How do I succeed in board applications?

Board roles are competitive. On average, compensated positions receive more than 30 applications. In this article, we aggregate tips to give you the best chance of succeeding. 

Understand what unique value you bring to each board 

"What sort of unique value add are they bringing to the table? They might be an impact investor who can really bring that impact lens to the table. They might have deep marketplace expertise or lots of experience with international expansion or M&A activity. With each board member, I'm quite clear about what extra value they are bringing." Tessa Clarke, Co-founder and CEO of Olio, Venture Partner at Mustard Seed MACS

Demonstrate an ability to work as part of a team 

“[In your board CV] don't put in a load of words like 'driving' and 'delivering', because all that does is say I'm a really great exec. Try to find ways of talking about the way you bring people together, the way you collaborate, the way you create system change by looking across organisations for synergies. Find some language that plays more to that non-exec skill set than it does to just saying I'm a fantastic exec." Sara Weller, Money & Pension Service Chair, BT, Virgin Money, Lloyds Banking Group former/NED

Use rejections to refine your non-exec proposition 

​​"If you face rejection, you can use it as a chance to understand why you didn’t fit and where your fit could be. Don’t hesitate to ask the recruiter for clear reasons why you were rejected. When you receive a good explanation, you are more likely to use that feedback to learn and improve, rather than having a negative reaction.” Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, London Business School Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship

Less is more at interview 

"By the time you've got to the interview, you're already good enough. They're just checking personality. If you talk too much, they're thinking, 'Oh my gosh, can you imagine them in the boardroom, going on and on?' Less is more." Fiona Hathorn, CEO and Co-founder of WB Directors, Chair of Nominations Committee at Hanks

Show you can listen 

“You want listeners ... You want people who are curious and are passionate about something. It may not be the whole business. Sometimes it’s a piece of it. Sometimes it’s a thing they can contribute. But they also need to mesh that passion with your objective, so they have to listen first. I want people who say, ‘I want to understand you and your business first … and then I’m going to tell you how I can help.'” Tamara Box, Reed Smith LLP Partner, Interpath Advisory & Eve Appeal Chair, Chartered Management Institute Trustee

Develop non-exec skills through pro bono positions 

“Not-for-profit roles are a great place to start … They teach you to communicate and be effective in a group, where people are coming together with different perspectives and backgrounds, but all with the intent of trying to help and support the overall company. They help you build confidence.” Shellye Archambeau, Fortune 20 NED & Committee Chair

Show T-shaped value 

“The most valuable non-execs … have a T shape model. The horizontal bit of the T is … you contribute as best you can your skills and experience to the overall decision making. And a really good non-exec also goes deep on something.” Dr Doug Gurr, Natural History Museum Director, Alan Turing Institute Chair, ex Amazon China President 

Bring strong personal networks 

“I think the most valuable thing my board always brought to me at Push Doctor was networking. They opened doors for me. They all had a very good black book across every single level.” Wais Shaifta, CGO at Co-Op, former CEO of Push Doctor, and NED at Snappy Shopper, Reach Plc and The Gym Group

Develop a strong elevator pitch for headhunters

"If you think about a search person who may be summarising you in front of a prospective chair, ask yourself what they will say in 30 seconds, 'Oh, this is the person that did X. They achieved Y.' You have to help them. Why should they have to invent that for you when you are the person that's owning that?" Amanda Mackenzie OBE, NED at British Land and Lloyds Banking Group, former CEO of Business in the Community

Show you can contribute to discussions beyond your core area 

“Unless a non-executive can contribute to everything the board discusses of any consequence, they’re unlikely to pull their weight …  I have come to the view that specialists on boards are suboptimal. I want generalists, with some specialist knowledge - and that's a nuance thing, but it's quite different.” Gerry Murphy, Chair at Tesco and Burberry, Trustee at The Burberry Foundation, Senior Advisor at Perella Weinberg

Know who’s going to call you 

“Too often people say, ‘I want to be on the board,’ but they haven't really asked a fundamental question, which is ‘who in the executive management team is going to call you?’ I think that is a very good hurdle. It's a very good lens to think about your value to an organisation.” Baroness Dambisa Moyo, former/Board Member at Chevron, Conde Nast, Barclays, University of Oxford Endowment Fund

