The Job Hunting Podcast

Episode 333 - Workforce participation drops sharply after 45, despite strong demand for experienced talent. In this episode, we explore the structural barriers, age bias, and outdated career models holding professionals back, and what individuals, employers, and governments can do to better support longer, more productive working lives.
We have all fallen in love with NASA's crew for its Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon in more than half a century. What stood out to me was the composition of the team. Every astronaut selected was Generation Xer, in their 40s and 50s.
When the stakes are high, we do not default to youth. We choose experience. That's what NASA did . They choose judgment. They choose people who have navigated complexity before and can do so again under pressure.
And yet, in the labour market, we continue to behave as if the opposite were true.
This contradiction sits at the heart of what has been described as the “longevity paradox”: We are living longer, healthier lives, but participating less in the workforce as we age. For the corporate professionals I work with, this is not an abstract concept. It is a lived experience, often emerging in their mid-40s and becoming more pronounced thereafter.
This issue has become more personal for me recently. At the age of 54, I have just become a grandmother. It has prompted a different kind of reflection about time, work, and what the next decades should look like. Like many of my clients, I am not thinking about slowing down. I am thinking about how to work in a way that is sustainable, meaningful, and aligned with the realities of a longer life.
The question is whether our institutions are prepared to support that.
Read the full Blog on the Website

31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now
Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses

Timestamps to guide your listening:
00:00 Introduction to the Longevity Economy Paradox
06:14 Understanding Workforce Participation and Aging
09:02 Personal Experiences with Career Transitions
12:09 The Role of Technology and AI in the Workforce
15:22 Challenges of Ageism in Recruitment
18:09 Strategies for Job Seekers Over 50
21:23 The Importance of Networking and Community Support
24:16 Midlife Career Checkup: Questions to Reflect On
26:57 Final Thoughts and Action Steps for Listeners

Links mentioned in this episode:
Michele Lemmens' LinkedIn
Rebecca Hall's LinkedIn

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
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Episode 332 - Natalie Moore joins me to explore what leaders and professionals need most in 2026: courage, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and space to think. We also discuss burnout, work design, hybrid work, and how career pivots can happen through small, intentional steps.
The themes in this week's podcast episode are not really about personal reinvention in the lifestyle sense, but they're also not hot takes about work culture. They sit at the intersection, as so many issues do when it comes to career and our personal lives. How to we reinvent leadership, organisational design, career strategy, and human behaviour so we can cope with the new ways of working?
That is where many of my clients live. They are not junior workers trying to “find their passion.” They are experienced corporate professionals, senior managers, and executives trying to make good decisions in a labour market that has become harder to read, less forgiving, and more emotionally demanding.
Here is what I keep seeing in my coaching work.
My clients are not simply struggling with job search mechanics. Yes, they need resumes, LinkedIn positioning, networking strategies, and interview preparation. But those are not the only things making this moment difficult. Many are also dealing with return-to-office mandates they did not choose, leadership cultures that speak the language of wellbeing without redesigning work, and AI-driven hiring processes that make the market feel more opaque than ever. LinkedIn reported in January that nearly two-thirds of people say finding a job has become more challenging, while U.S. applicants per open role have doubled since spring 2022. At the same time, 93% of recruiters say they plan to increase their use of AI in 2026.
Those are not small shifts. They change how people experience work, how they think about security, and how they approach career planning.
In my conversation with Natalie Moore on The Job Hunting Podcast (332), what emerged most clearly was that professionals who are coping best right now are not necessarily the most confident. They are the ones who are able to think clearly under pressure, notice when an environment is no longer working for them, and act with intention before their options narrow.
Read the full Blog on the Website

31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now
Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses

