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Welcome to The Matt Feret Show

Matt Feret:
Welcome to The Matt Feret Show, practical conversations to help you thrive in midlife, retirement, and beyond.

I’m Matt Feret, author of books and courses on Medicare and Social Security, and a former healthcare executive with decades of insider experience. I use that experience to help people make clearer, smarter decisions about health, wealth, lifestyle, and caregiving.

Each week, I sit down with experts, insiders, and fascinating people to explore what it really takes to thrive—finding purpose, building stronger relationships, and creating a sense of meaning and community in the second half of life.

Together, we’ll light the path toward your wealth, wisdom, and wellness. Welcome to the conversation.

Today’s Topic: Hiring, Careers, and the Hidden Job Market

Matt Feret:
Hey everybody. Today, we’re diving into something that impacts everyone: finding the right job, especially later in your career, and understanding how hiring really works behind the scenes, because it has changed a lot over the last couple of years.

My guest today is Rick Denius, founder and CEO of HR Search Company, one of the fastest-growing HR executive search firms in the country. He spent over 25 years in HR leadership, including 18 years at CNN in Atlanta, and now helps companies across the U.S. find senior HR talent.

Rick is an expert on the hidden job market, hiring bias, ageism, and how to actually get your resume in front of a real decision-maker when there are AI bots and hiring platforms everywhere.

We’re going to talk about why qualified candidates get ghosted, what really happens after you click “apply,” and how to hack the job search process—especially if you’re over 40.

Rick, with that, welcome to the show.

Rick Denius:
Thanks, Matt.

Rick’s Background in HR and Executive Search

Matt Feret:
Tell everybody what you do, how long you’ve been doing it, and how you help people.

Rick Denius:
Thank you for the opportunity. I launched HR Search Company in 2017 after 18 years in corporate human resources at a large company.

What we do is help companies find and hire great HR people. We’re both a contingent and retained search firm on the permanent side, and we also provide temporary staffing solutions when someone is going on leave or something similar.

I get a peek behind the curtain at hundreds of companies and engage with thousands of candidates. We do a lot of work confidentially in what’s known as the hidden job market, where companies choose not to publicly post a role on their website for various reasons.

I spend all my time facing the job market, so I’ve got battle-tested expertise and insights that I think will be helpful for your audience. And on the ageism side, I’m over 40. Up until I turned 40, I wasn’t part of any protected class. There are things people can do strategically to get in front of decision-makers and ultimately get hired.

Matt Feret:
That’s great. Thanks for the background.

CNN Stories and Life Behind the Scenes

Matt Feret:
I’ve got a lot of questions for you, but the first one is probably something you’ve been asked 5,000 times. Did you hire anybody at CNN that we would know?

Rick Denius:
Great question. No. There were really two worlds—the on-camera talent and the behind-the-scenes folks. I primarily dealt with people behind the scenes. I don’t think there are any recognizable names, but I’ve got a lot of stories.

Matt Feret:
Can you tell me a PG or maybe PG-13 version?

Rick Denius:
Sure. One part of my job at Turner Broadcasting was running recruiting efforts. We’d go to journalism conferences for job fairs and networking. Media companies would bring on-air talent and set up resume tape stations where young reporters could get feedback.

A couple of days before one conference, I called one of the correspondents who was attending. She answered the phone whispering. I said, “Hey, this is Rick. I just need to know what time you’re getting in on Thursday.” She said, “Rick, I’m in the Rose Garden.”

She had answered the phone during a presidential press conference because she saw the call coming from the main CNN number. That was one I never lived down with her.

Matt Feret:
That’s awesome. That’s funny.

Shifting Back to Hiring and Job Search Frustrations

Matt Feret:
Let’s get back into hiring and what you do for people and organizations. You’ve seen this from every side—big corporate, executive search, and candidate-facing. From your perspective, what frustrates you most about how job searches work today?

Rick Denius:
What gets me is that people on both sides sometimes lose sight of what’s really happening. Let me ask you this: philosophically, why do companies post jobs?

Matt Feret:
To attract the right talent into their organization.

Rick Denius:
That’s part of it, but it’s really because they have a unique set of problems that can only be solved by hiring someone new.

Before a job is posted, someone leaves or a gap appears. The company looks internally first—can they promote someone or redistribute the work? The last thing they want to do is post a job, because it’s expensive, time-consuming, and risky.

