episode 333 - Workforce participation drops sharply after 45, despite strong demand for experienced talent. In this episode, we explore the structural barriers, age bias, and outdated career models holding professionals back, and what individuals, employers, and governments can do to better support longer, more productive working lives. We have all fallen in love with NASA's crew for its Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon in more than half a century. What stood out to me was the composition of the team. Every astronaut selected was Generation Xer, in their 40s and 50s. When the stakes are high, we do not default to youth. We choose experience. That's what NASA did . They choose judgment. They choose people who have navigated complexity before and can do so again under pressure. And yet, in the labour market, we continue to behave as if the opposite were true. This contradiction sits at the heart of what has been described as the “longevity paradox”: We are living longer, healthier lives, but participating less in the workforce as we age. For the corporate professionals I work with, this is not an abstract concept. It is a lived experience, often emerging in their mid-40s and becoming more pronounced thereafter. This issue has become more personal for me recently. At the age of 54, I have just become a grandmother. It has prompted a different kind of reflection about time, work, and what the next decades should look like. Like many of my clients, I am not thinking about slowing down. I am thinking about how to work in a way that is sustainable, meaningful, and aligned with the realities of a longer life. The question is whether our institutions are prepared to support that. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| What Professionals Need Most in 2026 | 07 Apr 2026 | 00:46:38 | |
Episode 332 - Natalie Moore joins me to explore what leaders and professionals need most in 2026: courage, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and space to think. We also discuss burnout, work design, hybrid work, and how career pivots can happen through small, intentional steps. The themes in this week's podcast episode are not really about personal reinvention in the lifestyle sense, but they're also not hot takes about work culture. They sit at the intersection, as so many issues do when it comes to career and our personal lives. How to we reinvent leadership, organisational design, career strategy, and human behaviour so we can cope with the new ways of working? That is where many of my clients live. They are not junior workers trying to “find their passion.” They are experienced corporate professionals, senior managers, and executives trying to make good decisions in a labour market that has become harder to read, less forgiving, and more emotionally demanding. Here is what I keep seeing in my coaching work. My clients are not simply struggling with job search mechanics. Yes, they need resumes, LinkedIn positioning, networking strategies, and interview preparation. But those are not the only things making this moment difficult. Many are also dealing with return-to-office mandates they did not choose, leadership cultures that speak the language of wellbeing without redesigning work, and AI-driven hiring processes that make the market feel more opaque than ever. LinkedIn reported in January that nearly two-thirds of people say finding a job has become more challenging, while U.S. applicants per open role have doubled since spring 2022. At the same time, 93% of recruiters say they plan to increase their use of AI in 2026. Those are not small shifts. They change how people experience work, how they think about security, and how they approach career planning. In my conversation with Natalie Moore on The Job Hunting Podcast (332), what emerged most clearly was that professionals who are coping best right now are not necessarily the most confident. They are the ones who are able to think clearly under pressure, notice when an environment is no longer working for them, and act with intention before their options narrow. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Body Language for Interviews | 24 Mar 2026 | 00:45:37 | |
Episode 331 - Your experience may speak for itself on paper, but in interviews your body language is speaking too. Linda Clemons shares practical ways to project confidence, warmth, and authority so experienced professionals can perform better in interviews, networking events, and high-stakes conversations. In Episode 331 of The Job Hunting Podcast, I speak with Linda Clemons about body language, executive presence, and the ways experienced professionals are often misread in interviews. Our conversation explores how stress shows up physically, why long tenure can mask unhelpful communication habits, and what candidates can do to present themselves with greater clarity, warmth, and authority. Experienced professionals often assume that interview performance is mainly determined by the strength of their track record and the quality of their answers. That assumption makes sense. After all, senior candidates are usually selected for interview because their credentials already suggest competence. Yet many still leave the process confused by the outcome. They feel they answered well, understood the brief, and showed relevant experience, but did not turn the opportunity into an offer. In many cases, the missing factor is not substance. It is presentation in the broadest sense of the word. This does not mean superficial polish or fake self-confidence. It means the interaction between verbal and nonverbal communication: posture, tone, pace, facial expression, emotional regulation, and the overall impression of steadiness. Employers do not assess these factors separately from capability. They fold them into their judgment of capability. For experienced professionals, especially those who have spent a long time inside one organisation, this creates a specific challenge. They may be highly competent, but no longer practised in making that competence clear to strangers in a short, high-pressure setting. That issue came through clearly in my conversation with Linda Clemons, a global expert in nonverbal communication and executive presence. One of her most useful observations is that people are constantly judging alignment. They listen to the words, but they also notice whether the rest of the person appears to support them. When language, tone, movement, and emotional state line up, credibility rises. When they do not, doubt enters the room, even if nobody says it out loud. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Behind the Hiring Curtain: What’s Really Happening | 10 Mar 2026 | 01:07:00 | |