Timestamps to guide your listening:
00:00 – Welcome Back: Natalie Moore Returns
01:11 – Reinvention After Closing a Business
03:10 – Headline Hopes for the End of 2026
06:42 – How Leaders Can Stop Reacting and Start Responding
08:59 – True or False: Can Resilience Training Fix Burnout?
09:47 – True or False: Will Good Workers Naturally Adapt to AI?
10:55 – True or False: Do Career Pivots Require a Big Leap?
12:42 – Three Questions to Ask When You Feel Flat at Work
16:45 – What Stress and Burnout Really Look Like in High Performers
21:45 – Listening to Your Body and Noticing Your Triggers
24:03 – What We’re Leaving Behind in 2026
25:22 – Showing Up Differently in Business and on LinkedIn
28:40 – Why Workplace Wellbeing Still Feels Surface-Level
30:32 – Is It Time to Redesign the Workday?
32:55 – When Training and Development Add to Burnout
35:19 – The High-Performance Habits That Need to Go
36:50 – Why White Space Matters at Work and in Job Search
38:08 – Natalie’s Career Change Story and the Power of Slow Pivots
39:21 – What Matters Most in 2026: Confidence, Courage, or Clarity?
41:43 – AI, Human Work, and What Still Makes Us Valuable
43:34 – The Human Capabilities Professionals Need Now
45:44 – Final Thoughts and Where to Find Natalie

Links mentioned in this episode:
Natalie Moore's LinkedIn Profile
Follow Josh Piterman on Instagram to find out when he's running breathwork workshops in Melbourne
Josh Piterman Inside Timer
Episode 130 - Post-pandemic Stress and Other Factor Affecting Your Wellbeing at Work, with Natalie Moore and Lisa Saunders
Episode 72 - Systemic Gender Biases, Double Standards, Mental and Physical Dangers Affecting Women in the Workplace - with Hannah Piterman Ph.D.

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
X / Twitter

Episode 331 - Your experience may speak for itself on paper, but in interviews your body language is speaking too. Linda Clemons shares practical ways to project confidence, warmth, and authority so experienced professionals can perform better in interviews, networking events, and high-stakes conversations.
In Episode 331 of The Job Hunting Podcast, I speak with Linda Clemons about body language, executive presence, and the ways experienced professionals are often misread in interviews. Our conversation explores how stress shows up physically, why long tenure can mask unhelpful communication habits, and what candidates can do to present themselves with greater clarity, warmth, and authority.
Experienced professionals often assume that interview performance is mainly determined by the strength of their track record and the quality of their answers. That assumption makes sense. After all, senior candidates are usually selected for interview because their credentials already suggest competence. Yet many still leave the process confused by the outcome. They feel they answered well, understood the brief, and showed relevant experience, but did not turn the opportunity into an offer. In many cases, the missing factor is not substance. It is presentation in the broadest sense of the word.
This does not mean superficial polish or fake self-confidence. It means the interaction between verbal and nonverbal communication: posture, tone, pace, facial expression, emotional regulation, and the overall impression of steadiness. Employers do not assess these factors separately from capability. They fold them into their judgment of capability. For experienced professionals, especially those who have spent a long time inside one organisation, this creates a specific challenge. They may be highly competent, but no longer practised in making that competence clear to strangers in a short, high-pressure setting.
That issue came through clearly in my conversation with Linda Clemons, a global expert in nonverbal communication and executive presence. One of her most useful observations is that people are constantly judging alignment. They listen to the words, but they also notice whether the rest of the person appears to support them. When language, tone, movement, and emotional state line up, credibility rises. When they do not, doubt enters the room, even if nobody says it out loud.
Read the full Blog on the Website

31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now
Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses

Timestamps to guide your listening:
00:00 The Evolution of a Podcast Host
01:14 Understanding Body Language and Nonverbal Communication
04:04 The Impact of Posture on Communication
06:55 Reading Nonverbal Cues in Real Life
10:01 Preparing for Job Interviews
12:56 Navigating Interview Dynamics
16:01 The Importance of Presence in Communication
18:17 Body Language and Interview Presence
21:03 Navigating Behavioral Questions
23:37 The Importance of Authentic Communication
26:01 Understanding Communication Dynamics
28:09 The TAP Framework: Truthful, Authentic, Purposeful
30:33 Vulnerability in Leadership
33:11 Emotional Barriers: Frozen, Flooding, and Flat
38:00 The Impact of Long Tenure on Interview Performance
43:35 Linda's Book and Final Thoughts

Links mentioned in this episode:
Linda Clemons LinkedIn Profile
Linda Clemons' Book

