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One Huddler moved from HR technology into healthcare SaaS after a two-month interview process. Recruiter visibility, carefully prepared references, and a clear player-coach story helped overcome an imperfect category match. The experience shows how senior marketers can translate adjacent expertise, prepare advocates, and demonstrate the operating style a growing company needs from its next marketing leader.
One Huddler turned on LinkedIn's “Open to Recruiters” setting without publicly displaying “Open to Work.”
The first recruiter call that followed became the opportunity she eventually accepted.
Two months after her first interview, the Huddler landed a Vice President of Marketing role at a midsize healthcare SaaS company. The move took her from a roughly $20 million HR technology business to a roughly $50 million company in a different category.
Her background was not a perfect industry match. What did match was how she wanted to operate.
The Huddler saw herself as a player-coach who wanted to build, giving the hiring company a reason to look beyond exact category experience and consider how her operating style could fit the work ahead.
Search Snapshot
The Huddler's search demonstrates the difference between being visible to recruiters and publicly announcing a job search.
She enabled LinkedIn's “Open to Recruiters” setting rather than using the public “Open to Work” option. That decision made her discoverable to recruiters while keeping the search less visible to everyone else on the platform.
It worked quickly. The first recruiter phone call generated through that visibility ultimately led to the role she accepted.
For senior marketing executives who are uncomfortable publicly signaling a transition, recruiter-only visibility can provide another way to enter executive-search pipelines.
The Huddler was moving from HR technology into healthcare SaaS, so her background did not fit the new company's category exactly.
The lesson she took from the experience was that “round peg, round hole doesn't always apply.”
There were other points of alignment. Both roles were within technology businesses, and the new company needed a marketing leader willing to build. The Huddler specifically identified as a player-coach, giving her a way to connect her prior operating experience with what the new company needed.
The move also represented an increase in company scale, from roughly $20 million to $50 million.
Rather than making exact industry experience the entire argument, the search gave the hiring team another question to consider: did this executive have the operating style and experience required for the next stage of the business?
In this case, the answer was yes.
The Huddler's willingness to operate as a player-coach was not simply interview positioning. It reflected the kind of work she wanted to do.
That distinction matters when considering a senior marketing opportunity. Some executives want to inherit larger organizations and concentrate primarily on leadership and strategy. Others still want to build while leading.
For this Huddler, the latter matched her preferred operating style.
That gave her a clearer way to discuss fit even while moving into a new category. Instead of relying only on industry credentials, she could show that the way she wanted to lead aligned with the company's needs.
The hiring process included six virtual interviews followed by one in-person interview.
Seven conversations gave the company multiple opportunities to evaluate the Huddler while giving her time to demonstrate a consistent leadership story.
The process also required sustained preparation. Moving into a new category meant the Huddler needed to connect her previous experience with the new environment throughout the process rather than depending on a perfect résumé match to make that connection for her.
Her seven-year tenure at her previous company added another part of that story. She had stayed long enough to demonstrate sustained experience and had left on good terms, giving her a stable foundation from which to explain the next move.
References became a particularly significant part of this hiring process.
The recruiter contacted all 12 references the Huddler provided.
The Huddler had an in-depth process for briefing those references, drawing on the CMO Huddles Huddle Buddies Playbook. Rather than treating references as an administrative step at the end of the search, she prepared them for the conversations they might have about her candidacy.
With 12 people being contacted, that preparation mattered. Each conversation had the potential to reinforce or complicate the story she had spent the interview process establishing.
The experience is a useful reminder that references are part of an executive candidate's overall positioning. The people advocating for a candidate should understand the opportunity and be prepared to speak accurately about the work they observed.
The Huddler had spent seven years at her previous company and left on good terms.
That history provided continuity as she made two changes at once: moving into a different category and joining a larger organization.
The new opportunity did not require her career to follow a perfectly linear category path. Instead, the hiring process gave her room to demonstrate which parts of her experience would transfer and why her preferred operating style fit the company's needs.
Two months after the first interview, that case resulted in an offer.
The outcome reinforces the Huddler's own lesson that a candidate does not always need to be the obvious “round peg” for a role. Relevant experience can extend beyond industry labels when the candidate can clearly connect prior work, leadership style, and the needs of the new organization.
Yes. This Huddler moved from HR technology into healthcare SaaS. Her experience suggests that exact category alignment is not always required when other parts of the candidate's background and operating style match what the company needs.
It can provide recruiter visibility without displaying the public “Open to Work” banner. In this case, the Huddler turned it on and the first recruiter call ultimately led to the role she accepted.
The Huddler used an in-depth reference-briefing process from the CMO Huddles Huddle Buddies Playbook. Her experience is especially notable because the recruiter contacted all 12 references she provided.
Not necessarily. This Huddler specifically wanted to build while leading, and that operating style helped demonstrate fit with the company's needs.
Read the original CMO Job Search Success Story.
CMO Huddles supports experienced B2B marketing executives through its dedicated Transition Team, peer connections, practical search resources, and shared executive experience.