Career Clarity and Reinvention – Interview with Kirsten de Greling Visman

Kirsten de Greling-Visman is an international career strategist and founder of Clarity Compass Career Coaching, helping mid- to senior-level professionals stop being the world's best-kept secret and get hired. After growing her own coaching business across nine countries, she now guides clients through career transitions and the realities of today's brutal job market from France.

In this interview, Kirsten shares why traditional job-search advice is now useless. She also talks about what it means to own your career story and how professionals can stand out as top candidates in a market crowded with AI-generated applications and strong competition.

Kirsten de Greling Visman, International Career Coach and Strategist

After rebuilding your own career across nine countries, what does "career success" mean to you today?

Most people get their idea of success from parents, teachers, or mentors. I did too, and it worked for me until I moved to a place where that definition no longer fit.

When I moved to Cameroon and Burkina Faso, I quickly realized there were no jobs that matched what I had done before and loved. This wake-up call made me rethink what a successful life meant to me.

I realized that success for me meant spending my time on what truly matters to me, including a career that fits my lifestyle and values.

With the career part of that definition out of balance, my misery bled into everything, my mental health, motherhood, my relationships, and my confidence.

Yet what saved me every time we moved countries was not a new job. It was the promise of conversations and new friendships with amazing people from rich and diverse cultural backgrounds, and the possibility of expanding my network with brilliant people I would never have met otherwise. Surprisingly, my GP in Ouagadougou started opening my eyes to an opportunity I had never considered on my own, launching a global career coaching business.

Without a definition of success to show you the way, it is hard to pursue it and invite others to support you on your journey there. In today’s tough job market, with fierce competition all around and AI changing industries, that human connection is more important than ever.

Nowadays, success to me looks like a cross border career coaching business, but with boundaries. I give my all to my clients so they stop being the world’s best kept secret and get hired. But I spend Thursdays in the mountains. My last calls finish at 5 PM with ample time for family dinners. I do not do weekend sessions.

How did your own identity crisis reshape the way you coach people through career transitions?

I did not just have one identity crisis. I went through it three times, each in a different country. The first breakdown happened in Albania. I turned down three job offers to move there with my fiancé. Four months later, I was miserable. For the first time as an adult, I had no job to go to, no purpose to my days, and not speaking Albanian made finding work even harder.

Burkina Faso shook me up in a different way. Though I was studying for my coaching degree, I was still miserable with my unemployment status. Yet as soon as I left our gate, I was surrounded by people living in real poverty who were not miserable at all. This confrontation made me question the validity of my emotional struggles for a long time.

Then we moved to the Seychelles. It was a beautiful paradise but also isolating and lonely for me. Without a school community, I spent my days alone on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. My sense of identity fell apart again.

People often say you should separate your identity from your work. I do not think that is the whole answer. For those who build their careers around purpose and impact, work is part of who they are. When that is disrupted, everything feels shaky, confidence, relationships, and sense of self.

Having gone through this disruption three times, I can relate to my clients even if their stories are different from mine. When someone tells me they feel lost about their next steps, I do not start by exploring new job titles. I start by looking at what is really going on beneath the surface.

Why do you believe traditional job search advice no longer works for many professionals around the world?

Because that advice was designed for a job market that no longer exists. The old advice tells you to tailor your CV, use keywords, and keep applying to more and more jobs until you receive an offer. Many people still follow this advice closely, spending hours applying to everything and doing what they are told. Yet they still get ghosted.

Today, many jobs are filled through referrals and conversations before they are ever posted. By the time a job appears on LinkedIn, there are already hundreds of applicants. The odds are not in your favor.

So professionals who spend all their energy applying on job boards are competing with hundreds of others just as talented, with little chance of getting an interview. I call this a reactive job search strategy.

I encourage my clients to use a proactive job search strategy. This includes looking for trigger events in their industry that could lead to new opportunities soon, finding the key people involved, and starting conversations with them before any job description is written or a vacancy is announced.

This approach is not about trying to impress senior leaders. It is about showing that you can solve their most urgent problems. They do not have to guess where you fit, you show them you understand their challenges and offer your expertise before they even create the job. Sometimes the job description is written just for you.

Too many professionals still write their CVs as a list of tasks in the context of their past employers. That does not work anymore. You need to present your expertise from the future employer’s perspective, using language that speaks to their needs and goals. That is what modern career management is about.

What do professionals worldwide underestimate about positioning themselves for new opportunities in the current market?

They do not realize how invisible they are, even as highly experienced professionals. Many assume their experience and track record will speak for itself, but it often does not.

Sadly, I see this often, someone with fifteen or twenty years of experience applying to many jobs and still receiving no response. Their reputation is not helping as much as they think, their network is not opening doors, and their CV just lists achievements that made sense in another context.

One of my clients described it well. Her CV did not even get past the ATS, so no hiring manager ever saw it. She felt invisible, too senior for some roles but still not relevant to the market.

She is not alone. Many mid to senior professionals feel the same way. The job market is tough, and many CVs are AI written and sound alike. Hiring managers are overwhelmed by too many soulless applications.

