One landed in a month. One searched for a year.
READ TIME: 4 MINUTES
2 of my clients signed offers this summer.
The first landed in about a month. He interviewed with just under 10 companies, made 3 final rounds, and negotiated $45K in guaranteed commission plus more equity.
The second had been searching for nearly a year. 25 companies. Fourth and fifth rounds. 2 roles she accepted that fell apart. Her savings, gone.
If I stopped there, you'd assume the first one was the better seller.
The second one is a President's Club AE.
Here's the thing: the difference wasn't talent. It was how long each of them searched alone.
John: asked for help in week 1
John (not his real name) got laid off and reached out to me within about a week.
He'd already spent a couple of days blindly applying. It went nowhere, so he pivoted. He worked his network hard and looked for what he called "side doors," anyone who could put a name on his application.
He knew his target from the start: B2B SaaS sales, back in payments where he'd spent almost a decade, at a startup.
Getting interviews wasn't his problem. Standing out in them was.
"You only have 15 to 30 minutes per interview," he told me. "How can you actually set yourself apart from the hundreds of other people they might be interviewing?"
So that's where we spent our time. We rebuilt his stories with R-STAR™ and tracked his whole search in one place so nothing slipped.
When a company he was excited about told him "we want to move you forward," then quietly passed through the recruiter, he gave it 5 or 10 minutes.
Then he went back to building pipeline.
Start to finish: about a month.
Ellen: asked for help in month 10
Ellen (not her real name) is a President's Club SaaS AE in her 60s.
In her words, the search was "hell."
Like John, she had no trouble landing interviews. She kept making it deep into processes. She'd hear she was a great culture fit. Then, near the end, suddenly she wasn't.
"We all know what that meant," she said.
She took 2 roles along the way. Both were disasters. Every no stacked on the last one, and by month 10 she wasn't questioning the market anymore. She was questioning herself.
"I didn't know what was going on in role plays," she told me. "I thought they were good."
She'd been practicing with Claude. Its feedback, in her words, was "just going, yay, rah, to make me feel better."
Nobody was giving her an honest read on what was working. Or what wasn't.
She almost didn't hire a coach. The reason was simple: "My bank account."
What pushed her over the line: "The dumbest thing you could do is the same thing over and over again and expect a different result."
We did 3 sessions of interview prep. She had 2 companies with 2 different role plays coming up, and we ran both. I gave her feedback she could act on that day.
She signed an AE offer in health tech, a vertical she knows well.
When I asked about the biggest impact, she didn't mention the role plays.
"I realized I know what I'm doing, despite all of the no's."
What this means for your search
John and Ellen didn't have different skill sets. They had different support.
Think about how you'd work a strategic deal. You'd never go 6 months without a deal review. You'd pull in your manager, your SE, a sales rep on your team. You'd pressure test the pitch before the big meeting.
Most people run their job search with none of that.
Here's what to take from both of them:
Get an outside read early. A coach, a former manager, a peer who hires. Pick someone who'll tell you the truth, not a cheerleader and not a chatbot that only says what you want to hear. John got his read in week 1. Ellen got hers in month 10. Her advice to anyone recently laid off: "Don't wait. Get your act together first, have a plan, and then hire somebody."
Read every no as data, not a verdict. John gave a rejection 10 minutes. Ellen carried hers for months. Those no's never meant she couldn't sell. They meant nobody was helping her read them.
Always keep backups in your pipeline. A "we want to move you forward" isn't an offer. When a company he was excited about passed, John gave it 5 or 10 minutes and went back to building pipeline. You'd never bet your quota on 1 deal. Don't bet your search on 1 company.
Run the search from 1 source of truth. John's biggest takeaway wasn't a script. It was having every conversation, next step, and follow-up in one place, so his search ran like a pipeline instead of a pile.
The job search is like a sales process.
And nobody closes their biggest deal alone.
Hit reply and tell me: how long have you been running your search without an outside read? I read every response.
To clarity and confidence in your career path,
Amanda
See you next Sunday.
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