The Executive
Job Seekers
Blueprint
Everything that makes you succeed from the moment you join TESS to the moment you have an offer. No gaps, no guesswork, every output specified.
and ERICa deployed
The entire job market above £120k operates as a buyer's world, not a seller's world. 75% of vacancies at £120k+ are never advertised. At CEO level it's closer to 95%. The truth for you sits somewhere between those two numbers depending on your seniority. Those jobs aren't advertised because that creates an inbox full of people trying to sell themselves — and no hiring manager wants that.
Hiring managers buy the way you, me, and everyone else buys anything — TVs, lawnmowers, anything. They start with research. The executives they choose for interview are the ones who were most visible when they started looking and most compelling when they looked closer. No sales pitch. No recruiter. The transaction concludes without any selling involved at all.
Amazon doesn't call you to tell you about their products. They make themselves visible wherever buyers look, and they make their product pages so compelling that you arrive at a definitive decision without needing to speak to a salesperson. That's how £200k+ executives must position themselves to get bought.
The ROI on the alternative — applying for the 25% of roles that are advertised, competing with hundreds of equally qualified candidates — is approximately 1%. It's not a strategy. It's a lottery.
TESS won't show you how to sell yourself better.
In fact, it won't show you how to sell yourself at all.
What it will do is show you how to get bought — which is exactly what the hiring manager is doing for senior roles.
Getting bought requires you to be two things: visible and compelling. Once you are both, you're no longer competing against five hundred people. You're competing against six. You've unlocked 75% of vacancies instead of cramming yourself into 25%. When your market is three times bigger and your competition is a fraction of what it was, the table is tilted decisively in your favour.
The executive job search is broken by design. The process that works for a £60k manager — apply, interview, accept — actively damages a £200k executive's job seeking success. And sanity.
Most senior executives in transition are making three mistakes simultaneously. They're trying to sell themselves to hiring managers who want to buy. They believe being the best candidate will get them the job — it won't. The hiring manager wants someone good enough, today, so they can stop recruiting and get back to their actual job. And they're doing it alone, when getting the job and doing the job are completely different skills.
The result: talented, experienced executives getting ignored, lowballed, or — worst of all — reframing their ambitions downward because the market appears not to want them.
"The impact of being able to take control of an interview is a game-changer for me. Johnny is hugely motivational and overall, the programme was really impressive."
The market does want you. It just hasn't been able to find you.
Immediately on joining, two things happen simultaneously. Your onboarding call is booked within 48 hours. And you receive the TESS data spreadsheet — the single document that powers everything that follows.
The spreadsheet has two tabs. Tab one is your static data: name, contact details, qualifications, academic and vocational certifications. Tab two is your career history: for each role, the employer, dates, and job title in column A, and the significant activities of that role in column B. Format doesn't matter — copy from your existing CV if it's easier. The work of interpreting and transforming that data happens on the call, not before it.
Your only job before the call: copy and paste your name and contact info etc. and employer history into TESS's spreadsheet. Nothing else is required.
This is where the transformation happens. The call runs 60–90 minutes and covers two things, in order, for every role in your career history.
First: Purpose. For each activity, one question is asked repeatedly: "What was the benefit of doing that for your employer?" This question is iterated — what was the benefit of that benefit? — until the answer resolves to one of three things: revenue, cost, or risk. And not generically. Not "cost reduction" but "people cost in engineering." Not "risk mitigation" but "operational risk in financial services." Specificity is what makes a hiring manager sit up.
Second: Performance. Every purpose needs a number. This is where most executives freeze — they don't know the exact figure, it's confidential, or they're uncomfortable claiming personal responsibility for an organisational outcome.
None of those objections survive scrutiny. You don't need the precise number — you need a conservative guesstimate. If your change programme cost £2m and no board would sign off at less than 5x ROI, then it was designed to deliver at least £10m. You didn't achieve £10m single-handedly — no executive does. The language that resolves this: "I led my [functional] contribution towards reducing operational costs by at least £10m." Conservative. Defensible. Credible in interview. And almost certainly an understatement.
By the end of the call, TESS knows all she needs. Your data now powers everything that follows.
From the completed spreadsheet, your elevator pitch is constructed using the 5P formula. It is the most important sentence you will say in your entire job search — and it is built from data, not guesswork.
Person is whoever your hiring manager would be. Place is the aggregated type of organisation you work best in — typically an industry vertical, but sometimes defined by scale, location, or culture (fast-growth vs. blue chip). Purpose is identified by looking at the dominant theme across your career. Performance is the representative number for your performance aligned to that purpose. Process is simply your job title, wrapped in leadership language — by leading the [function] performance and function effectively.
The elevator pitch is not a script. It is a positioning statement. Once you have it, you know exactly who you are for, what you deliver for them, and how much you're worth to the hiring manager. Everything else in the programme flows from it.
