EIM Leadership Career Strategy Program
Your CV proves you are excellent at the job you already have.
That is exactly why it is not getting you the next one.Fifteen years of inspection, integrity, maintenance or projects experience reads, to a hiring committee, as fifteen years of that experience. Not as someone who could run the department.
Where senior moves are lost
You are not being overlooked. You are being read correctly, for the wrong role.
Senior technical professionals lose leadership opportunities in three places. None of them is a lack of capability.
The roles are not advertised
PwC analysis puts 48% of executive hires down to headhunting rather than advertising, and LinkedIn research attributes around 60% of executive placements to network referrals. Most senior roles are filled before they are advertised, if they are advertised at all.
Your CV argues the wrong case
There is a substantial body of management literature on why technical experts struggle in leadership roles, and hiring committees have read it. They arrive wary. Your CV is fifteen years of carefully documented evidence that you are an outstanding technical specialist — presented unchanged, it confirms exactly the concern they came in with.
You have applications, not a strategy
No target list. No view of which companies are restructuring. No relationship with the search firms who fill these roles. No preparation for a compensation conversation that sets your base for the next five years. Most senior professionals approach a move the way they approached their first job, and at this level that is the least effective route available.
A senior move is worth a level, not a percentage. The difference between Senior Engineer and Manager is a different band, a different scope, and a different starting point for everything that follows. This programme costs a fraction of a single year of that difference.
What changes
The same career, positioned as a different case
Before
- Applying to advertised roles
- Competing with the whole market
- CV describes what you did
- Offer accepted as presented
two years of applications
After
- Targeting 12 named companies
- In conversation with 4 decision makers
- CV demonstrates what you led
- Offer negotiated from a prepared position
90-day plan
What this is
This is not CV writing. It is a strategy for one specific move.
We work with you to build a personal plan for your next senior role: what you are actually targeting, what already sets you apart, what needs addressing first, which companies to approach, how to reach them, and what to say when compensation comes up.
Your CV and LinkedIn are part of it. They are not the point of it.
The work is one-to-one throughout, with someone who has worked in this industry at a senior level — not a general career coach who will ask you to describe what your department does.
Places are limited, so that every engagement gets the attention this requires.
What the programme covers
Eight parts, one connected strategy
Career and Experience Assessment
A structured review of your career to date, your experience, and where you want to go next. Most senior professionals have never had this conversation with anyone, and what emerges is usually different from what they expected.
Strength and Gap Analysis
A clear picture of what already sets you apart, and what to address before your next move. Knowing your gap before an interview panel finds it is the difference between a weakness and a prepared answer.
Target Role Identification
"Manager" is not a target. A named role type, at a named tier of company, in a named market, is. This is where that gets decided.
CV and LinkedIn Positioning
Both repositioned for leadership-level roles rather than technical ones — the same fifteen years, presented as evidence of judgement and scope rather than of tasks completed.
Target Company and Networking Strategy
A plan for which companies to approach and how to build the right connections. Around 60% of executive placements come through referrals. This is the part most people skip, and it is where most of the roles are.
Salary Negotiation Strategy
Preparation for a compensation conversation at leadership level. The number you agree sets the base for every raise, bonus and offer that follows it — the highest-leverage hour of the entire process.
Personalised 90-Day Career Action Plan
A concrete, week-by-week plan for the first ninety days of your search. Strategy without a schedule becomes intention; this is the part that makes it happen.
Detailed EIM Career Strategy Report
A written report bringing the full assessment and strategy together in one place. Yours to keep and return to — most people use it again at the move after this one.
Who this is for
Senior enough that the next move is a level, not a step
- Leads, Principals and Senior Specialists ready to move into management
- Managers targeting Department Head or Senior Manager positions
- Senior professionals with 10+ years considering their next move
- Technical experts who have been passed over at least once and want to understand why
And whichever discipline you sit in
Inspection & Integrity
- Asset integrity management
- Inspection management
Corrosion & Materials
- Materials and corrosion
- Coating and CP programmes
Maintenance & Reliability
- Reliability and maintenance
- Turnaround management
Welding & QA/QC
- Quality management
- QA/QC department heads
Projects & Engineering
- Project and FEED leadership
- Planning and cost control
The positioning problem is identical whichever one you sit in. What changes is the vocabulary.
And who it is not for
- Professionals with under 10 years of experience — see Career Navigator instead
- Anyone looking for a CV rewrite alone — again, Career Navigator
- Anyone wanting a guaranteed placement. We are not a recruitment agency and this is not a job guarantee.
How it works
Three steps, and it starts with a form
Tell us what you are targeting
Fill in the form below. We come back to you and tell you honestly whether this programme fits. At this level, sometimes it does not, and we would rather say so.
The strategy sessions
One-to-one, working through all eight components. Your assessment, your targets, your positioning, your plan.
Your strategy report and 90-day plan
Everything in one written document, with a week-by-week schedule for the first ninety days.
Questions
What senior professionals actually ask
Career Navigator rebuilds your CV and LinkedIn so that you are found and read properly. This programme starts a step earlier: what should you be targeting, why, and how do you get in front of the people who decide. The documents are one of eight components rather than the whole engagement.
Possibly not, if your CV is getting you leadership interviews. If it is getting you technical interviews for roles you are overqualified for, that is the exact problem this addresses.
No. We are not a recruitment agency, and anyone promising placement at this level should be treated carefully. What we build is the strategy, the positioning and the plan. The conversations are yours to have.
The strategy work is typically completed over several one-to-one sessions. The 90-day plan then runs for ninety days, which is where most of the result comes from. We will give you the specific schedule when we come back to you.
Everything here is confidential, and much of it — assessment, positioning, target identification — happens before any external activity at all. Where LinkedIn is involved, we will show you the settings that make you visible to recruiters and not to your employer.
Because it is one-to-one throughout and the strategy work is genuinely bespoke. We would rather turn people away than run it as a template.
That happens, and it is a legitimate outcome. Several people have come through the assessment and concluded that the better move was inside their current organisation. The strategy work applies either way.
No. Senior Specialist and Principal tracks are leadership too, and they are positioned differently again. That distinction comes out in the target role identification.
The next move sets the next decade
Your experience already justifies the role. What is missing is the case for it, put in front of the right people, at the right time.
Request a place
Tell us what you are targeting
Fill this in and we will come back to you, and tell you honestly whether we can help. No obligation.
Limited places each month to keep every engagement one-to-one.
What happens next
- 01Someone who has worked in this industry reads it. Not a bot, not a form queue.
- 02We come back to you either way, including when the honest answer is that we cannot help.
- 03The conversation that follows costs nothing, and commits you to nothing.