Payroll is the number-one expense for any company. Hiring takes managers away from their day jobs, and posting a job creates risk around discrimination and compliance.

So when a job is posted, it’s because they’ve exhausted other options. The goal becomes finding the person best suited to solve that specific set of problems.

For job seekers, it comes down to this: how do you position yourself as the person most capable of solving those problems? Too many people get caught up in resume noise. They spend thousands on resumes and send the same one everywhere, but most senior roles aren’t even publicly posted. They’re filled through search firms, networking, or referrals.

The person who gets hired is the one who separates themselves as the best option to solve the company’s problems. Companies don’t hire people just to hire people. You have to put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes and alleviate their pain.

Resume Strategy, LinkedIn, and Ageism

Matt Feret:
One thing you said that stood out is that posting a job is often a last resort. Should that send warning signs to candidates about company culture?

Rick Denius:
Not necessarily. There’s a spectrum of sophistication. Large companies tend to have well-developed HR systems and succession planning. Smaller or mid-sized companies, including private equity-backed firms, often don’t invest as much in readiness and pipelines.

It’s not always a bad mark. Strategic workforce planning is important, but fewer people often wear more hats in smaller organizations.

Matt Feret:
You mentioned resumes earlier. How should people think about resumes and networking today, especially people in their 40s and 50s who haven’t job searched in years?

Rick Denius:
Search firms are B2B. Companies hire us to find people. Until we have marching orders, it’s more of a “we’ll find you” situation.

The key is visibility. LinkedIn is huge. Senior people often underuse it. There’s no character limit, so your LinkedIn profile should be detailed.

For resumes, I follow what I call the “2005 rule.” Don’t include jobs before 2005 unless they were VP-level or above. Just list earlier roles briefly. Don’t include graduation years. Avoid outdated technology references. Those are big turn-offs.

A good resume has the right level of detail—enough for me to quickly understand who you are, what level you’re at, and whether you’re close to the center of the target for what I’m hiring.

Nobody looks at a resume in a vacuum. They’re comparing multiple resumes to find the best fit for a specific need.

Matt Feret:
Why not include graduation years? Because it shows your age?

Rick Denius:
Exactly. Ageism is real. It’s often subconscious, but it’s there.

 

Activating Your Network and the Power of Advocates

Rick Denius:
That’s some good advice there, but activating your army of advocates is the real key.

When people are on LinkedIn, a lot of the time they spend all their energy scrolling job postings, seeing an opening, and applying to the job. That’s one approach, but there’s another way to use LinkedIn that I strongly recommend.

If you’re looking for a specific role, go search for people who are currently doing that job at companies similar in size or in the same industry. If you see a job posting, look at the backgrounds of the people already in those roles. How did they progress? Do you line up? Do you have a similar story to tell?

Then reach out to those people. Say, “I’m in a similar position to where you were, and I’d love to move into a role like yours. Is there someone in your company you’d suggest I connect with?” The worst thing that can happen is they say no.

LinkedIn has robust messaging and search features. What it really comes back to is what I said earlier: you have to make yourself the person who’s uniquely suited to solve the set of problems that company has.

You can apply online, and there is value in that. For example, I posted a VP of HR role back in September. In two days, I had 2,600 applications. I shut it down, sent a mass email saying the response was overwhelming, and told everyone I’d do my best to work through it.

To this day, when I’ve had another role come up, I’ve gone back to that two-day flash resume dump. So yes, there is value there.

But if your only job search strategy is applying for jobs and sitting back waiting for a callback, it doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to think of different ways to separate yourself.

Online Presence, LinkedIn, and Reputation Management

Matt Feret:
In your example, you mentioned job postings everywhere, especially LinkedIn. And I want to say something in a slightly different way than you did.

When you submit your resume, or when someone is looking at you as a candidate, they will Google you. You will have a LinkedIn profile, and they will look at it. If you have anything else out there—photos of you being a Boy Scout leader or whatever—that’s fine. They’re just going to see all of it.

There’s no HR rule that I’m aware of that says you can’t Google candidates.

Rick Denius:
No, no, not at all.

Matt Feret:
So reputation management matters. You want to get ahead of that because literally everybody does it. Maybe everybody knows that, but I think some people will be surprised.

You’ve said before, and I mentioned it in the intro, that people apply for jobs the wrong way. You just talked about that.

I’ve got friends who say, “Yep, I’m applying for jobs.” I ask, “Do you need recruiter referrals?” and they say, “No, I’m just going on LinkedIn and hitting apply.”