Every executive CV has the same three problems. TESS solves all three simultaneously.
The master TESS CV means you never write another CV again. Every future CV is ready in ten minutes.
Your LinkedIn profile is rebuilt from the same data. Banner carries the first four Ps — the attention statement without the how. Headline carries all five. The About section is written using your free full-access LinkedIn content writing assistant EVA, structured as a buyer's journey narrative — not a biography. Experience section lifts directly from the master CV.
Two pieces of content go live immediately. Post one: your elevator pitch reveal — "This is how to explain what I do: my elevator pitch. What do you think?" Post two: your CV before and after — "I've just rebuilt my CV, compare and contrast." Both posts want the comments. More comments, more algorithmic distribution, more visibility of a compelling proposition to exactly the right audience.
EVA then takes over for all content thereafter — structured around five content themes, published consistently, building authority and inbound interest throughout your search.
The ERIC call uses your onboarding data to produce a report you can sell: how you would leverage AI in your function if you were leading it at your next employer. Written from your perspective. Specific to your domain.
This is not a thought leadership piece. It is a functional document — revenue gains, cost reductions, risk mitigations, easy wins — that a hiring manager, board member, or functional peer can buy on expenses without hesitation. The people who buy it are, by definition, potential employers or referrers. It builds visibility with exactly the right audience while generating income.
Target: 5–15 sales at £200. Conservative projection: £1,000–£3,000 generated before your next role starts.
Immediately after ERIC, you receive your personal referral link and ERICa briefing. For every executive you refer to TESS who joins the programme, you receive £2,000. Referrals are unlimited — there is no ceiling on what this can return. With enough referrals, ERICa doesn't just recoup the programme fee. It turns a career investment into a profit.
You don't need to sell anything. You need to think of one person — a former colleague, a peer, anyone in transition at your level — and share your experience. One referral returns £2,000. Two referrals and ERIC together effectively return the cost of the programme before your new role begins.
A recorded Zoom interview — structured as a buyer's journey pitch. Who is your audience, what problem do they have, how bad is it, how good could it be, how do you solve it, how did you get so good at it, and how do they reach you. Five to ten minutes. Pre-populated answers from your onboarding data, lightly personalised by you. No preparation required beyond showing up.
The output: a professional interview published under the ExecPlatform.ai brand, positioning you as a senior executive worth knowing. Raw footage returned for your own use. A piece of content that works for you 24 hours a day.
While the rest of the programme builds your visibility and positioning, JoSS is already working in the background — without requiring anything further from you.
Most executives apply for roles. JoSS positions you before they exist.
This isn't recruitment. This is representation. Executive search firms work on vacancies — they wait for a brief, build a shortlist, and get paid when someone is hired. The executive is the inventory.
We don't work that way.
JoSS tracks organisational signals — hiring patterns, restructuring, leadership change, pressure building — to identify organisations that are about to need someone like you. Then we introduce you as the solution. Not as a CV. As a commercial answer to a problem they're about to have.
There is still a process. Interviews. Feedback. Negotiation. But it runs around you — not around a vacancy.
When you land your next role through JoSS, the employer pays as they always would. You don't. In fact, we pay you — your TESS fees are refunded in full once we receive our placement fee. Getting placed through JoSS doesn't just get you the right job. It makes the entire programme free.
Everything from week two onwards is self-directed, supported twice weekly by live strategy sessions with Johnny Walker and the TESS community — executives at your level, going through the same process at the same time. The community element is not an afterthought. Peer accountability, shared intelligence on the market, and the knowledge that others are moving at the same pace are significant accelerants.
The programme modules cover:
LinkedIn completion remaining profile elements, skills, endorsements, recommendations, etc.
Choose Your Next Boss generating relationship capital with stakeholders before requesting internal referrals — the highest-conversion route to senior roles
Recruiter strategy identifying the best recruiters for your exact niche and becoming their number one candidate — not treated like cannon fodder
Personal networking getting your network to actually deliver when you ask them to this time
Interview — full script The module executives consistently call the most powerful thing they've ever done in a job search. A complete end-to-end interview system that puts you in command of a process you've been a passenger in your entire career. One COO told us: "If I'd known this ten years ago, my career would look completely different." He's not alone.
Negotiation how to get an extra 5–6 figures on your pay. Every time.
Post-offer risks what can derail an accepted offer — budget freezes, hiring manager changes, structural shifts — and how to protect against each
TESS is the only executive career programme designed to be financially self-liquidating before you start your next role. The income mechanisms are built into the programme — not bolted on as an afterthought.
Income figures are illustrative based on programme mechanics, not guarantees. Results depend on network size, engagement, and implementation speed.
Before The Price Rises.