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
X / Twitter

Episode 330 - Patrick Dunlop, organisational psychologist and Future of Work professor, shares what he learned from studying recruiters, what’s overhyped, what’s still painfully manual, and how experienced candidates can move with confidence through modern selection processes.
Spend enough time around job seekers and you will hear the same diagnosis: “Hiring is broken.”
Spend enough time around recruiters and you will hear a different one: “We’re drowning.”
Both can be true. What has changed in the last few years is not simply the technology inside recruitment. It’s the volume, the noise, and the mismatch between what candidates think is happening and what is actually happening inside organisations.
In my conversation with Professor Patrick Dunlop, an organisational psychologist at Curtin University, one theme kept resurfacing: the biggest misunderstanding is not about AI. It’s about realism. Hiring varies wildly from one organisation to the next, and much of what candidates assume is “automated” is still surprisingly manual, uneven, and dependent on human judgement.
What follows is a structured, evidence-informed way to think about modern hiring if you are an experienced professional, particularly in your 40s and beyond.
Read the full Blog on the Website

31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now
Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses

Timestamps to guide your listening:
00:00 Understanding Assessment Tools
00:52 The Importance of Job Analysis
03:48 Designing Effective Assessment Processes
06:53 The Role of Simulations and Case Studies
09:59 Concerns About Psychometric Testing
12:56 Faking in Assessments and Its Implications
15:50 Cultural Differences in Assessment Responses
26:44 Cross-Cultural Assessment in Personality Testing
30:57 Candidate Experience and Recruitment Processes
36:10 The Impact of AI on Job Applications
39:04 Adapting to New Technologies in Job Search
49:19 Future Trends in Recruitment and Assessment

Links mentioned in this episode:
Patrick Dunlop's LinkedIn Profile

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
X / Twitter

Episode 329 - We unpack what interviewers are really reacting to, how to show agility at any age, and how to stay authentic while adapting to different cultures and expectations.
I understand why Brené Brown and Adam Grant can say “thumbs down” on executive presence and get a standing ovation. In their conversation on Dare to Lead, they frame executive presence as “party of one” and contrast it with leadership as a “collective capability.” It’s a compelling point, and a necessary correction for leaders who confuse charisma with competence or confuse performative confidence with real stewardship.
But in my day-to-day work as a career coach for experienced corporate professionals, executives, and senior technical specialists, executive presence is not a fad, a buzzword, or an outdated corporate relic. It is a hiring variable. It’s the most searched term on my podcast’s website. And pretending otherwise leaves job seekers at the mercy of unspoken rules.
That’s why I devoted Episode 329 of The Job Hunting Podcast to executive presence, alongside two experts who don’t treat it as a personality type or a costume: Dr. Alexa Chilcutt, executive coach and faculty lead for the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School’s Executive Education Business Communication Certificate, and Dr. Carl DuPont, Associate Professor of Voice at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute and Executive Education faculty at Carey.
What I took from our discussion is this: executive presence is real because the question isn’t whether it exists. The question is whether we teach it responsibly, in a way that helps professionals be read accurately, without forcing them into a narrow mould.
Read the full Blog on the Website

31 Days of Action for Job Seekers
Find Your Talents: Learn About Your Strengths, and Watch Your Career Grow
Join 5,000+ Readers of The Job Hunting Newsletter: Subscribe Now
Lear More About Renata's career coaching and courses

Timestamps to guide your listening:
My website
My Instagram
Subscribe to my newsletter
Group coaching wait list
Work with Renata: All my courses and coaching services
Alexa Chilcutt, PhD
Carl DuPont, DMA
Alexa and Carl's website
Alexa and Carl's book - for 25% discount, enter the code Pres26 at checkout

Links mentioned in this episode:
00:00 Introduction to Executive Presence
01:51 Defining Executive Presence
04:43 The Importance of Communication
07:36 Challenging Traditional Views on Executive Presence
09:54 Navigating Ageism in the Workplace
12:52 Cultural Dissonance and Code Switching
28:33 Authenticity vs. Performance in Executive Presence
32:27 The Evolution of Personal Branding
34:22 Navigating Cultural Expectations in Professional Appearance
37:42 The Role of Voice in Executive Presence
41:23 Embracing Diversity in Professional Narratives
46:52 The Art of Communication: Finding Your Voice
52:03 Overcoming Barriers to Executive Presence

About the host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I'm Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I'm also an executive coach, job-hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach corporate, non-profit, and public professionals the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
Watch the Episodes on YouTube
Follow Renata on Social Media:
LinkedIn
Instagram
Facebook
X / Twitter