Fourteen months. A title that looked right. A mandate that turned out to be something else entirely. Now it's a line you'd rather not talk about — or one you quietly took off the resume. That isn't a career problem. It's an alignment problem, and it was visible before you ever said yes.
Neither of them is your fault, and both of them cost you years.
Short tenure on the resume. The careful answer you rehearse for the next interview. The quiet worry that a real opportunity will read it as a red flag — when the truth is the role was misrepresented before you got there.
You make it work. You stop proposing things. The scope you were promised never materializes, the authority sits somewhere else, and a few years later you're further from the work you actually wanted to do than when you started.
There is a third option, and it starts with someone assessing the seat as carefully as they assess you.
What we're offering is representation — and the only thing we need from you is the truth about what you want.
What happened to the last person in it. Whether the reporting line is settled. Whether the mandate is real or decorative. We ask the employer the questions you can't ask in an interview.
Including when a role isn't right for you — even when placing you would pay us. A search firm that talks you into the wrong seat has to find you a new one in a year.
You won't hear from us about every requisition. You'll hear from us when something matches what you told us you actually wanted.
I've been on both sides of this. I spent over a decade inside healthcare organizations — hiring, working alongside senior leaders, and coaching healthcare executives up to the CEO level through exactly the decision you're weighing. I know what the wrong seat can cost a capable leader — and I built this to help you find the one worth staying in.
Not the polished version. The real one — including the thing you wouldn't say in an interview. We can't find you the right seat if we only know the version you think we want to hear.
Based in the Caribbean, or open to a leadership role there? Use our Caribbean form →
Kimberly reads every one of these herself. Here's exactly what happens next, so you're not left wondering.
Listen to Healthcare’s Keeping Problem — healthcare leaders on why good people leave and what makes them stay.
Listen to the podcast →Changed your mind, or want something removed? Email contact@retainhealth.co and it's done — no questions.
Nothing here is scored. What you just wrote is not an assessment of you, and it isn't rated or ranked. If you're ever considered for a specific search, you'll receive our candidate notice first — explaining exactly how that works and what your rights are.