How Shata broke out of a senior manager plateau into a Director of IT Applications role

Shata had been stuck at senior manager level for a while, looking for a step up that her company simply did not have to give her. Her background is enterprise applications, SAP specifically.

We landed her a Director of IT Applications role at a large company, and along the way a VP-level interview too. She turned the VP one down. She felt more at home at director level and wanted to grow into the next step at her own pace, without leaping too far in one go.

Turning down the bigger title is the interesting part

A search that hands you an option above what you were aiming for is doing its job even when you say no to it, because you can only decline something that is actually on the table. She says she now feels more confident than she did about taking that next step whenever she decides she wants it.

Why finding contacts is the hard part

Her sharpest observation is about the work that sits underneath all that hiring-manager outreach. It is a good answer to anyone who assumes this is just a matter of spending time on LinkedIn.

“Finding contacts is not easy either. It's not like you go to LinkedIn and getting an email is a different thing. You need to find, for example, whether they're using an mc.com or a bosch.com address.”

Figuring out the email pattern for one company, verifying it, then doing the whole thing again for the next target, that is the unglamorous work that makes direct outreach possible at all. It is also the exact part that falls apart when you are doing it on your own after work.

The search in numbers

• Stuck at senior manager level for years with no internal route up
• Director of IT Applications at a large company, plus a VP-level interview she declined
• Level: Director. Function: IT and Enterprise Systems