Today’s job market is about owning your career story and sharing it as a value proposition in language and context your future employer understands. Even as a highly experienced professional, if you do not do this, you will remain the world’s best kept secret and will not get hired any time soon.

What does "own your career story" actually look like in practice during a job search or career pivot?

This is easier said than done, but it means that before you ever speak to them, they already know why they should hire you.

Most professionals wait to be asked, "So why should we hire you?" and then scramble to prove themselves in their answer. Owning your story means you have positioned yourself so clearly that the question never needs to be asked.

It starts with getting honest about what you actually do, not your job title, not your responsibilities, but the thing that changes because you are there, the thing that falls apart when you are not.

Then you make that visible. Every touchpoint, whether it is your CV, your LinkedIn, or your first conversation, signals the same thing, here is what I solve and why it matters to you.

You stop hoping someone else will tell you where they see you fit. You make yourself an obvious hire for the roles you know you can thrive in. When you do that, you are not convincing anyone, you are making it easy for them to place you, refer you, or hire you.

What patterns are you seeing right now among professionals who are actively job searching or considering a career change in this current brutal job market?

I am seeing two responses to the fear around the uncertainty of there being a new job out there for them. Neither response is working.

Most active job seekers are doing everything they have been told to do. They are tailoring every CV, optimizing for keywords, and using AI tools to speed up the process, sending out hundreds of applications without a single interview to show for it.

Yet professionals are also staying put in jobs they have outgrown, not because they want to, but because they are terrified to move. 57 percent of workers are now job hugging, clinging to roles out of fear, even though they are ready for their next step.

But both groups are exhausted. Not just from work. It is the weight of the headlines, restructurings, industry wipeouts, budget cuts, AI replacing roles. That takes a mental toll, even when a job feels secure.

Underneath all of this fear is a network problem. Most professionals have not upgraded their networks to match their career aspirations. Their connections still represent where they have been, not where they want to go. They are not in conversations with the right people in the industries or roles they are trying to move into.

What are the biggest challenges you're seeing with AI generated applications in the job market right now?

There are two main challenges. Recruiters are receiving hundreds of perfectly soulless AI generated applications per opportunity, and hiring managers say it is still hard to find the right people to interview even with so many applicants for one role.

Job seekers often think they are doing everything right by keyword optimizing their CVs for ATS screening, but their applications still end up in the no pile.

Here is the problem, AI can make your application look good, but if it does not include your story, your personality, or your spark, there is no real human connection. When a recruiter or hiring manager reads your CV, they do not get a sense of who you are. There is nothing that makes them want to meet you.

Recruiters also notice a disconnect during interviews. The person they meet often seems very different from the one described in the CV. This mismatch makes hiring managers more cautious with all candidates.

AI can be a helpful tool for job seekers when used well. But it cannot do the deeper work of finding and sharing your story. It does not know your passion, the impact you have made, or how you solve problems. AI can improve your wording, but it misses the core of what makes you worth hiring. That part takes more effort.

When you know and share your story well, everything lines up, your CV, LinkedIn, conversations, and interviews. You show up the same way everywhere, with your spark and unique value, using words that connect with your future employer. That is what makes people feel you are the right person for the job.

What advice would you give to someone considering hiring a career coach?

If you have been actively applying for months without getting interviews, I understand that is a tough place to be in. Please remember that it does not mean you are not qualified for any of those jobs. However, it is a sign that your job search strategy is broken somewhere. That is where a career coach comes in.

A coach is not there to rewrite your CV and applications, but to help you identify what is not working, why it is happening, and how to fix it.

Often, it is about how you present yourself. Are you just listing what you have done, or are you showing that you solve problems? Most of us were never taught to make that shift, but it changes how you come across.

Job searching has changed too. What worked three, five, or ten years ago does not work the same way now. A good coach helps you update your approach, shows you what works today, and gives you tools for the current market.

Do not hesitate to get help from an expert career coach with an outside perspective, someone who can see the things and options that are hidden to you.

What is one thing you wish more professionals understood about their careers?

Your career is yours to shape and create, not your employer’s, not the market’s, but yours. I see many talented people waiting for someone to notice their potential, to tell them to move on, or for the perfect opportunity to just magically show up.

But waiting or not taking charge of your career leaves you at the mercy of a job market that will not wait for you to catch up.

The people who get the roles they want are the ones who change how they manage their careers. They stop just answering "why should we hire you" and start showing "this is what I offer and this is what I want." They do not expect others to figure out where they fit or leave it up to chance.

In a competitive market, having a clear value proposition is what makes you stand out. One of my clients put it this way, "I now see my career as something I actively shape and control through my career story." Throughout her journey with me, her skills and experience did not change. What changed was how she viewed and positioned herself.

With a proactive career management strategy and a clear value proposition, your career does not just happen to you anymore, opportunities start coming to you even when you are not looking. When people know exactly what you are on the market for, they will remember you when the right opportunity comes up and refer you.

"Your career is something you build, and it starts when you decide you get to choose where you fit."

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