A recruiter at an HR consultancy firm I’d worked with for several years — someone who knew my track record well — recently posted a job that checked every box. An international company setting up its first US operation. Build-out, team hiring, vendor relationships, the works. The kind of role where you’re not managing a function, you’re building a company from the ground up. I jumped at the opportunity and reached out to the recruiter to put my name in the hat.
A few days later, I was in an in-person interview with the person leading the US expansion — I’ll call him John. And it was instant. Values aligned. The culture conversation flowed. I walked out of that room elated. The kind of interview where you’re already picturing yourself in the job.
A few days after that, a second interview — this time with a VP from headquarters overseas, over Teams. I’ll call her Susan. That’s where the first cracks showed.
I felt evaluated against a corporate polish my smaller-company background didn’t have. Susan was sharp, reserved, relentlessly professional — and she came at me with scenario after scenario. I didn’t perform my best. Something had shifted in the room, and John, sitting right there, couldn’t quite smooth it over.
And here’s the part that mattered more than the awkward interview: this role — the one person expected to run the entire US side, make fast calls, operate without hand-holding — came with no real authority. No officer title. No financial sign-off. Full responsibility, none of the trust that should come with it.
I asked the recruiter for feedback after that round. There wasn’t any. This particular company simply wasn’t into giving feedback, despite the recruiter’s urging.
Then came the ask: three timed psychometric tests, plus two personality assessments. Two hours of my time, with zero feedback so far and no clarity on why. I said no. I’d already done a personality assessment through this same recruiting relationship, plus I felt that some of the testing simply crossed a privacy line. Ten days later, I grudgingly agreed after being told I was still very much a top candidate.
One final round followed — John and Susan, though she didn’t show. I used the room to ask the hard questions directly: about the silence, about the one-sided feel of the whole process, about the disconnect between “full responsibility” and “no authority.” I told John plainly — if I can’t get a straight answer as a candidate, what happens once I’m an employee? His answers were flat. Surface-level. A let-down from someone I’d genuinely connected with three weeks earlier.
I spent the next few days sitting with it. And what stuck wasn’t the tough interview — I can handle a tough interview. It was how I’d been treated. Made to feel like a line item, not a person.
So I called my awesome recruiter who had gone out of her way to keep me informed, thanked her for all her efforts, and withdrew.
Where Companies Get It Wrong
A lot of companies still operate on the assumption that candidates need the job more than the company needs the candidate — so the process doesn’t have to work hard on its end. That assumption might hold for some people, some of the time. It’s still the wrong way to run a hiring process.
Hiring is a two-way street. Especially for leadership roles.
It was never just about whether I was good enough for them. It’s also about whether they were good enough for me.
Now — the flip side, because it’s not all bad out there.
Where Companies Get It Right
I recently applied for another startup leadership role. Their job posting got an A+ from me: good information about the company (history, values, benefits), the role, and requirements that were 100% reasonable and not overstated. I uploaded my resume and cover letter to their website on a weekend. Heard back from their own talent lead within a day. A phone screen two days later — the person was upfront that he was doing first-round filtering, told me exactly what came next, and asked if I’d talk to the site lead. Two days after that, I did.
Both calls were easy. Personable, sharp questions, real two-way conversation, full transparency on where things stood internally. They also outlined expectations for the role’s first year, along with a plan for how to set me up to succeed. But most importantly, what they gave me through the entire process was mutual respect. They asked about my goals, acknowledged my skillset, and showed real excitement about me as a potential match. I was genuinely impressed. In the end, the commute would’ve worn me down long-term, and I said so honestly. We left it there, both of us clear-eyed. All in all, this process took one week.
For me, there was a palpable difference between these two experiences.
So what was it? It wasn’t paperwork, and in my case it wasn’t even the job posting — the bad process didn’t come with one at all, it came through a recruiter I already trusted. It came down to something simpler.
Respect coupled with being seen. That was the real gap between the two experiences. One made me feel like a number — someone they didn’t fully trust but still expected to hand over everything to: my time, my track record, my patience, my full trust, round after round — with nothing given back in return. The other made me feel like a person they were genuinely curious about. What also stood out was that they mentioned that they loved being interviewed as a potential employer, and that it felt refreshing to have a candidate who was truly looking for the right match — someone who was excited to come to work for them every day, not someone who just needed the money.