Episode 330 - Patrick Dunlop, organisational psychologist and Future of Work professor, shares what he learned from studying recruiters, what’s overhyped, what’s still painfully manual, and how experienced candidates can move with confidence through modern selection processes. Spend enough time around job seekers and you will hear the same diagnosis: “Hiring is broken.” Spend enough time around recruiters and you will hear a different one: “We’re drowning.” Both can be true. What has changed in the last few years is not simply the technology inside recruitment. It’s the volume, the noise, and the mismatch between what candidates think is happening and what is actually happening inside organisations. In my conversation with Professor Patrick Dunlop, an organisational psychologist at Curtin University, one theme kept resurfacing: the biggest misunderstanding is not about AI. It’s about realism. Hiring varies wildly from one organisation to the next, and much of what candidates assume is “automated” is still surprisingly manual, uneven, and dependent on human judgement. What follows is a structured, evidence-informed way to think about modern hiring if you are an experienced professional, particularly in your 40s and beyond. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Executive Presence Without the Mould: Ageism, Culture, and Code-Switching | 24 Feb 2026 | 00:58:58 | |
Episode 329 - We unpack what interviewers are really reacting to, how to show agility at any age, and how to stay authentic while adapting to different cultures and expectations. I understand why Brené Brown and Adam Grant can say “thumbs down” on executive presence and get a standing ovation. In their conversation on Dare to Lead, they frame executive presence as “party of one” and contrast it with leadership as a “collective capability.” It’s a compelling point, and a necessary correction for leaders who confuse charisma with competence or confuse performative confidence with real stewardship. But in my day-to-day work as a career coach for experienced corporate professionals, executives, and senior technical specialists, executive presence is not a fad, a buzzword, or an outdated corporate relic. It is a hiring variable. It’s the most searched term on my podcast’s website. And pretending otherwise leaves job seekers at the mercy of unspoken rules. That’s why I devoted Episode 329 of The Job Hunting Podcast to executive presence, alongside two experts who don’t treat it as a personality type or a costume: Dr. Alexa Chilcutt, executive coach and faculty lead for the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School’s Executive Education Business Communication Certificate, and Dr. Carl DuPont, Associate Professor of Voice at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute and Executive Education faculty at Carey. What I took from our discussion is this: executive presence is real because the question isn’t whether it exists. The question is whether we teach it responsibly, in a way that helps professionals be read accurately, without forcing them into a narrow mould. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Two Sports Psychology Tools That Make Job Searching Easier | 10 Feb 2026 | 00:43:30 | |
Episode 328 - I borrow two tools from elite sport psychology: the difference between thoughts and attention, and the difference between internal and external focus. You’ll learn how to stop fighting your nerves and start directing your attention. Job searching can feel deeply personal, but the mechanics of it are closer to a high-performance environment than most people want to admit. You are assessed in real time. You are compared, often invisibly, against other candidates. You are expected to communicate with clarity, confidence, and restraint while navigating uncertainty, rejection, and the emotional weight of change. For experienced corporate professionals and executives, this becomes even more complex. The stakes feel higher, the stories are longer, and the margin for error can seem smaller. Many of the people I work with are excellent at their jobs, yet they find the job search uniquely destabilising. That’s not because they are not capable. It’s because job hunting creates a different cognitive and emotional context than most leadership roles do. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| 6 Coaching Tools for a Smarter Job Search | 27 Jan 2026 | 00:24:01 | |
Episode 327 - I share six tools I use with experienced professionals who feel stuck in job search. You will leave with clearer direction, a simple decision filter, and practical ways to build momentum. January has a particular sound in my inbox. It is the quiet urgency of people who are either ready for change or exhausted from trying. Many are senior professionals with decades of achievement behind them, now facing a job search that feels unfamiliar, slower, and strangely impersonal. The temptation is to treat that discomfort as a personal flaw. Please, do not. Instead, treat it as a signal. If you feel overwhelmed right now, you are not broken. You are overloaded. And the overload is not only emotional. It is structural. As 2026 begins, multiple signals point to a labor market that is “stuck in place,” with slow hiring and slow firing, and a growing divide between sectors that are hiring and those that are simply holding. That “low-hire, low-fire” reality creates a special kind of psychological strain for corporate job seekers. You can do everything “right” and still hear nothing. You can have a strong resume and still feel invisible. You can be an excellent leader and still find yourself tweaking a LinkedIn headline at midnight, as if the correct adjective will unlock a recruiter’s calendar. This is the context in which mindset stops being motivational fluff and becomes a practical career asset. The market is sending a clear message: there is less room for vague positioning, passive applications, and comfort-zone job searching. The good news is that experienced professionals are unusually well equipped for this moment, once they stop trying to recreate the last chapter and begin designing the next one. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| 7 Strategies to Navigate Career Uncertainty | 19 Jan 2026 | 00:38:56 | |
