Most senior candidates fail before their CV is even read. Not because the profile is weak, but because the timing is commercially naïve.
Here is the reality inside most organisations.
DWOR = Daily & Weekly Operational Reporting.
This cycle dictates leadership attention far more than recruitment ever will.
A typical week inside a functioning business looks like this:
- 08:00–08:30 Managers & staff DWOR meeting
- 08:30–09:00 Manager to Manager / Direct Reports
- 09:00–09:30 Directors & C-suite performance review
- 09:30–10:00 CEO, owner & shareholder escalation
By 10am on Monday, leadership bandwidth is already exhausted dealing with last week’s failures, underperformance & fire-fighting. Recruitment is not even on the agenda.
Now add human behaviour.
Most senior leaders do not reopen last week’s emails until Wednesday. That means:
- Monday is operational triage.
- Tuesday is backlog recovery.
- Wednesday is the first moment anyone looks up.
Result?
The first three days of the week are dead ground for senior applications, unless a business has a fully ringfenced internal recruitment function. Most do not.
The Executive Insight Most Candidates Miss
Recruitment attention peaks after performance pressure peaks.
End of week.
End of month.
End of quarter.
End of reporting cycle.
This is when:
- Targets have been missed.
- Delivery excuses have run out.
- Leadership starts looking externally for answers.
Now imagine what happens if a decision-grade CV lands at that precise moment.
Not while everyone is busy pretending things are under control.
But after the performance ball has already been dropped.
Your CV is no longer “another application”.
It becomes a solution arriving at the exact moment of pain.
Why Phones Explode for the Right Candidates
Senior recruitment is not meritocratic.
It is contextual.
When your profile arrives:
- Late week.
- Near period end.
- After DWOR pressure has peaked.
You are read differently.
You are evaluated faster.
You are escalated upward, not filtered downward.
That is when calls happen.
That is when recruiters chase.
That is when executives lean in.
The TCE Position
At The Career Experts, we do not just write CVs.
We weaponise timing.
A strong CV sent at the wrong time is invisible.
A strategic CV sent at the right time is unavoidable.
This is not a job search.
It is commercial interception.
And when executed properly, your phone does not ring.
It explodes.
