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Executive Career Strategy: Move into Senior Leadership
2,811 students
Executive Career Strategy: Move into Senior Leadership
executive career strategy | executive search | senior leadership | job search | interview preparation | linkedin profile
Last updated 9/2026
English
English [Auto],
What you'll learn
- Understand how senior roles are actually filled, from the search side rather than the job board
- Get onto a long list and survive the cut to a short list
- Write a positioning statement for yourself and the messages that support it
- Read the scorecard you will be assessed against before you walk into the room
- Build a CV and a LinkedIn profile that a search consultant can act on
- Negotiate an offer, and handle the counter-offer your current employer will make
- Audit your competencies against the level above you and build a development plan
- Work through impostor syndrome, burnout and your own financial runway during a search
- Learn alongside Mike's 1.6 million students from 185 countries
- Get the author's experience from Preply, Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank
Explore related topics
Course content
17 sections • 44 lectures • 19h 50m total length
Requirements
- Several years of professional experience and an interest in moving up rather than across
- No recruiting background required. Executive search is explained from the beginning
- A LinkedIn profile, even a neglected one, to work on during the course
- English at intermediate level or above, since all lessons are in English
- Willingness to look at how you are currently described by other people
Description
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
Senior roles are rarely filled by someone who applied. They are filled by someone a search consultant already had on a list, months before the role existed.
Why applying stops working above a certain level
I have been on both sides of this. I have run searches where the shortlist was built from a target list of forty names and not one of them came from an application, and I have watched capable directors send fifty applications into a void and conclude that the market was bad. The market was fine. They were invisible to the process that actually fills those roles, and nobody had ever explained that process to them.
What this course actually covers
Six blocks. First, how executive search works from the inside: the brief, the market scan, the target list, the long list, the cut to a shortlist, the approach, the offer and the counter-offer you will receive from your current employer. Second, positioning: how you are currently described, what you want to be described as, and the messages that close the gap. Third, the competencies expected one level above you, so you know what you are being measured against. Fourth, the assessor's view of an interview — the scorecard, the competency matrix, how bias is controlled and how the final comparison is made. Fifth, the mechanics: CV, recruiter screen, salary conversation, LinkedIn. Sixth, ten lessons of personal work — talents, impostor syndrome, a competency audit, burnout, financial runway, and what keeps someone in the top league.
A note on two of the blocks
The executive search block and the interviewing block were filmed for people who hire, not for people being hired. That is deliberate. If you want a senior role, the most useful thing you can see is the document you will be scored on and the list you need to appear on. The personal-development block was filmed as a coaching method for working with clients; here you are the client. I would rather tell you that than dress it up.
Who is teaching this
I am Mike. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries. I have run senior searches and I have sat on the other side of them.
What is included
Lifetime access to all 42 lessons
Active instructor support in the Q&A section
A Udemy Certificate of Completion
Working templates: job order, scorecard, target list, long list, short list, offer
Practical tools for your CV, LinkedIn profile, competency audit and development plan
Where to start
Open LinkedIn and read your own headline as a search consultant would, with a specific role in mind. If it does not tell them what you are for, that is the first thing this course fixes. Enrol now and start the first lesson today.
Who this course is for:
- Senior specialists who want a leadership role and keep being passed over
- Managers aiming for a director or C-level position within a few years
- Directors who have never been approached by a search consultant and wonder why
- Professionals who apply to senior roles online and hear nothing back
- People planning a deliberate move rather than reacting to a layoff
- Leaders who negotiate well for their company and badly for themselves
- Anyone who suspects their career has been happening to them rather than being built