Episode 326 - Navigate career uncertainty with strategies to stay relevant amid AI disruptions and global shifts. Rebroadcasting as Episode 326 during our holiday break, this episode (originally released as Episode 295) continues to be one of the most practical and impactful guides for professionals feeling threatened by uncertainty in the job market, especially from AI. The job market feels like it's operating in a dense fog. For many professionals, particularly those in mid-to-senior corporate roles, navigating a career today is less like following a GPS and more like learning to read a compass in the dark. This uncertainty is not just emotional, it’s systemic. We’ve seen a wave of redundancies ripple across different sectors. My own coaching clients, many of whom are experienced professionals, were affected. The catalyst? A perfect storm of geopolitical issues, reduced funding, and yes, artificial intelligence. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Burnout and Ambition: Why Rest Is a Smart Career Move | 12 Jan 2026 | 00:20:56 | |
Episode 325 - In a world that celebrates hustle, rest can feel counterintuitive. But for ambitious professionals, learning to pause is not optional. It’s a strategic necessity. Rebroadcasting as Episode 325 during our holiday break, this episode (originally released as Episode 298) continues to be one of the most practical and impactful guides for professionals feeling burned out at work. If you’ve spent the last few months feeling more exhausted than usual, struggling to focus, or wondering why your motivation has gone missing despite a looming job application or promotion deadline, you’re not alone. In my coaching work with experienced professionals, these themes are everywhere. And they’re not the result of laziness, lack of ambition, or poor time management. They are the hallmarks of burnout, which is now a routine part of corporate life. Burnout isn’t new. But its spread among high-performing professionals is growing quieter, deeper, and more normalized than ever. The World Health Organization gave it official status as an “occupational phenomenon” in 2019, describing it as the result of chronic workplace stress left unmanaged. Yet the language around burnout still lags behind the reality: many professionals don’t realise they’re burning out until their relationships suffer, their health declines, or their job search stalls despite their best efforts. You don’t need to be working in a hospital during a pandemic to feel burned out. Today, it’s just as likely to show up in the corner office, the Zoom window, or the resume file named “final_final_FINAL.pdf”. From senior executives navigating hybrid workplaces to job seekers attempting to “optimize” every aspect of their applications, the common thread is emotional depletion disguised as diligence. And the real danger? Burnout thrives in silence. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| The Hidden Truth Behind Job Search Advice: What You’re Not Being Told | 05 Jan 2026 | 00:25:08 | |
Episode 324 - If you've ever felt frustrated by job search advice that doesn’t seem to work for you, this episode will help you understand why, and what to do instead. This episode is being rebroadcast as Episode 324 during our holiday break. It originally aired as Episode 277, and it remains one of the most useful episodes I’ve recorded for professionals who feel stuck in their job search. If you spend any time on LinkedIn these days, you’ll find no shortage of job search success stories. Posts from professionals who landed a new role in record time are often presented as if they hold the ultimate secret formula. The implication? If you’re still struggling to land your next opportunity, you must be doing something wrong. But the reality of job searching, especially for experienced corporate professionals, is far more complex than these polished narratives suggest. As a career strategist and coach, I work with professionals every day who are trying to navigate a labor market that has changed drastically. Their frustrations, struggles, and triumphs reveal an inconvenient truth: job search success is rarely as simple as social media makes it seem. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| 3 Steps to Get Hired Faster | 29 Dec 2025 | 00:22:57 | |
Episode 323 - I break down why experienced corporate professionals are struggling to regain control of their careers and share three practical steps to accelerate your job search This episode is being rebroadcast as Episode 323 during our holiday break. It originally aired as Episode 275, and it remains one of the most useful reset episodes I’ve recorded for experienced professionals who feel stuck in their job search. The job market has been tough over the past few years. Whether you were impacted by the pandemic or faced the challenges of the post-pandemic economy, job hunting is no easy feat. If you're an experienced professional, you're likely feeling stuck, frustrated, or overwhelmed. The good news? You don't have to navigate this process by yourself anymore. In this episode and blog, I’ll walk you through three essential steps to help you regain control over your job search. These are actionable, proven strategies that go beyond the clichéd advice of "posting more on LinkedIn" or "mastering the STAR interview technique." As a career and executive coach, I’ve helped counThis episode is being rebroadcast as Episode 323 during our holiday break. It originally aired as Episode 275, and it remains one of the most useful reset episodes I’ve recorded for experienced professionals who feel stuck in their job search. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Why You Didn't Get The Job: 5 Mistakes To Avoid | 22 Dec 2025 | 00:38:09 | |
