The ‘Invisible’ Executive: Ehsan Ali Au on Navigating Market Value After Long-Term Roles

In a recent LinkedIn post, Ehsan Ali Au shares a poignant observation about experienced professionals struggling to find new roles despite extensive careers and significant achievements. He highlights a conversation with a technology director boasting over 25 years of industry experience, who had successfully hired more than 100 people, led award-winning programs, and consistently earned substantial salaries and bonuses for three consecutive years. Despite this impressive track record, the director found himself six months into an unsuccessful job search.

The core of Ehsan Ali Au’s concern wasn’t the job search itself, but the psychological toll it had taken on the director. As Ehsan Ali Au recounts:

“I was not like this,” he said. “A bit of desperation is building up now.”

This sentiment, Ehsan Ali Au observes, is becoming increasingly common among senior leaders globally, including Directors, Heads of Engineering, and Architects. These individuals, possessing decades of experience and proven delivery capabilities, are finding themselves feeling vulnerable, stuck, and questioning their worth – not due to a lack of skill, but because the current market struggles to recognize their value.

The Disconnect Between Internal Trust and Market Visibility

Ehsan Ali Au points out a critical distinction that often goes untold: hard work builds trust within a company, but it doesn’t guarantee visibility in the external job market. He argues that the market operates on a different set of principles than internal company dynamics.

“Hard work gets you trusted inside a company. It does not get you found in a market,” Ehsan Ali Au writes. “That is a very different game.”

This realization often hits experienced professionals who have spent years, if not decades, in stable, high-impact roles. Their value has been consistently demonstrated and rewarded internally, leading them to believe their worth is self-evident. However, when transitioning to the job market, they discover that their internal currency doesn’t always translate.

Rediscovering Marketable Value

The turning point in Ehsan Ali Au’s conversation with the technology director came when he shifted the focus from titles and responsibilities to tangible problem-solving. By asking the director to articulate the actual problems he solved and the unique decisions only he could make, the narrative changed.

“Within ten minutes, he was a different person. He hadn’t lost his value. He had forgotten how to see it.”

According to Ehsan Ali Au, this experience underscores a crucial point: many seasoned professionals haven’t lost their value; they’ve simply lost the ability to articulate it in a way that resonates with the external market. The job search requires a different kind of storytelling – one that emphasizes impact, unique contributions, and solutions to market-relevant problems, rather than just tenure and internal accomplishments.

Addressing the ‘Invisible’ Professional

Ehsan Ali Au frames this common predicament not as a sign of being broken, but of being ‘invisible’ to the market. He emphasizes that invisibility is a fixable condition, unlike being fundamentally broken.

“If you’ve been out longer than expected. If that quiet confidence is starting to crack. You’re not broken. You’re invisible. Different thing. Invisible is fixable.”

To help professionals overcome this challenge, Ehsan Ali Au is offering live sessions focused on rediscovering and articulating their market value. He stresses that this is a common issue for many experienced leaders who may be experiencing a temporary disconnect between their proven capabilities and their market visibility.