Show Notes
thenowwhat.co.uk You know you're capable. You've got ideas, drive, the whole thing. But when you're job hunting, ambition starts to feel less like fuel and more like something you need to apologise for.
This episode is about the weird contradiction of being ambitious while applying for roles you're overqualified for — and still not getting them. It's about the shame that creeps in when you can't even get a call back for a job you could do in your sleep. And it's about what happens when you realise that waiting for permission might be the thing that's actually killing you.
No neat answers here. Just what I'm doing about it right now, which may or may not be the right call, but it's better than sitting around pretending the ambition doesn't exist.
If you're tired of folding yourself into shapes that don't fit, this one might land.
If you're asking yourself 'now what?', you're in the right place.
Check out Starting Over — another podcast supporting people navigating redundancy and career transition:https://open.spotify.com/show/4sJJ60cFs02lECqjWlxHcr?si=0415c60728d141a6
More from Now What? - Life after redundancy
After the best part of a year and somewhere north of a hundred applications, I've been offered a role and this episode is the honest version of what that actually feels like, recorded a while before I've even started, with none of the hindsight smoothed in yet.
There's a particular kind of unlucky where one thing goes wrong and you can just about laugh about it. Then there's Dan Roberts's 2025, where the wrong things queued up to take turns; right up until the week he finally caught a break and then redundancy turned up two days later like it had been waiting for an invite.
Most people navigating redundancy have spent years being good at their jobs. The doing was never really the problem. The bit that catches people out is the presenting — interview panels, networking rooms, video calls with recruiters — where suddenly you have to articulate your value out loud, to strangers, in real time, without your brain quietly filing everything under unavailable.
Most people treat a recruiter like a fire extinguisher — ignore it completely until something's on fire, then hope it works first time. In this episode, I'm joined by Neil Johns, Director at Merje, a specialist recruitment business working with everyone from startups and FinTechs through to national banking groups and global organisations, to find out what the job search actually looks like from the other side of the desk.
The salary conversation is one of the most anxiety-producing moments in any job search — and when you're coming from redundancy, it's even more loaded. Your last salary exists but it may not reflect what the market currently pays. The pressure of needing a role changes what you're willing to say out loud. And the advice available is either negotiation-bro overconfident or so hedged it's useless.