Holiday Replay Episode 322 - Are your job search efforts failing short? Discover the 5 critical mistakes that could be stopping you from landing your next role, and how to correct them. This episode is being rebroadcast as Episode 323 during our holiday break. It originally aired as Episode 275 and it remains one of the most useful reset episodes I’ve recorded for experienced professionals who feel stuck in their job search. This is the kind of episode that lands differently when you’re tired, discouraged, or overthinking your next move. If this year didn’t go to plan, use this as a practical reset: mindset, interview presence, upskilling signals, and the small etiquette details that quietly cost offers. When job seeking, while external factors played a role, it’s crucial to focus on the aspects within your control. In this podcast episode, I explore the five main reasons why you may not have secured a job and, more importantly, what you can do differently. Drawing insights from renowned experts, as well as my own experience as a career coach, I will guide you through key mindset shifts, practical job search strategies, and essential interview techniques that can transform your career prospects. In this blog I will summarize the key points from this episode. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| How to Find a Job in 2026 | 15 Dec 2025 | 00:43:17 | |
Episode 321 - The job market in 2025 has been flat, competitive, and emotionally draining for many professionals. In this episode, recruiter Geoff Slade and I unpack what’s really happening behind the scenes and what job seekers can do to stand out, especially when everyone’s application starts to look the same. If 2025 felt harsher than you expected, you were not imagining it. As a career coach, I’ve watched experienced professionals, including senior leaders, get caught in longer hiring cycles, more competition, and a colder tone in recruitment communication. In this episode of The Job Hunting Podcast, I sat down with Geoff Slade, Chairman of the Slade Group, for our end-of-year reflection and forward-looking conversation. Geoff has a rare vantage point. His group operates across multiple recruitment brands and covers everything from entry-level roles through to senior executive appointments. He’s also been in the recruitment industry for decades, which gives him pattern recognition that most job seekers never get access to. In this blog post, I’m summarising and unpacking key points from our conversation, with a focus on what corporate professionals and executives can do right now. We discussed the flat job market, the rise of interim roles, the reality of negotiating salary and flexibility, and how AI is changing the way applications look and feel. Most importantly, we talked about how to market yourself so you stop blending in. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Success Lives on the Other Side of Cringe | 08 Dec 2025 | 00:33:00 | |
Episode 320 - Discover the idea of “productive cringe” and how the slightly embarrassing moves you avoid are often the exact moves that unlock new roles, better opportunities, and a more sustainable career. Over the past few months, a phrase has appeared again and again in my coaching sessions with senior professionals.
At first glance, these might sound like small worries. In reality, they tell us a great deal about how mid-career professionals are relating to their work in 2025. Cringe has become a powerful, if unspoken, organising force in many corporate careers. Not the justified embarrassment that comes from genuinely unprofessional behaviour, but the anticipatory discomfort we feel when we imagine colleagues rolling their eyes at our ambition. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| How Kindness and Giving Protect Your Career After Layoffs | 01 Dec 2025 | 00:55:39 | |
Episode 319 - When a role disappears or a career stops feeling right, most professionals reach for more control, more effort and more doom scrolling. In this conversation, Professor Stephen G Post explains why generosity, service and “pure unlimited love” are powerful tools for coping with job loss, protecting mental health and realigning your career with a deeper sense of calling. Recording this episode with Professor Stephen G Post felt very different from my usual conversations about job search strategy. We did not talk much about keywords, ATS or networking scripts. We talked about love, service, calling and what happens to you on the inside when your role disappears or your career stops feeling right. As you know, most of my clients are senior professionals who have done everything by the book. Good schools, strong performance, promotions. Then something happens. A restructure, a new CEO, a bad boss, burnout. Suddenly the path that once felt stable looks very fragile. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Open To Work Banners, One Year of Job Hunting, And Ageism | 24 Nov 2025 | 00:42:58 | |
Episode 318 - I answer real questions from professionals who are worried about a prolonged job search. We talk about whether to use the LinkedIn Open To Work banner, how to cope when your job search has stretched past a year, and what to do when employers say you are “too senior”. In my inbox and on my Zoom screen, the same faces keep appearing. They are senior managers, directors, heads of function, sometimes C suite executives. They are in their forties, fifties, and sixties. They have built careers inside large companies, delivered turnarounds, navigated crises, and led hundreds of people. Now they are sitting at home with a LinkedIn tab open, hovering over a tiny feature that has come to carry enormous emotional weight: the “Open to Work” banner. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Why Agency Matters More Than “Success” In Your Career | 17 Nov 2025 | 00:58:08 | |
Episode 317 - Losing a job or having a terrible job can pull you straight into survival mode. In this conversation with Jon Rosemberg, we unpack how to move from white-knuckle coping to a more intentional, agentic way of designing your next chapter. Survival mode is a nervous system response, not a personal failure. In this podcast conversation, I spent time unpacking what survival mode actually is with my guest, Jon Rosemberg, who has studied applied positive psychology and worked as a COO in high-pressure environments. It is easy to forget that our bodies are old hardware running new software. From a nervous system perspective, losing a role or facing long-term unemployment can register as a threat to survival. Identity, status, and income are deeply tied to our sense of safety. When that safety is shaken, the body reacts. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| How Underrepresented Professionals Reach the C-Suite | 10 Nov 2025 | 00:44:10 | |
