Placing around 120 – 150 NEDs a year, around 60% of these to listed companies, Karoline and her team are a major recruiter to UK boards. Although the number of candidates searching for plc board roles hugely outstrips this number, it is a fine balance to find the right people for each role.

How can you make sure headhunters are thinking of you as and when a suitable role appears?

Firstly, do the obvious and register with them. Although Egon Zehnder is a major recruiter, there are many others. Karoline recommends registering your CV with all the main search firms. This obviously leads to the importance of having an effective Board CV. This should be professional and it is worth spending time on an impactful biography – whether for the CV or a headhunters’ registration form.

Of course, a meeting with a headhunter is a useful way to raise your profile with them. Karoline – like most recruiters – enjoys meeting new and interesting people. However, it’s an enormously busy job and time is a huge constraint. Her advice is to ask senior contacts for an introduction, which makes it far more likely that a headhunter will prioritise meeting with you. Don’t be disheartened if they can’t meet with you, however; they will still be looking to place you. It’s not possible to fill vacancies only from people they’ve had speculative meetings with.

Karoline has a few pieces of advice if you do get a meeting. Bear in mind it is not a job interview. The recruiter doesn’t need your whole career history or life story.

Emphasise what you can bring and what you are looking for. If a potential role comes up, that will be the time to get into detail.

Finally, do be mindful of their time. Karoline finds around 20 minutes is enough to get a sense of candidate, so don’t be offended if the meeting feels brief. That is often a good sign!

Limit your on-going contact with headhunters

Karoline also suggests you limit your on-going contact with headhunters. If there is a significant change in your circumstances or professional achievements, do drop them a note. But don’t contact them every couple of months as a matter of course. Karoline finds she gets often requests to ‘meet for a catch-up’ – something she simply doesn’t have time for.

The other way to get on a longlist for a non-executive role is to be recommended by the Chair and/or Executive team at the recruiting organisation. Karoline estimates around 10% of the longlist arrive this way. So nurture your senior contacts and make sure they know you’d be interested in a board role.

Karoline’s final piece of advice is being strategic with your career and which point in it is best to move to non-executive roles. Gaining not-for-profit or proxy board experience early in your career will put you in a stronger position when you are looking to move into larger, commercial boards.

However, the most important factor in success in gaining non-executive roles is a strong executive career. Karoline believes it is increasingly possible to get senior NED roles without having been a CEO, but it’s a case of showing how you gained the requisite skills without the job title.

Karoline’s final and main advice is to stay as an executive as long as possible and go for the top jobs. She counsels this for two reasons. One, the frank truth is if you go portfolio too early you will lose your currency. Two, we need more great women as top executives!