4x Unicorn Exec on the Invitation-Only Market for Senior Leaders

The executive job market has always had its hidden corners, where top roles are filled based on referrals and references. But now AI is inversely expanding this “hidden job market,” making senior-level positions even harder to find. A growing number of companies are pulling these roles from public view, hoping to avoid a flood of AI-assisted applications from unqualified candidates, and creating a hiring landscape that operates on a fundamentally different set of rules.

To understand the evolving job search, we spoke with Andy Mowat, founder of Whispered, a data-driven executive platform that helps leaders uncover unposted roles and insider company insights. As a seasoned operations leader, he has seen this problem from the inside at the highest levels, driving massive growth at Upwork and Culture Amp and guiding Box and Carta through IPO-scale operations. The challenge with hiring for the C-Suite and other executive roles is that it’s an intuitive search for the right experience and fit, instead of a laundry list of skills. “With senior roles, it’s not about a simple skill set. It’s about experience and strategic fit. People aren’t looking for a checklist of 12 things. You know it when you see it, and you can’t capture that in a job post,” he says.

• A tale of three titles: Data from Mowat’s firm shows the hidden job market becomes more pronounced with seniority, providing a concrete framework for understanding the varying degrees of transparency across different seniority levels. “At the director level, 20% of roles are unposted. At the VP level, 60% are not posted. At the C-level, 95% are unposted,” he outlines.

AI is the catalyst supercharging unposted executive roles. What was once a lengthy process to find a quality hire has become a deluge where 100 perfect-looking applications arrive within an hour. This has sparked an inefficient ‘AI arms race,’ where companies deploy AI screening tools to combat the flood of AI-generated applications, inadvertently filtering out strong candidates and causing rejections to pile up for HR teams. Whispered is tackling that problem from the other side, Mowat explains, using AI and shared recruiter data to help executives find and evaluate unposted opportunities before they reach public job boards.

• More resumes, more problems: The overwhelming volume forces recruiting teams to spend their time rejecting unsuitable candidates rather than proactively identifying top talent. “When an attractive company posts a role, you’ll get 5,000 applicants and 99% will be unqualified. You see this classic aspirant mindset where someone thinks that just because they’ve sold some things, they are qualified to be a CRO,” Mowat explains.

• From candidate to critic: Rejecting hundreds of candidates potentially impacts employee experience, customer perception, and even market share, making it a C-level strategic concern. “You burn your brand by constantly saying no. When you reject 4,995 people, that bad experience can have business consequences. The person who feels ‘dissed’ by OpenAI might decide to go try Claude instead,” Mowat observes.

With AI making the traditional “front door” application process useless at the highest levels, Mowat says the most viable path forward for job searchers is through back channels like referrals. Executive candidates must fundamentally shift their approach from passive application to active engagement and strategic influence. “The front door doesn’t work anymore. Because everyone’s applying with AI, you have to go through back channels,” Mowat stresses.

• Drafting the competition: A back channel strategy leverages an existing network of professionals to gain early access to opportunities that might otherwise remain unposted, turning competitors into collaborators. “Find people who are doing the job you want today, build relationships with them, and ask them to send opportunities your way when recruiters reach out,” Mowat recommends.

• Follow the leader: Identifying these predictable hiring sequences allows candidates to anticipate needs and position themselves strategically for future roles, rather than waiting for public postings. “There are interesting patterns you can follow. For example, when a new CRO lands, they will generally hire a head of RevOps. Following those kinds of moves is a longer-play game,” he notes.

While AI is the cause of hiring challenges, it might also be the answer. Mowat proposes a forward-looking vision to use AI for powering reputation-based matching. The concept is to build a vast database of resumes and use AI to cross-reference them against a company’s employee database, instantly surfacing overlapping work histories.

Moving beyond simple keyword matching, AI can facilitate a more efficient form of network-based vetting, leveraging the power of existing connections. “Every time someone does a back-channel reference, they’re just manually lining people up based on overlapping work history. That entire process should be AI-enabled,” Mowat envisions. “You should be able to drop a resume into a repository and instantly query who in your company has overlapped with that candidate.” This capability represents just one piece of a broader vision for AI in executive hiring, which can also be used to illuminate hidden opportunities, map trusted networks, and help executives navigate career moves with better data and context. Ultimately, AI could transform back-channel searches into a transparent, trusted, and data-driven network for senior talent.