Episode 316 - Dr. Sheila Gujrathi discusses how to build real influence, find sponsors, and move into executive roles without losing yourself. We unpack how fear shows up and what to do when you aren’t the “obvious” candidate. I recorded this episode to answer a question many experienced professionals wrestle with: How do you keep advancing when you do not fit the traditional mold for senior leadership? My guest is Dr. Sheila Gujrathi, a biotech executive, physician, and scientist who has led programs from idea to approval, served as a CEO and board director, and built platforms to support leaders across the health and life sciences sector. She is known for a high-impact TEDx talk on brave, inclusive leadership with more than a million views, and she co-founded a peer community that connects and develops biotech CEOs. Our conversation is a practical discussion about sponsorship, fear, authentic influence, and the specific moves that help underrepresented leaders rise without losing themselves. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| The Executive Crisis Playbook: Edward Segal on Plans, Media & Rapid Response | 03 Nov 2025 | 00:37:25 | |
Episode 315 - Crisis expert Edward Segal maps the first moves leaders should make when something goes wrong, who to call, what to say, how to brief the media, and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Most professionals I speak to who are experiencing a career crisis did not see it coming, and almost all of them did not prepare for it. Corporate professionals still treat crisis management as something that happens to other people, like the CEOs in the headlines and the companies and brands trending on social media for all the wrong reasons. In reality, crises are not confined to boardrooms or news cycles. They unfold quietly in inboxes, performance reviews, and unexpected phone calls from HR. When I sat down recently with Edward Segal, an expert on crisis management, I was reminded that “it’s not if, it’s when.” Every professional, no matter how senior or secure, will face defining career moments that test their judgment, values, and resilience. The challenge is not to avoid these moments, but to prepare for them and respond well when they arrive. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Bold Career Moves with Georgie Hubbard: Reinvention, LinkedIn, and Getting Hired | 27 Oct 2025 | 00:45:45 | |
Episode 314 - Recruiter-turned-Founder Georgie Hubbard unpacks how to pivot with confidence, optimize your resume and LinkedIn, and ditch “spray & pray” for targeted strategies that actually get results. After dozens of conversations with senior professionals over the past few months and the discussions in my latest podcast episode, I keep coming back to the same conclusion. The people who are progressing in this year’s job market are not the ones applying faster or to more roles. They are the ones who have adapted to a hiring system that is more algorithmic and more cautious than it was a year ago. The question is whether your job search strategy reflects this as well. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Toxic Workplaces: When to Speak Up, When to Leave | 20 Oct 2025 | 00:49:09 | |
Episode 313 - Employment attorney Jessica Childress is back, unpacking what “toxic” really means at work, and how to decide if it’s time to stay or go. I'm sure you're well aware that experienced professionals have had to cope with hostile cultures, micromanagement, and difficult leaders in their careers. Some issues are illegal. Many are not. Either way, the impact on your confidence and career can be profound. In this episode, employment attorney Jessica Childress helps us separate what is unlawful from what is simply unhealthy, and to outline a practical approach for documenting issues, engaging HR strategically, and, when needed, negotiating a clean exit. Start with definitions. Many environments feel corrosive yet are not unlawful. Civility is not a legal requirement. As Jessica put it: “It’s not a workplace civility code. So the law does not require civility.” However, discrimination, harassment, and retaliation tied to a protected class or protected activity are unlawful. Knowing the line matters because your strategy depends on it. If conduct is unlawful, escalate precisely and protect the record. If it is unhealthy but legal, your leverage comes from establishing boundaries, framing your business, and exploring options outside the building. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Conquer Your Imposter Syndrome at Work with Alison Shamir | 13 Oct 2025 | 00:50:33 | |
Episode 312 - If you second-guess your success, Alison Shamir shares the mindset shifts and tools that help professionals recognise and overcome imposter thoughts. For years, clients have reached out to me with this dilemma: They are capable, experienced professionals who are unsuccessful in their job search. Usually, this is my diagnosis: They are not short of qualifications; they are short of traction. Listening back to my conversation with imposter syndrome expert Alison Shamir, I was struck by how precisely her framework matches what my clients have faced in their careers. That is, a human tendency to discount our own track record, especially when they're unemployed and looking for work. It is a cycle in which the external system is harder to read and the internal narrator becomes louder, precisely when professionals need to demonstrate clear business value. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| When the Recruiter Becomes the Candidate | 06 Oct 2025 | 01:02:28 | |
Episode 311 - Leanne Brannigan spent years hiring. Then she was laid off, and used social media to document her experience job searching while unemployed. Her story exposes how the system treats candidates and what we can do better. I spend my weeks advising professionals who assumed that their extensive work experience and a tidy LinkedIn profile would carry them through a choppy market. Then they collide with reality: Long hiring cycles, few roles at their level, automated screens that reward keywords over judgment, and interview panels that want evidence, not eloquence. The latest episode of my podcast features internal recruiter turned job seeker, Leanne Brannigan, who walked through that reality from both sides of the table. Her story crystallizes the themes I see daily and points to a more disciplined way forward for corporate professionals who want to compete at the top end of the labor market. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Job Search Insights from Ambition CEO Nick Waterworth | 29 Sep 2025 | 01:02:48 | |
