Blog
Your reputation travels through their network, not your website.
Your reputation travels through their network, not your website.
BEST MARKET PRACTICE 2025/26
C-level candidates make their decisions based on network information. They call peers, advisors, and former colleagues to assess their flexibility and power dynamics. This creates a reputational image that often carries more weight than your job posting or employer branding. You can influence this by sharpening your governance narrative before publishing it. Use the Power Dynamics app to identify informal influence. Use the Inclusion Lens app to assess whether dissent is safe. Only then should you post the job posting.
Your reputation reaches the candidate before your role does.
Many organizations invest in job postings, work pages, and campaigns. That’s understandable. However, top candidates rarely base their decisions on these channels. They base their decisions on conversations.
And those conversations flow through their network.
- A CFO calls a CFO
- A CHRO calls a CHRO
- A CEO calls a supervisor
- A former colleague calls someone on your second line
- An advisor calls an investor
Within 48 hours, a picture emerges. Sometimes that picture is correct. Sometimes it’s outdated. But it does drive interest.
My Observation
Network information almost always covers the same topics.
- Range of play, how much autonomy is given to the role
- Power dynamics, who has real influence
- Decision-making pace, how quickly the board makes decisions
- Conflict behavior, how they handle tension
- Reputation for fairness, who receives support, who doesn’t
That’s why governance tools work better than marketing assets in this phase.
- Our Power Dynamics app helps you identify the informal reality.
- Our Inclusion Lens app helps you prove that contradiction is safe.
If you don’t do this, a mismatch will arise. You present a role with a high impact. The market hears through the network that the role primarily has to navigate between interests. Then interest wanes.
Advice
Do you want to better manage your network reputation? Do this before the vacancy goes live.
- Create a one-page governance briefing. Direction, mandate, decision-making pace, conflict mechanism, success criteria.
- Conduct a Power Dynamics scan.
Identify 10 stakeholders. Identify influence and blocking risk. - Conduct an Inclusion Lens scan.
Test 2 recent decisions for contradiction and decision quality. - Schedule 5 confidential market intelligence meetings.
Not to sell. But to hear what people are really saying. - Train your board on a single, consistent narrative.
So that the network isn’t fed by noise.
Resistance
- We can’t verify network narratives.
Correct. You can influence them through clarity, consistency, and mature governance. - We don’t want to be too open.
You don’t have to be open about details. You must be clear about frameworks and decision-making.
Top candidates don’t decide based on your words. They decide based on their network’s perception of your playing field. You increase your attractiveness by making that playing field explicit before publication.
Note:
Would you like a short governance sparring session before going live? Send me your role type and context in eight sentences. I’ll reflect how the network is likely to interpret this. Afterward, you can book a readiness assessment so you can go to market prepared.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How quickly does the network form a picture?
Often within 24 to 72 hours, because C-level profiles are setting multiple lines in parallel. - What is the biggest mismatch you see?
A role with a lot of responsibility, but little explicit mandate and many informal vetoes. - How do I make power dynamics a topic of discussion without internal friction?
By making it factual, with a scan and clear frameworks, without names and without emotion.