These are director-level and executive director–level people who don’t even know there’s another way.

So what is the right way? You said you got, what, 2,500 resumes in two days?

Rick Denius:
Yeah.

Matt Feret:
You’re never going to look at all of those.

Rick Denius:
No, no. I calculated it would take double-digit hours just to go through them. I do have tools that allow me to search by keywords, and I did follow up with everybody to let them know what was going on.

But what I’m saying is this: a human being is not going to open up 2,500 resumes and read them one by one.

Leveraging Your Network Instead of Competing With Thousands

Matt Feret:
Nobody is going to read 2,500 resumes for five minutes each. It’s just impossible. So what’s the right way to do this?

Rick Denius:
The right way goes back to what I was saying a minute ago. There are ways you can leverage your network to get this done.

Here’s what often happens. Someone comes in and tells their boss they’re leaving. Now the boss is thinking, “Oh no, I’m losing a key player. What am I going to do?” The boss goes to a staff meeting and announces the departure. Somebody speaks up and says, “You’ve got to consider Tommy Rogers for this job. I talked to him two days ago. He’s fantastic. He’s lights out. I worked with him at the last company. He’s looking right now, and it would be worth your while to talk to him.”

Then somebody else chimes in and says, “Yeah, you’ve also got to talk to Lacey Summers.”

To get yourself into that situation, you have to be connecting with people you’ve worked with in the past who are aware of what you’ve done.

What I recommend is this. If you haven’t done this exercise, tomorrow spend 15 minutes reaching out to people you used to work with who know who you are and what you’re capable of. Ask them, “What’s one thing I’m really good at?” or “What types of problems am I known for solving?” or “What am I a credible voice on?”

People will tell you. They’ll say, “I really appreciated this about you,” or “You were great at this,” or “You had an ability to do that quickly.”

That feedback can help shape your pitch. A lot of times, people get blinded by their own estimation of their value. When you get outside perspective, you start hearing themes that you can weave into your narrative when you’re talking to people.

Reaching the Right People Inside an Organization

Rick Denius:
When you’re reaching out, there are really two types of people to contact.

Let’s say there’s a job posting. For example, imagine the CEO of a bacon and sausage factory in Ohio is hiring a CFO. That’s a big job. You can read the tea leaves pretty quickly and say, “The hiring manager for the CFO is the CEO.” So now you know who you need to influence. That person is going to make the hiring decision and potentially be your future boss.

You could apply and wait for him to get your resume, or you could connect with him and send a quick direct message. The worst thing he can do is ignore it or say no.

I get contacted all the time by unsolicited messages saying, “Hey, I want a job. I need a job.” I can’t really do much with that. But occasionally, when the timing is right, I’ll click on a profile and think, “This person is worth talking to,” or “I should pass this along.”

You can also reverse engineer this process. If you’re even slightly resourceful, you can usually figure out who in the organization is going to be the hiring person and target that person directly.

The other approach is reaching out to people at a similar level inside the organization. CFO might be a bad example, but let’s say it’s a director-level role. Reach out to other directors in the company. Let them know who you are.

If you ever send a message like this, make sure it’s forwardable. You want it to be something they can easily send along to the person making the decision.

When you have 2,500 people applying for a job, referrals speak incredibly loudly. It’s an instant filter.

Matt Feret:
I’ve been in that room you’re describing. Someone says, “Hey, this is happening,” and somebody else says, “Well, I’ve got a guy.”

Rick Denius:
Exactly. It doesn’t even matter if you have five HR sources—four of them might be ignored, but the referral cuts straight through the noise.

 

Experience, Credibility, and the Real Currency of Hiring

Rick Denius:
If the person in the room who’s sourcing candidates is one of those advocates, that person is getting into that top five.

Matt Feret:
Yeah, exactly.

Rick Denius:
That’s how it works. That’s the currency. It’s that army of advocates you’ve built over time.

One of your unfair advantages in this whole process is your experience and your credibility. Like I said before, someone under 40 might have 20,000 LinkedIn connections. But if you’ve been doing this a long time and you’ve been building real currency with your coworkers, that’s far more valuable.

Those people may have moved on to other companies that now have openings. They may have moved into leadership roles and can give you perspective or mentoring-type advice. That’s incredibly powerful.