Episode 310 - Most job seekers focus on what they should do. In today’s episode, we dig into what they aren’t doing and why that’s costing them jobs. At a time when headlines are dominated by artificial intelligence, layoffs, and economic uncertainty, the themes from my discussion with Nick Waterworth, CEO of Ambition, on The Job Hunting Podcast (ep 309) deserve a closer look. His insights align with what I hear daily from my clients, and he offers explanations and advice that will benefit many job seekers on their path to career advancement and success in the hiring process. As a career strategist working with experienced professionals, many of whom are navigating the turbulence of mid-to-late career transitions, I found the conversation with Nick enlightening. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| When Love and Leadership Collide: CEOs, HR, and Crisis Management | 22 Sep 2025 | 00:42:16 | |
Episode 309 - Beyond the headlines, workplace scandals reveal deeper lessons about governance, disclosure, and accountability. In this episode, I share strategies for overcoming missteps and rebuilding your professional brand. Every so often, a string of corporate headlines forces us to confront the evolving nature of leadership. In recent months, the departures of high-profile CEOs from Astronomer, Nestlé, and Super Retail have done exactly that. Each case was triggered not by financial mismanagement or strategic failure of disclosure. More specifically, in relation to personal relationships that crossed professional boundaries. These stories are not about romance or morality. They are about power, trust, and the unforgiving spotlight under which modern leaders operate. For my clients and listeners, experienced corporate professionals navigating career transitions, these scandals are not distant boardroom dramas. They are cautionary tales that shape hiring practices, redefine professional expectations, and serve as stark reminders that reputation can shift overnight. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| How to Handle Layoffs, Rejections & Career Pivots | 15 Sep 2025 | 00:48:37 | |
Episode 308 - Rejections are part of the job search and they can also guide your next steps. In this episode, Renata answers questions about resumes, layoffs, LinkedIn gaps, and how to pivot into new opportunities. In recent months, the messages I receive from clients and podcast listeners have become increasingly urgent. Experienced professionals, many in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, are being forced to navigate layoffs, endless rejections, and the unsettling prospect of having to pivot careers in an economy that feels unstable at best. The questions raised by hundreds of participants in a recent webinar I joined, organized by the job seeker’s platform Callings.ai, painted a vivid picture of where corporate professionals stand today. This moment is not unique. Labor markets cycle, as history shows us. Yet 2025 has brought together a particular mix of challenges: post-pandemic restructuring, political shifts that have left government professionals in limbo, funding cuts, and AI-driven restructures. For executives and experienced professionals, these shifts create both barriers and opportunities. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| The Rise of Portfolio Careers and Interim Executives with Donna Burr | 08 Sep 2025 | 00:55:04 | |
Episode 307 - From the rise of portfolio careers to the growing importance of digital transformation, the 2025 Interim Executive Survey highlights how executives are choosing new ways of working. In this week’s episode of The Job Hunting Podcast, I spoke with Donna Burr, Partner in Interim Executive Management at Watermark Search International, about the findings of their 15th Annual Interim Executive Survey. With 15 years of data and nearly 900 survey respondents in 2025, this report offers invaluable insight into how executives are choosing to work flexibly in interim roles, what organizations want from interim executives, and how career models are evolving. Our discussion revealed trends that are essential for anyone navigating today's and future job markets. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Master LinkedIn Activity: Posts, Comments & Career Growth | 01 Sep 2025 | 00:46:39 | |
Episode 306 - This episode explores how LinkedIn activity can protect you from layoffs, attract opportunities, and build long-term credibility. I believe that LinkedIn activity is the new career currency. In fact, I am certain of that, and I have clients’ results to prove it. To determine if professionals were already aware of this fact, I ran a poll on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, asking where people felt most stuck in building their presence on the platform. The answers surprised me, though perhaps they shouldn’t have. It wasn’t the profile. It wasn’t resume-style updates. The real struggle was posting and activity. Knowing what to say, how to say it, and how to balance the risk of being visible with the fear of misstepping in front of employers and peers seems to be the biggest barrier for professionals when it comes to fully embracing LinkedIn. This result mirrors what I hear daily from clients and listeners of my podcast. Corporate professionals, including senior executives with decades of experience, remain uneasy about engaging on LinkedIn. And yet, engagement, rather than a polished profile, is increasingly what recruiters, boards, and decision-makers evaluate when considering candidates. And it makes sense. In today’s hybrid world of work and a job market filled with AI-generated content, the difference between those who can express themselves and communicate their expertise with confidence, knowledge, and empathy gives them an incredible advantage. They stand out in a sea of sameness. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| How to Secure a Board Role | 25 Aug 2025 | 00:47:56 | |
