As I studied Engineering I was undoubtedly always more attracted to science and pragmatism than to arts and philosophy. However, there was a phrase I heard my Philosophy professor say that really marked me: Quoting José Ortega y Gasset he said, “I am myself and my circumstances.”

I think that there is no better title than this phrase for a treatise on behavioural sciences (heavens! I almost wrote behavioural engineering!). Indeed our behaviour, comprising actions and reactions, is always dependant on certain “circumstances”.

A professional career is led by various “circumstances”, that lead us to take decisions to take advantage or not of opportunities that arise.

After six years conducting Executive Searches I have yet not found any career created by a professional. It is hard to hear, as if it were an inescapable truth, that a career can be created, or rather, 100% planned.

It's a lie! Every step we take in our career, although it may have some element of planning, results from the crossing of an opportunity with the moment in our professional lives! Of course, normally nobody is expecting to be contacted by me when I present an opportunity for change.

Our moment is concerned with our whole past and with current “circumstances”. Our past, more or less recent, is full of goals, achieved or not, of relationships with people, at all levels, and who may say good or bad things about us.

Indeed, a project to recruit a key executive should always be based on a methodology that in “only” 100% of cases there should be careful checking of professional's references as well as analysis.

Those who think that we only have to write something on a CV, to clearly announce something for it to be true are quite wrong!

People who we have come across will be contacted by us, obviously confidentially and professionally and they will, more or less openly, confirm our skills in the field.

Advice: Let us be honest professionals, let us make sure that expectations are known by us and by those who work with us, let us serve the company.

If my career has its “whats” and particularly its “whys”, without a doubt “I am myself and my references”.