That mindset matters in any hire. But when you’re hiring someone to lead, it should carry even more weight.
Along with being seen comes the relationship part. As Americans, we run most everything on relationships. I don’t understand why that gets so lost in the hiring process. Especially with John, in my first example — that initial connection got thrown out the moment Susan entered the picture.
John failed to have my back as my potential boss.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand all about company allegiance over an unproven candidate, but John – through his inaction and non-communication – clearly showed that he did not value or respect me. Not the best base for a working relationship.
What Companies Can Do Better
Here are some tips for companies looking to hire top talent in upper management roles. It should start with:
- Be clear internally about what the job actually entails. Messaging should be consistent across every interview and every interviewer. When it isn’t — when the scope shifts depending on who’s in the room — that’s a red flag for most candidates looking for leadership roles. It tells them the company hasn’t done its own thinking yet.
- Be honest about authority for leadership roles. What decisions can this person make on their own? What do they need sign-off for? Where does responsibility start and stop? Most companies genuinely haven’t thought this through at all — it’s not usually deliberate. But how a company handles authority is typically representative of trust, and candidates read the gap between “full responsibility” and “no real authority” as exactly that: a trust problem, before the job has even started.
- Consider whether the position actually warrants testing. Psychometric and personality assessments aren’t automatically wrong — but plenty of candidates feel these cross a line, or worry the results get used against them quietly, with no way to even know it happened.
Once your company is clear on the role and its corresponding authority, it’s time to put your best foot forward with:
- The job posting. Most companies rush through this step. They want the job posted but fail to realize that great leaders are looking to learn what the company can offer that makes it an attractive employer. A wall of requirements with nothing about the company is a red flag before a single conversation happens.
- Response time. A company should know fairly fast if there’s a fit. With all the automated processes available, there’s no reason candidates should wait weeks or months for a reply. If your HR department is too busy to screen or respond, there are deeper issues to tackle.
- The interview process itself. It shows up in everything — how communications flow, the tone, the visuals, how you’re greeted for an in-person interview, who’s in the room, how many rounds, whether anyone tells you how the process actually works or leaves you guessing between steps.
- Give feedback, or say plainly why you can’t. “We’re not able to share details right now” is a real answer. A company telling a candidate that no one ever gets feedback isn’t a policy — it’s a process nobody owns. And if the real reason is caution — worry about liability, about saying the wrong thing — that’s worth sitting with too. Because if a company can’t risk being honest with a candidate it’s evaluating, that says something about how it communicates when more is on the line than a rejection.
- And timing runs through all of it. How fast you move between rounds. How fast feedback comes back, if it comes at all. How fast an offer, once made, actually gets to the table with real numbers attached. Every gap in timing reads as a signal, whether the company means it to or not. Silence isn’t discretion. It’s an answer, just not the one anyone says out loud.
None of this is complicated. It just requires someone deciding that how you hire is worth being as intentional about as who you hire.
Hire the Ones Who Push Back
One more thing worth saying plainly: if you want a great leader, don’t be afraid of a candidate who pushes back.
The strongest leadership candidates ask the tough questions.
They bring up the uncomfortable stuff — the vague scope, the missing feedback, the authority that doesn’t match the responsibility — because that instinct is exactly what you’re hiring for. Someone willing to offer a different viewpoint, or challenge an idea instead of just nodding along, is showing you exactly how they’ll operate once they’re in the role. And how a company responds to that is just as telling. Businesses don’t grow on compliance alone — they grow on people willing to bring strategies and perspectives that fall outside the norm.
I know I’m fortunate to be able to walk away from a potential “yes.”
I’m not chasing perfect — I actually like a challenge, that’s the whole point of building something from the ground up. What gets me is the assumption, still alive in a lot of hiring rooms, that companies hold all the leverage and owe nothing back. That roles get stretched past what they pay for. That candidates — and eventually employees — don’t matter unless they give it their all while the company does not reciprocate.
Hiring is the first real conversation a company has with someone who might build its future. How that conversation goes tells you almost everything about what comes after.