Episode 305 - Many professionals dream of a board career, but few know how to get there. In this episode, I unpack the three biggest blockers and share a roadmap to help you secure your first board role. A large number of experienced professionals are eyeing board appointments as the next chapter in their careers. In a recent LinkedIn poll I conducted, nearly eight in ten respondents said they wanted a board role within the next five years. The allure is understandable. Board seats promise influence, intellectual challenge, and the prestige of shaping an organization’s future without the grind of day-to-day operations. But there’s a catch. While the appetite for board roles is surging, the path to securing one remains opaque and, for many, deeply frustrating. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| The New Rules of Executive Presence in a Virtual World with Ashleigh Paholek | 18 Aug 2025 | 00:40:47 | |
Episode 304 - In this episode of The Job Hunting Podcast, TV journalist and confidence coach Ashleigh Paholek shares how to project authority and trust in interviews, presentations, and boardrooms. From mastering silence to improving your virtual presence, these strategies will help you influence with confidence — even when you don’t feel it. I coach experienced professionals who are navigating a turbulent job market. When we start working together, some things are easier and faster to update: resumes get polished, LinkedIn profiles refreshed, and applications start converting to interviews. Yet they remain puzzled by a frustrating reality: despite their decades of experience, they are struggling to get traction with their interviews, network, and even with their employers once they start working. It’s tempting to point to market forces. Hiring freezes, cautious budgets, and a glut of qualified applicants are real obstacles. But a quieter, more personal factor often separates the candidates who advance from those who do not: executive presence. And this is when working with a coach for a few months can help. https://www.renatabernarde.com/ In a recent conversation with Ashleigh Paholek, an experienced television journalist and communications expert, I was reminded how little this skill is discussed and how much it matters. Our talk reinforced something I’ve seen in my coaching practice: career opportunities often hinge less on what you say than on how you say it. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Thriving After Setbacks: Lessons from the Front Lines of Executive Search with Kyle Samuels | 11 Aug 2025 | 00:54:17 | |
Episode 303 - Kyle Samuels returns to share his personal health journey, the lessons it taught him about leadership, and the hiring trends shaping today’s job market. We explore recruitment trends, networking strategies, and how to handle career gaps with confidence. The last time I spoke with executive recruiter Kyle Samuels, we were deep in conversation about executive compensation. This year, the conversation was very different. Kyle returned to my podcast with not only market insights but a deeply personal story. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, undergone major surgery, and endured six months of chemotherapy. On top of that, he continued to lead his firm, Creative Talent Endeavors, during one of the toughest job markets in recent memory. His experience illuminates three critical themes for corporate professionals today: resilience in the face of disruption, the centrality of relationships, and the rapid changes occurring in recruitment and hiring. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| How to Bounce Back After a Layoff: The 7 Stages of Grief with Steve Jaffe | 04 Aug 2025 | 00:52:55 | |
Hardly a week goes by without news of another high-profile layoff. From tech giants like Meta and Tesla to government agencies and financial institutions, corporate professionals at every level find themselves confronting an unsettling new normal. As a career coach, outplacement provider, and host of The Job Hunting Podcast, I've observed firsthand the toll layoffs are taking both financially and emotionally. In this episode’s conversation with Steve Jaffe, author of "The Layoff Journey: From Dismissal to Discovery," we unpacked the psychological impacts of job loss and how professionals can emerge stronger. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Corporate Career Growth Tips: Mastering Hidden Rules with Kendall Berg | 28 Jul 2025 | 00:59:11 | |
If there’s one lesson from the corporate world that deserves a headline, it’s this: the workplace is not a meritocracy. Or at least, not in the way most professionals imagine. Hard work is necessary, but it’s not the defining factor in who gets promoted, who receives stretch opportunities, or who survives the next round of cost-cutting. In this episode, I spoke with Kendall Berg, former senior executive turned career coach and author of Secrets of the Career Game. We explored how professionals, especially those at mid to senior levels, are stalling not because of performance but because of invisibility. They’re delivering outcomes, checking boxes, staying loyal, but failing to cultivate the relationships and influence that truly drive advancement. Berg’s following on social media channels amounts to over 500,000, indicating that her message about what actually gets you promoted resonates with many people. Berg’s career turning point came when a senior leader told her: “Everyone wants you on their team because you're so efficient, and nobody likes working with you.” That moment, which she recounts without bitterness, shattered the myth that excellent work alone was enough to earn the next title. It was, as she puts it, the moment she realized she’d been playing a game she didn’t know existed. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Navigating Career Pivots, AI Disruption, and Mid-Career Confidence: Lessons from Priya Bhola Rathod | 21 Jul 2025 | 00:53:41 | |
