After Covid, enormously tough personal years, a devastating divorce, the full-scale war in my country, heartbreaking evacuation stories I was involved in, very little external help, and the necessity to settle in a new country to start my life over at age 35, I decided to leave my job as a hired CEO in a profitable company.

I was so burnt out, devastated and cracked that this decision brought me release and comfort.

I had no equity and all my possessions were savings of less far than 100k. I was in a country that warmly welcomed me as a Ukrainian refugee but I knew literally 4 people here.

All my professional network told me that with my experience and toolbox, my next outstanding career leap is guaranteed to happen soon!

To give myself some time to restore, I took a gap period, created the first version of my CV, updated my LinkedIn profile and began applying for vacancies.

I was thrilled by the abundance of opportunities and the quality of companies on job boards. Every day hundreds of new positions were added for the UK market alone.

There were countless remote jobs available! The majority of vacancies I applied for seemed like a perfect fit. The compensation rates were far higher than what I made as the CEO of a multi-million company. (Well, indeed, I never made millions)

I was more than inspired by the success story of my fiancée. She landed a new job in less than 3 months, was interviewed by Meta, Inmarsat and Comscore and eventually accepted an offer from a prestigious influencer marketing agency in London.

So my story would be even brighter! I cheered myself up:)

I started receiving some invitations for interviews and met a few investors and headhunters.

But very soon things began to look weird.

I began my active job search in February 2023.

February, March and April flew by. In May after returning from our scheduled retreat, I realised that after two weeks my inbox was literally empty.

Meanwhile, the number of positions I had applied for reached 700. The idea for this article had already crystallized in my mind.

In May and part of June, I easily reached the milestone of 1000 and I am now ready to share all the detailed data.

1001 applications. The data-driven journey.

There’s a spreadsheet containing all the vacancies I applied for along with a dashboard that demonstrates the results and includes links and job descriptions.

Now, it’s time to delve deep into each step I took.

As a C-suite executive, I have reviewed thousands of CVs and conducted an equal number of interviews with candidates from different cultures, for different roles, speaking in three languages in which I’m fluent.

Surely, I did my research about the UK market and did my best to adjust my profile and CV not only for the market but for the different roles.

The initial versions of my CV were non-standard and designed with the following idea: “This is how I think and present myself. I want to find people who will appreciate it and who’s looking for a person like me”

– I’m looking for vision-driven, world-class teams and empathic leaders dedicated to solving global problems and making meaningful, industry-changing products

I divided my 20 years of expertise into different layers and created CVs for the marketing, product and operational leadership position.

And of course for VCs.

After another few hundred rejections I made changes and created the 3rd and the 4th versions of the CVs.

Then I created a concise one-page version

I adjusted the CVs for the most interesting positions, utilized plugins that highlighted the percentage of alignment of my CV and the job description, used services for improving CVs, changed titles and descriptions, and chatted with carrier coaches and headhunters.

I received a lot of admiration for my expertise and profile from headhunters, recruiters and experienced C-level executives whom I approached on LinkedIn to seek their opinions.

Literally, everyone I reached out to provided inspirational and flattering feedback.

However, the rejections kept piling up by the hundreds.

I created a list of 200+ headhunters and executive search recruiters, connected with them on LinkedIn and wrote personal notes.

I asked for referrals and pursued executives from VCs and some startups I’d like to work with.

As a guy who worked in the Creator Economy industry, I also began to connect with industry leaders and companies within the sector who may need my expertise.

I read every article I can find and approached people on LinkedIn to give me a hint. Everyone was puzzled by my situation and the only thing that was in common in their feedback is that maybe I can look overqualified or too expensive.

I paid $1500 to a high-profile career coach and got nothing but depreciation (“you have nothing specific to offer”) and obvious pieces of advice I already tried previously.

I even decided to add a compensation level in my CV to let the market know that I’m affordable and even expect less than a lot of vacancies offer.

The last set of CVs looked much more classic but had no influence on the outcome.

Nothing works

I had hundreds of rejections and very few invitations for the interviews.

I even googled my name, in case someone mentioned somewhere that no company on Earth should ever hire me.

But obviously nothing like this. You can find my name and my last company in Forbes, Inc, Crunchbase, my public speaking materials from global events, mentorship profiles and kudos on LinkedIn.

The silence was confusing and sad.

No one from more than 1000 companies recognised in me the person every founder is looking for — the one who will treat business like their own.

As an experienced hands-on hard worker, I’m so in love with creating and scaling products.

Why are all those lazy bastards hating their jobs and wasting the company’s budget still occupying their chairs?

And I, passionate and qualified, still have no team and no product to scale?