I know I’m probably making this sound easier than it is. I know people are really struggling. There are longtime unemployed folks who just can’t find something, whether they’re geographically tied to an area with limited opportunity or they’ve worked in an industry where their skill set has moved to the back burner.

There are things you need to be doing, whether it’s leveraging AI—I’ve actually developed a pretty good relationship with ChatGPT recently—or getting advice and asking questions about how other people are thinking about similar problems, or how they’ve overcome similar challenges.

There’s power in the collective, too.

Safety Versus Risk in Midlife Careers

Matt Feret:
I want to follow you down that path.

Let’s say I’m in my 40s or 50s and I’ve been downsized, or I’m just stuck. I’m not getting promoted. My boss is fine, but the tea leaves are there. I’ve got people in their 30s or early 40s coming up behind me who are probably going to get the next opportunity.

I don’t necessarily want to pick up and move. I don’t necessarily want to put my current comfortable role at risk just to take a chance and potentially get let go in a year or two or three.

Walk me through the headspace of someone who finds themselves choosing safety over risk, with age, in a dynamic environment. Can you do that?

Rick Denius:
Yeah, to a degree. I think I understand the question.

In corporate environments, there’s always that underlying anxiety that you could get laid off. You don’t have full control. Especially in right-to-work states, or even when you’re under contract, the reality is there’s still anxiety around how you’re going to pay your bills if you don’t have a job.

That’s a very real thing, and it drives a lot of decision-making. If you’re in your 40s or 50s and you’re feeling stuck, that anxiety can become even more pronounced.

 

Burnout, Plateaus, and Knowing When to Get Off the Ladder

Rick Denius:
Maybe you’re a little burned out, or you’re just at a point where you look ahead on the career ladder in your company and you don’t want to take that next step. I talked to somebody this morning where the next step would be in Oslo, Norway. They’re just not interested. They know they need to get off at some point, and they don’t know exactly where or how.

I would say start sooner rather than later. Treat every day—even if you’ve been at a company for 20 years—like a job interview for your next job, or even for your current job. Unfortunately, you really have to show up.

If you’re not adding value, you can’t blame a company that exists solely to make money for not keeping you around. If you’re not adding to the bottom line, directly or indirectly, then you become vulnerable.

So what you’ve got to do is keep that fire in your belly. Continue to innovate. Continue to ask questions. Continue to push forward.

If you do face something big, like real burnout, a lot of times people will start things on the side or move into a more entrepreneurial stance. That’s something I did. I know that path is not for everyone. It’s leaving corporate America behind and moving into more of an “eat what you kill” ecosystem for a while until you get things up and running. It can be terrifying.

I would say every day, be curious. Bring your best self.

Balancing Safety, Risk, and Relevance in Your 40s and 50s

Rick Denius:
I lost sight of the question a bit there, Matt.

Matt Feret:
No, you’re good. What I was asking was how someone in their 40s or 50s deals with this—especially if they’re not tapped for that management or executive leadership role, or they don’t want it. They don’t necessarily want to take a leap of faith from a company they’ve been with for three, five, or ten years into an unknown situation that puts their retirement and cash flow at risk.

Rick Denius:
I think you answered it yourself in part. Don’t wait. Control the narrative.

You can either have things happen to you, or you can make things happen. Age is a number. Relevance is a choice.

Getting older is not for the faint of heart. There are real challenges, and those challenges get heavier as responsibilities pile up. But don’t sit around waiting. Don’t wait for someone to come hand you your dream job.

It takes as much work to manage your career as it does to do your job. Even if everything seems fine, you still need to be out there. You need to stay in touch with people. You need to be curious about where others have gone—people you may have lost track of but should reconnect with.

Those people might be in a position to hand you a better job. That happens all the time. I’ll see someone I worked with 15 years ago pop up on LinkedIn, and now they’re a big deal. I appreciate their journey and their success, but I also think, “Hey, can I help you?” or “I know someone who would be a great fit for that opening I see on your website.”

Fractional and Contract Work as a Mid-Career Option

Matt Feret:
Have you seen more companies, especially for mid-career and upper-level roles, asking for fractional or contract work? Is that scary, or is it a good thing? Where is this going?

Rick Denius:
I think it’s always been there. The word “fractional” has just become popular over the last two or three years, and people treat it like a shiny new model.

The gig economy was being talked about as far back as 2005. It’s really about taking your skills to the market in a project-based or time-bound way.

