In my last couple of post I have been sharing how I managed my recent job search. Let me be honest with you: a year is a long time to search for a job. Especially when you have spent your career leading associations, walking into rooms with confidence, and being the person others look to for direction.

What made it manageable was that I never stepped away from the work. Throughout my search, I was consulting full-time, taking on interim leadership roles that kept me engaged, challenged, and connected to the mission-driven work I love. That was not a fallback. It turned out to be genuinely fulfilling in its own right. it also helped to take the pressure off the job search. I was not waiting to be relevant again. I was already doing meaningful work, which meant I could afford to be intentional about what came next rather than desperate for anything at all.

And yet the search was still a search with all the uncertainty, the near-misses, and the long silences that come with it. Here is how I navigated it.

Step One: I Let My Ikigai Do the Filtering

Before I sent a single resume, I made myself a promise: I would not apply to anything just because it was available, prestigious, or safe. I had done the work to understand my ikigai (my “reason for being”) and I was going to honor it.

If you have not read my earlier post on ikigai, start there. The framework asks four essential questions: What do I love? What am I good at? What does the world need? And what can I be paid for? The challenge is in finding the role that sits at the intersection of all four.

What I quickly discovered is that ikigai is an very helpful filter. There were roles that looked good on paper, carried impressive titles, and would have made for a flattering LinkedIn announcement. But when I held them up against my ikigai, they did not align. Maybe the mission did not resonate. Maybe the work would have required me to suppress the skills I most enjoy using. Maybe the sector was right but the culture was wrong.

Staying true to my ikigai meant I sent few applications, but every role I pursued was one I genuinely wanted.

Step Two: I Practiced My SOAR Stories Until They Felt Like Second Nature

Once I identified the right opportunities, I had to be ready to compete for them. Competing at the CEO level means telling your story with precision, confidence, and specificity.

I leaned heavily on the SOAR framework — Situation, Obstacles, Actions, and Results — which I wrote about here. SOAR gave me a structured way to capture and communicate everything I had accomplished over a long career in ways that were concrete, compelling, and credible.

I did not just write my SOAR stories once and consider the work done. I practiced them outloud. I refined them after every interview based on what had landed well and what had fallen flat. I timed myself. Ands I practiced with AI.

By the time I was deep into the search, I could tell a tight, well-paced story about nearly any aspect of my leadership experience from budget crises, governance challenges, membership growth, to team rebuilding, without hesitation and without notes. That fluency is impresses search committees and builds your confidence. In high-stakes interviews, the difference between a candidate who knows their stories and one who has truly practiced them is immediately apparent.

Step Three: When I Did Not Get the Role, I Let Myself Feel It

This is the part people rarely talk about.

When you do not get a role you wanted it hurts. Especially when you make it to the second round of interviews and have imagined what you would do if you were the leader. It feels like a rejection not just of your resume but of your story, your experience, your sense of yourself as a leader. Pretending otherwise is both dishonest and counterproductive.

So I gave myself permission to grieve genuinely. Not indefnitely, but I allowed myself at least 24 hours to feel the disappointment, to wallow in self-pity, to sit with the sting of it. I did not immediately pivot to optimism. I did not force myself to reframe the rejection as a gift before I had actually processed the loss. I ate too much chocolate, drank good wine, and doomscrolled. I complained and catastrophized to the people who love me. I let myself be human.

Each time I set a boundary on the grief. When the time I had set for bemoaning my fate was up, I sat down and asked myself two questions: What did I learn? And what do I want to do differently?

Sometimes the answer was about my preparation. Sometimes it was about the role itself that, in hindsight, something had felt slightly off during the proces,s and I had ignored it. Sometimes the answer was simply that it was not my time and my place, and that I needed to trust that the fit would happen.

Step Four: I Kept Refining What I Was Looking For

ThroughI got better at knowing what I wanted. By the later stages of the search, I had a nuanced, specific, and honest picture of the kind of organization I wanted to lead the mission space, the board culture, the size and stage, the staff capacity, the values I needed to see reflected in how the organization operated.

That clarity came from interviews that did not go the way I hoped, from conversations with recruiters who gave me candid feedback, from sitting across the table from search committee and sensing, even when the role looked right on paper, that the fit was not quite there. Every experience, including the disappointing ones, sharpened my instincts.

By the time the right opportunity appeared, I was applying because I knew that this was the intersection of everything I had been working toward.

Step Five: When the Right Opportunity Came, I Was Ready

When the right opportunity arrived, I was prepared in every sense that mattered. My SOAR stories were sharp. My understanding of my own ikigai was clear. I had processed enough rejection to approach the process without desperation. I knew what questions to ask. I knew what I was walking into and what I was walking toward.

I got the role.

But more than that, I got it as my full, deliberate, well-prepared self. Not as someone who had simply survived a year of searching, but as someone who had used that year to become a better leader, a better candidate, and a clearer thinker about purpose.

What I Would Tell You

If you are in the middle of a search right now, if the year feels long and the silence between applications feels deafening, know this: the search itself can be useful. Every rejection you process honestly, every story you sharpen, every role you pass on because it does not align with who you are – it all compounds. You are not just waiting to be chosen. You are preparing to lead.