Say it with me, darling: applying for jobs the traditional way is a rigged game.
I’ve ranted about this before in our salary negotiation podcast for women, but I need to keep saying it louder. The deluge of conventional career advice keeps steering professional women towards a system designed to limit them.
You might think my biggest issue with recruitment is the power imbalance – companies holding all the cards whilst candidates scramble for crumbs. That’s certainly true. But there’s something far more insidious at play.
The Real Damage of Traditional Hiring
The biggest problem isn’t just inequality. It’s what the system does to you. It stops you from seeing what you’re truly capable of. It blinds you to how ready you are for that next big step. It prevents you from recognising the immense value you could bring if you simply levelled up.
Here’s the brutal truth about women’s career negotiation: traditional recruitment plays directly into the gender stereotype that men get promoted on potential whilst women must prove past performance first. As a woman, you’re expected to demonstrate you’ve done something before being deemed ready. You need to be a “safe bet.”
But my darling, here’s what I know from years of executive career coaching for women: you can do exponentially more than what you’ve shown so far. That’s precisely how you’ve progressed in your career – by uplevelling through doing new things.
And you always managed, didn’t you?
Stop Playing by Their Rules
Here’s my strategic career negotiation advice: don’t make the mistake of thinking you can only pursue a role when you tick 100% of the boxes. Don’t buy into a system that refuses to back your potential.
Your career trajectory will be dramatically steeper when you reject this nonsense.
The WOA Difference
At Women of Agency, the core of our career advancement coaching isn’t just teaching strategies and techniques. The biggest transformation happens when we uncover what executive women are truly capable of.
We work with senior professional women to help them not just know, but own their potential. Once that shift happens? Game-changing.
When you combine this mindset shift with our proven framework for role co-creation – essentially building your own hiring process rather than fitting into theirs – the sky’s the limit. This is precisely how women in our career coaching programme go up one, two, or sometimes even three levels.
Because negotiating your worth starts with recognising it exists in the first place.
Ready to stop applying and start strategically negotiating your next move? That’s what we do at WOA.