You see a lot of fractional CMOs, fractional chief marketing officers, fractional HR leaders. These are contract or time-bound roles. If a company needs someone quickly—maybe they’re searching for a new CEO—they still need someone who can step in and do the work right away.

There’s a whole market of people who can do that. For more senior or seasoned job seekers, looking at that model can be a viable path forward.

The Reality of Fractional and Contract Roles

Rick Denius:
I talk to people all the time, and they’ll say, “I’d also be open to a fractional or contract role,” thinking that might offer them some flexibility. It might, in the long term. But make no mistake, it’s a full-time job, and there’s a ton of pressure to perform right away.

That kind of work is really for folks who have a unique set of skills and real market value—people who can step in quickly and deliver. Most of the fractional CFOs I know, for example, are former full-time CFOs. You’re not usually going to see a controller or a finance director stepping directly into that role unless they’ve already done the big job.

But if you have that market value, absolutely lean into it. The fractional, contract, interim space—whatever you want to call it—is real, and you’ll see jobs posted that way.

As you’re talking to your army of advocates, make sure they know you’re available and interested in those types of roles as well.

What Employers Really Look for in Mid- and Late-Career Hires

Rick Denius:
When companies are hiring people in this age band, and you alluded to this earlier, they want you to lean into your experience. It’s your professionalism. It’s the wide range of topics and situations you’ve dealt with over the years.

When they’re deciding whether to hire someone, they’re usually looking at a mix of pedigree, performance, and personality. It’s definitely a combination of all three.

Personality and cultural fit are huge, especially in team dynamics. People who leave jobs voluntarily often do so because they don’t like the people they work with. Most people just want to work with nice, normal people.

Matt Feret:
Yeah, absolutely.

Rick Denius:
Personality is a big piece of it. You’ll hear people say, “They were great technically, skill set-wise, but I just don’t see myself grabbing a sandwich with this person.” If you’re going to spend a third of your life—or more—at work, you want to be around people you genuinely like. People who are authentic, selfless, and team players.

Hopefully, that comes out organically in interviews and interactions. You need to get a sense of who someone really is, not just what they can do.

Pedigree, Career Storytelling, and Post-COVID Expectations

Rick Denius:
From the other angles, pedigree still matters. You want to show that you’ve been promoted into roles with increasing responsibility at the right times. Your resume should tell a story quickly—maybe a more junior role, then a mid-level role, then increasing responsibility as you move forward.

Continuity used to matter more. Before COVID, if someone changed jobs every three years, hiring managers might have raised an eyebrow and wondered about stick-to-itiveness. These days, I’m seeing hiring managers not bat an eye at 18 months here, 18 months there, because of all the turbulence that happened.

For a lot of full-time roles, if they can get someone in the seat for two years, that’s considered fine now. That might not have been the case in the past, but pedigree still matters for most jobs.

Authenticity in Interviews and Why Faking It Fails

Rick Denius:
I’ve interviewed thousands of people, and I’ve been interviewed many times myself. One thing I’ve learned is don’t even try to fake it.

Authenticity matters—not just for the interviewer, but for you. You have to be yourself, your professional self. If you hold your personality back because you think it’s more “professional,” that can actually work against you.

You don’t want to work for someone who doesn’t value you for who you are. And they don’t want someone who interviews one way, then turns into a completely different person once they’re inside the organization. It goes both ways.

Matt Feret:
In my experience, it’s the same thing. Be yourself. If something’s funny, laugh. If you want to make a joke during a dinner, make the joke. Show some personality. You don’t want to be a robot, and they don’t want a robot either.

Rick Denius:
Exactly. I see people play it way too safe in the interview process.

The Interview as Theater

Rick Denius:
The interview process itself is so much theater. On one side, you have the hiring manager, who has the power and control. They understand the culture, the organization, and what success looks like because they’re working next to someone who’s been in the role for years.

Then you show up as a candidate. You pop onto a Zoom screen, and suddenly you’re part of this awkward play. You don’t know all the lines. You don’t fully understand the setting or the backstory. You have a job description and maybe a little research on the person you’re talking to, but that’s it.

You don’t have much power. You don’t have many answers. So you try to play it safe. You try to say the “right” things. And that can get in the way of authenticity.

It’s hard to show your true colors in that environment, but that’s exactly what matters most.

Preparing for Interviews With Intention

Rick Denius:
There are books and all types of resources out there, and I recommend anyone getting involved in the interview process take advantage of them. Get as much information as you can about the company and the job, but get just as much information about how the interview process works.