Show objectivity 

“We do not criticize people. We challenge specific ideas and specific proposals. We do not vote. We make decisions by consensus … We ask questions not in order to show that we are extremely smart, but to enhance the discussion … An effective chair looks for directors with these attitudes, reminds them of them before they join the board - and reinforces them through simple but powerful rules.” Professor Stanislav Shekshnia, INSEAD Professor, Chair of TechnoEnergy AG

Invest in your brand

"Do not underestimate the importance of developing your personal brand. It's possible to do that now in a way that it wasn't in 1990. But now we have tools at our disposal like LinkedIn. For many years I wrote a regular blog, so people were getting a sense of not just my technical, professional experience, but also my values. It's about bringing your own story into those board discussions, being confident to share your story." Cedi Frederick, Chair of NHS Kent & Medway, NED at Sage Homes

Make your CV ruthlessly results-driven 

"You have to be incredibly ruthless about what you're putting on that first page. What is the impact of what you’ve done? If you've increased net promoter score, if you've increased customer numbers, if you've reduced marketing spend … You have to redact it down to the absolute minimum that is very punchy and clear." Amanda Mackenzie OBE, NED at British Land and Lloyds Banking Group, former CEO of Business in the Community

Show you can influence through collective decision-making 

"When you get to a boardroom, you've got to be able to influence the whole board, or at least most of the board. You can't do it entirely in bilateral relationships. The fact it’s a collective rather than a bilateral process is one of the biggest challenges of going from management onto a board." Professor Randall Peterson, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School

Think of board applications as a campaign 

"She took speaking opportunities. She said, 'I'm looking for a new role.' She had subtle subliminal things going on in her LinkedIn profile, but the campaign was really serious." Fiona Hathorn, CEO and Co-founder of WB Directors, Chair of Nominations Committee at Hanks

Be prepared to talk about failures as well as successes 

"I want some people that have been through some failures, not just some successes. There are some people where nothing's ever gone wrong: maybe they're brilliant; maybe they've been lucky, probably both. But you don't want too many of those people, because when something does go wrong, I want somebody that has hopefully dug themselves out of something and come back from it." Angela Seymour-Jackson, Chair of PageGroup, NED at Trustpilot, Future PLC and Janus Henderson

Pick a committee specialism where demand outstrips supply 

"You've probably got a spike in something that a chair needs to fulfill around his or her board. My background meant I was a natural fit for remuneration, and not many people want to chair a remuneration committee. I'm an economist at heart: it's supply and demand. If I've got a skill set and there isn't much supply, I've increased the probability that I might be useful to that chair." Cathy Turner, NED at Lloyds Banking Group PLC, Rentokil PLC and Spectris PLC, Partner at Manchester Square Partners

Give yourself two years and be prepared for rejection

"I gave myself two years. I thought I'm going to spend two years trying to make this work, and if I can't make it work, I'll go back to full time work. For every organisation that said yes to me, there were lots that said no. You've got to kiss a lot of frogs. Some of them turn out to be toads." Sarah Flannigan, Chair of Bionic, Yeo Valley, Riverford Organic Farmers and Sawdays, Senior Advisor at OMERS Private Equity

Pick a major and be known for it 

"Pick a major - something you're going to focus on. For me it's governance, which makes sense. I ran a company that was governance and compliance. Every board has a governance and nominating committee, so that's the committee I tend to join. The other is tech. Making sure that's an area I always stay up to date on, so I can bring that point of view. Be known for something." Shellye Archambeau, Board Director at Verizon, Roper Technologies and Okta, former CEO of MetricStream, author of Unapologetically Ambitious

Keep your board profile to one page 

"My strategy was to get to the point where I had a board profile that's on one page. I've seen some that were on six or eight. And it didn't just explain what I'd done. I tried to explain what I might provide through what I'd done. It went through a few iterations, and I asked one or two people whose judgment I valued to give me critical feedback." Jane Routledge, NED at M&G Credit Income Investment Trust and Brown Advisory US Smaller Companies Trust, Governor at Cumbria Education Trust

Don’t treat non-executive interview like executive ones 

"When you go in as an executive, you're keen to demonstrate that you're competent, that you understand the issues, you've got tools and experience to do them. When you go into a NED interview, you don't get in the room with the chair unless they've already largely established you can do the role. What they're really interested in is how you might go about doing it. It sounds subtle, but it is a fundamental difference." Cathy Turner, NED at Lloyds Banking Group PLC, Rentokil PLC and Spectris PLC, Partner at Manchester Square Partners