What Hiring Managers Really Look For (But Won’t Tell You)

In this job market, we get CEOs and COOs applying for our director-level roles at scale.

👉 This makes the selection process harder than ever, especially since CVs are read DIFFERENTLY than what applicants BELIEVE is listed in.

All while entire roles are being eliminated at large – sitting in a middle management level (a proxy for too many units no longer needed), or brand management, or niche social media roles, and many others that are now consolidated and executed effectively by fewer people (or a single person wearing several hats thanks to AI and SaaS).

It also turns selection into a wild guessing game.

What hiring managers look into that’s unrelated to actual skills? ⤵️

– Tenure rate
– Red flag roles (short tenure, blacklisted companies)
– Special companies in their whitelist (like top competitors)
– Special access to teams/products/roles with insider knowledge

What skills are critical, yet a CV can’t demonstrate at all? ⤵️

– Speed of execution (what takes 30min for one takes a day for another)
– Autonomy (how many back and forth interactions to get the job done)
– Quality (how much back and forth/QA/editing to get this finalized)
– Adaptiveness (is he/she going to be stuck in the same place in a year)

And various other factors – punctuality (coming on time), availability (on call, or not being sick every week), honesty (protecting privacy), culture fit (not being a toxic asshole).

☄️Your intermediate “I’ll take a two-year remote gap in a corporation” may still play a role 5 years from now.

☄️The choice to prioritize remote for the past 5 years is rarely a positive sign in today’s economy.

☄️Working in the same industry for 5+ years while not understanding how digital works, or any modern tooling, apps, systems, GTM motions, isn’t a positive outlook.

And sadly, the code of conduct means that millions of applicants won’t get this direct feedback – because it feels rude, alienating, personal, inadequate, preposterous, presumptuous, and a handful of negative qualifiers.

1. If you’re in hiring mode right now, a tough role in the past 2-3 years would have been a strong winning signal.

2. If not, your CV should limit most outliers as best as possible.

3. While in application mode, work on your portfolio ASAP. No excuse to NOT use Lovable or Bolt or Replit or v0 as a marketer, product manager, or any other non-tech desk job. None. Finance too – dashboards and pivot charts.

Personal branding has often been neglected by applicants. But if you’ve been developing a professional blog, or presented at meetups or conferences, that matters.

Any “extracurricular activities” help – showcasing passion for work outside of a 9-to-5.

There are million ways to shine professionally even in tough markets. Sadly, there are more that showcase a passive attitude and little authonomy and inventiveness during times of transformation.