You need to understand what mindset you need to show up with to present yourself in the best possible way and set yourself apart. At the end of the day, you want to come across as the person who is the absolute best option to solve the set of problems that got you to that meeting.

That means being focused on showing that you’re a problem solver, that you’re resourceful, pragmatic, easy to work with, and collaborative. All of that has to come through. None of this is intuitive. You have to go out and get the ebook, do the research, and understand the psychology of interviewing if you have any chance of succeeding.

Otherwise, you’re going to play it too safe. You won’t come across as your true self, and you might miss opportunities you otherwise would have had if you were better prepared.

The Emotional Impact of Being Laid Off Later in Your Career

Matt Feret:
When you’re in your 40s, 50s, or 60s and you’ve gotten laid off, how do you handle that? You’ve attained that age and experience. If you were a manager, then a director, then a senior director, you’ve shown progression over time. Then when you reach a certain level or title, you get laid off or fired or downsized.

That’s a real gut punch for a lot of people who’ve climbed the proverbial corporate ladder. Right at the pinnacle—your highest role, your highest job—somebody comes in and says, “We don’t want you anymore.”

Not only is there the internal processing of that, which could be a whole other podcast, but when you get back out there, you also have to explain it. You might be the VP of manufacturing at a bacon factory in Ohio, and suddenly you’re laid off. How do you handle that?

Rick Denius:
Welcome to the club. Everybody in the job market gets there one way or another.

Refocusing on the Hiring Manager’s Problems

Rick Denius:
Focusing too much on your own origin story, instead of the set of problems the hiring manager is trying to solve, won’t serve you. You have to be hyper-focused on positioning yourself as the person who can make a difference and make that hiring manager’s life easier.

That’s what it comes down to—keeping it simple and foundational, and not letting emotion overwhelm you.

If you are laid off, I strongly recommend using outplacement services. A lot of companies offer them as part of a downsizing. Firms like LHH or others will give you eight or twelve weeks with people who help with your resume and, just as importantly, help you emotionally get past the hump.

Often, they’ll bring together groups of people who’ve been recently laid off so you can share stories and get through it together. It is an emotional thing, especially if you’ve been at a company a long time. You start to think in very specific ways without realizing it.

When I left corporate, it took me about a year to fully decompress from the corporate ecosystem. A lot longer than I thought it would. There are real emotional things you have to work through.

If you’re in the job market and you’re not focused on finding opportunities where you’re the most competitive person—where you can uniquely solve the problems and make the hiring manager’s life easier—you’re going to struggle. Yes, it’s emotional how you ended up in the job seeker pool, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, but everyone ends up there for some reason.

Why Outplacement Services Actually Help

Matt Feret:
I’m glad you brought up outplacement services. A lot of people dismiss them and say it’s just the company trying to make itself feel better after laying you off.

I’ve known people who’ve used them, and I’ve used them myself. They do help. Not just with your resume or LinkedIn, but with sorting through the emotions. A lot of the people who work there are former recruiters or talent professionals, and they keep their eyes open.

People will come to them and say, “If you see a really good marketing manager who’s been laid off, let me know.” They’re advocating for people along the way. I know dozens, maybe hundreds, of people who’ve leaned into outplacement and benefited from it. I also know people who ignore it entirely.

There’s real value there if you use it.

Rick Denius:
I’m glad you feel that way. A lot of people don’t understand that dynamic.

Unintentional Hiring Bias and Ageism

Matt Feret:
We’ve talked about ageism, the hiring process, resumes, networking, and layoffs. What it seems like we’re getting at is hiring bias—not necessarily intentional, but unintentional.

How can hiring bias show up unintentionally, even among companies that are trying to do the right thing?

Rick Denius:
It’s hard, because there are deliberate things happening in corporate America around this. A lot of what drives ageism is unconscious bias. Nobody is going to come out and say it, but it shows up in assumptions like, “They’re too expensive,” “They’re too close to retirement,” or “They’ll never be able to pick up how we do things here.”

That unconscious bias exists in recruiters and hiring managers. It’s part of being human. We’re unpredictable animals, and we’re hardwired with bias whether we like it or not.

There has been deliberate training in many organizations for people involved in hiring to become aware of unconscious bias and work around it. I know I was part of that when I was in corporate roles.

 

What You Can and Can’t Control in the Hiring Process

Rick Denius:
In corporate America, everybody in our company had to go through unconscious bias training. Anyone involved in the hiring process was part of it, and it was eye-opening.