The labor market feels eerily calm on the surface. Unemployment still hovers near 4 percent in both the US and Australia, and it has not yet reached 5% in the UK. Yet, experienced professionals looking for work in corporate, startups, government and nonprofits tell a very different story. Over the past quarter my coaching inbox has filled with job seekers, from vice presidents to team managers forced to write résumés for the first time in over a decade, and directors competing with their former interns for hybrid roles that pay 20 percent less. After interviewing Priya Bhola Rathod, Indeed’s career-trends expert, for my podcast last week, I’m convinced the squeeze is structural, not cyclical. Below are the three forces reshaping white-collar work, and the countermeasures every corporate professional should deploy now. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| First 90-Day Leadership Moves Matter: Proven Strategies to Listen, Act Symbolically, and Avoid Hasty Personnel Decisions in New Roles | 14 Jul 2025 | 00:47:24 | |
I sat down with Neill Marshall and Kurt Mosley of HealthSearch Partners to talk about the first 90 days of an executive appointment. While their expertise is focused on senior roles in healthcare, the lessons are universal: in 2025, how a leader shows up on day one can either extend a career or stall it. What struck me is how much has changed in the hiring market and how much has stayed the same. For experienced professionals navigating career transitions, the insights from this conversation should serve as both a warning and an inspiration. They confirmed what many of my clients are feeling: that the margin for error is thin, expectations are high, and hiring trends are evolving fast. Job seekers need to keep up. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| You're Not a Machine | 07 Jul 2025 | 00:23:49 | |
Episode 298 - Burnout May Be Blocking Your Career Growth If you’ve spent the last few months feeling more exhausted than usual, struggling to focus, or wondering why your motivation has gone missing despite a looming job application or promotion deadline, you’re not alone. In my coaching work with experienced professionals, these themes are everywhere. And they’re not the result of laziness, lack of ambition, or poor time management. They are the hallmarks of burnout, which is now a routine part of corporate life. Burnout isn’t new. But its spread among high-performing professionals is growing quieter, deeper, and more normalized than ever. The World Health Organization gave it official status as an “occupational phenomenon” in 2019, describing it as the result of chronic workplace stress left unmanaged. Yet the language around burnout still lags behind the reality: many professionals don’t realise they’re burning out until their relationships suffer, their health declines, or their job search stalls despite their best efforts. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
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Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| When Job Interviews Go Wrong | 30 Jun 2025 | 00:40:52 | |
Episode 297 - When Interviews Go Bad: How to Bounce Back Stronger When Interviews Go Bad: How to Bounce Back Stronger It’s a truth most career professionals don’t like to admit: we’ve all had a bad interview. Not just “I didn’t get the job” bad, but “something went wrong and I’m not even sure why” bad. As a career strategist and coach to senior corporate professionals, I often see this scenario unfolding more frequently than you might expect, even among high performers with stellar resumes and extensive experience. Why? Because the modern job interview has become a flawed litmus test. It’s over-indexed on performance under pressure, vulnerable to unconscious bias, often led by untrained interviewers, and increasingly divorced from a candidate’s real potential. In today’s job market, still uncertain, hyper-competitive, and fatigued by hiring delays, poor interviews don’t always reflect poor candidates. Instead, they reflect structural issues in how we hire. Let’s unpack the patterns I see every week from clients across industries, and what they reveal about the current professional climate. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| Unemployed, Not Broken | 23 Jun 2025 | 00:29:28 | |
Episode 296 - No One Understands Me: What to Do When You're the Only Person You Know Who's Unemployed It’s an increasingly familiar story: a highly skilled professional finds themselves unemployed, not for lack of talent or dedication, but because of market forces, corporate restructuring, or a volatile economy. What surprises them most is not the absence of work, but the sudden absence of understanding from their network. I´ve been there. Have you? As a career strategist working closely with corporate professionals, many in mid to late stages of their careers, I see this pattern every day. Talented executives come to me not just with resumes and job applications, but with a quieter crisis: the emotional toll of feeling forgotten or judged during what can be a profoundly disorienting life transition. These are not entry-level candidates or those just learning to navigate the workforce. They are former department heads, regional leaders, VPs, senior managers, and trusted experts in their field. Yet the moment they exit a company, many find their identity questioned, even by themselves. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode: About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||
| To AI or Not to AI? | 16 Jun 2025 | 00:41:27 | |
Episode 295 - How to Stay Focused on Your Career Goals, Even When the Future Feels Uncertain The job market in 2025 feels like it's operating in a dense fog. For many professionals, particularly those in mid-to-senior corporate roles, navigating a career today is less like following a GPS and more like learning to read a compass in the dark. This uncertainty is not just emotional, it’s systemic. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve seen a wave of redundancies ripple across different sectors. My own coaching clients, many of whom are experienced professionals, were affected. The catalyst? A perfect storm of geopolitical issues, reduced funding, and yes, artificial intelligence. Read the full Blog on the Website Book a Free Introductory Consultation with Renata 31 Days of Action for Job Seekers Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses
Timestamps to guide your listening:
Links mentioned in this episode:
About the host, Renata Bernarde Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress. Follow Renata on Social Media: | |||