We recently received more than 300 applications for just one Non-Executive Director opportunity. The calibre of the field was exceptional. There were experienced executives, established Directors and aspiring NEDs from across Australia, bringing expertise in governance, finance, risk, transformation, property, community services, government and many other areas.
Reviewing such a large and capable field reinforced something we often see in Board recruitment - that having the right experience and making that experience easy for a Board to see are two different things.
So, if you are building a Board career, there are a few practical things worth considering when preparing your next application.
1.Start with your Board experience
A Board CV is not simply an executive CV with a few governance roles added to the top. If you already hold Board or committee appointments, make them easy to find.
Lead with your Board and governance experience before moving into your executive career. The person reviewing your application is trying to understand your governance capability quickly. Help them do that.
2. Give your experience some context
A title alone rarely tells the whole story. For each relevant Board appointment, think about including context such as:
• the size and scale of the organisation
• industry or sector
• regulatory environment
• financial or asset scale
• geographic reach
• organisational complexity
• committees you have chaired or served on
• significant governance challenges you have helped navigate.
This helps the reader understand the environment in which you have operated, rather than simply seeing a list of titles.
3. Be clear about governance versus executive experience
Many senior executives have worked closely with Boards throughout their careers. That experience can be highly valuable, particularly for someone seeking their first NED role.
But advising or presenting to a Board is different from carrying formal governance responsibility as a Director. Be clear about which experience you have.
If you are moving towards your first NED appointment, highlight the governance-related elements of your executive career — risk, strategy, regulatory oversight, financial stewardship, transformation and working with Boards — without overstating them.
4. Think about what you add to the Board
Board recruitment is rarely about finding the single “best” candidate. It is about finding the right person to complement the capability already around the table. A very strong candidate can miss out simply because another candidate brings a capability the Board particularly needs at that point in time.
5. Make it easy for the reader
With more than 300 applications to review, clarity matters. The strongest Board CVs tend to help the reader quickly understand:
Where have you governed?
What scale and complexity have you worked at?
What are your strongest areas of expertise?
And what will you contribute around the Board table?
That does not mean squeezing your career into a single page or removing important detail. It means being deliberate about what comes first. Your executive career remains important. But for a Board application, your governance capability should be doing the heavy lifting.
If you are just beginning your NED journey… Don’t be discouraged by highly competitive Board processes. There were many extremely capable people in this field who did not progress.
For emerging Directors, building a portfolio takes time. Continue developing your governance capability, look for opportunities where your existing expertise genuinely adds value and keep refining how you communicate that experience.
Sometimes an unsuccessful application isn’t telling you that you aren’t Board-ready. It may simply mean that another candidate was a closer fit for what that particular Board needed at that particular time.