That said, there’s really nothing you can do to directly influence someone else’s bias. What you can influence is how you show up. That starts with your resume, how you reach out, and figuring out what you’re really, really good at—then flipping that into your narrative.

Underneath all the emotion and anxiety that comes with work and job seeking, there’s a simple truth. At the end of the day, the only person who gets hired is the person who can solve the problems the company has.

They have a unique set of problems. They can’t solve them by promoting someone internally. They can’t move the work somewhere else. They’re forced into the uncomfortable position of taking a risk and hiring someone new.

So you have to focus on their needs, not just how you feel about where you are in the process. That mindset is incredibly important.

A Real Hiring Example From Inside CNN

Rick Denius:
I’ll add a story from when I was a hiring manager at CNN. A lot of times, a job would open up in the newsroom. The way it worked was very structured. You came in at an entry-level news production position, which was designed to feed into different tracks.

You could go down a producer track and work toward becoming a news producer or writer. Or you could go down a technical track—working in the control room as a director or technical director, or out in the field as a photographer or editor.

For a long time, hiring was almost entirely internal. External hires only happened at certain jumping-off points, usually around the five- or six-year mark, when they needed skills they didn’t already have internally.

So a job would open up, and 15 or 20 people would apply. A lot of them thought, “This is just the next step in my evolution.” But the person who got the job was the one who could walk into the executive room and say, “Here’s how we’re going to increase ratings. Here’s what we’re going to do differently in the second block to keep people watching.”

They were focused on the problem the hiring manager was trying to solve—in that case, ratings—not on the idea that this role was just the next rung on their career ladder.

That’s the difference.

The Real “Secret” to Getting Hired

Rick Denius:
Focusing on the need that drove the opening is the answer. That’s the secret.

Put your energy and attention into identifying what those problems are and showing how you can solve them—for the amount of money they’re willing to pay you.

That’s what it comes down to.

Matt Feret:
I love that example, and I love how you framed this from the beginning all the way to the end.

Why Job Searching Has to Be Active

Matt Feret:
Job searching in this environment—for anyone, but especially if you’re in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond—has to be active. It cannot be passive.

You can’t just check LinkedIn job postings and click “submit resume.” You have to engage. And when you’re lucky enough to get an interview, it’s not enough to rely on the old advice of knowing the company history, the CEO’s name, and all of that.

That’s fine, but it’s more active than that.

They’re talking to you because they didn’t have anyone to promote internally, and they can’t get anyone else to do the work. They have a problem they need to pay someone to solve.

What is that problem? And how are you specifically addressing it?

Job search is active—all the way through the process.

Rick Denius:
Exactly

Matt Feret:
This has been really fun and really insightful. I’d love to share how people can find you and learn more about what you’re working on.

 

Where to Find Rick and How to Engage

Matt Feret:
What kind of engagement are you looking for? What’s most impactful for you with people who are listening or watching?

Rick Denius:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that opportunity.

The HR Search Co. is the name of the company. It’s our search firm, and the website is www.hrsearchco.com. There’s a “Contact Us” button on the site if anybody wants to engage or ask questions.

I’m also on LinkedIn. You can find me under Rick Denius, D-E-N-I-U-S, the same name as on the podcast.

Who Rick Works With and How He Helps

Matt Feret:
What kind of customer are you looking for? Are you looking for someone just out of college, someone who has one more job left in them, or anything in between?

Rick Denius:
I really love talking to people who are in career transition.

The business model itself is designed around helping companies find good people. If there’s a business leader who knows there’s going to be a departure on their team, we can step in very quickly and ramp up a confidential search to replace that person, often in advance of reorganizations.

We also help if you have a need on your team for a contract or interim person. If someone is going to leave and you’re going to need coverage, we can place replacement folks on our payroll, on an hourly basis, to provide that coverage for you.

And as I mentioned, I’m available through LinkedIn if anybody wants to reach out and ask questions. I’ll do my best to get back to everybody who reaches out.

Thoughts

Matt Feret:
Awesome. Everybody, that was Rick Denius. Rick, thanks for giving us an insider’s look at how hiring, the job search, and everything around it really works—and how to beat the system with strategy and activity, not just luck and clicking a bunch of submit buttons.

Thanks, everybody, for watching and listening to The Matt Feret Show. Until next time, here’s to your wealth, wisdom, and wellness.

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