Your search stays yours.

Most of my clients are still employed when we start working together.

So confidentiality isn't a feature of working with me. It's the foundation everything else is built on.

I don't ask you to take that on faith. Below is the actual protocol — how I communicate, how your documents are handled, how we change your LinkedIn profile without announcing anything, and the questions you should ask any search firm before your name goes anywhere near their process.

This fall, a recruiting firm's internal candidate notes were published in public job posts. The names of 102 targeted candidates appeared — most of them people who had never applied for anything. There was no hacker. The notes simply traveled somewhere nobody had thought to ask about.

That story is why this page exists. Confidentiality isn't a promise someone makes in a first conversation. It's a structure. Here's mine.

How I work: the protocol

We talk on your personal email and your personal phone. Never your work accounts — not once, not even for scheduling. If it has your employer's name on it, our work doesn't touch it.

I never contact your employer. Not your references, not anyone in your network, not anyone at your company — about you, ever, without you knowing and agreeing first.

Nothing identifiable moves without your explicit consent. Your name, your resume with your name on it, your compensation details, your reasons for looking — none of it goes to anyone, anywhere, until you've said yes to that specific move.

Calendar invitations stay neutral. Anything from me reads "Conversation with Robyn Feldberg." It never mentions a job search, and it goes to your personal email.

Your name appears nowhere public. No testimonial, no case study, no client list, no social post — without your written permission. Some of my best work will never carry a name. That's fine with me.

Your documents stay between us. Drafts and finished files are sent only to you, at your personal email. What you do with them from there is your call.

The Quiet Build: how we change your LinkedIn profile without signaling a search

The loudest signal a confidential search sends isn't a job application. It's a LinkedIn profile that gets polished all in one weekend.

On Friday it hasn't been touched in three years. On Monday it has a new headline, a new photo, a rewritten About section, and experience entries that suddenly read like achievements. Every colleague who sees it draws the same conclusion — and they are usually right.

When we optimize your profile, we don't do it that way. We do what I call the Quiet Build:

Settings first. Before a single word changes, we turn off the setting that shares your profile updates with your network. Nobody gets notified about anything that follows.

Substance next, quietly. The experience detail, the scope, the results — the parts that make a senior profile credible — go in gradually. These are the changes nobody screenshots, because they look like a leader tending a profile, not preparing an exit.

Signals last, under cover. The elements that point toward your next role — a headline aimed at where you're going, for instance — move only when there's a natural reason for the change: a work anniversary, a speaking engagement, an article, a project launch. Or they wait until you're ready for them to be seen.

You approve the timing of every change. Nothing goes live on your profile without your say-so on when.

To anyone watching, it looks like what it is: a senior leader keeping their presence current. The strategy underneath is ours.

Before your name moves: five questions for any search firm

At some point in a serious search, a recruiter or search firm will want to present you. That's their job, and good firms handle confidential candidates well. But "trust us" is not a standard.

The standard already exists, in the industry's own words. The Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants — the search profession's own association — publishes a Candidate Bill of Rights for its member firms. Its confidentiality article says it plainly:

"The unintended disclosure of an executive's interest in a new position can be highly disruptive—even catastrophic."

These five questions are simply how you hold a firm to the standard its own profession already set. Before your name enters anyone else's process, ask them — and notice how the answers feel as much as what they say.

1. Who will see the brief you've written about me? Their internal team is normal. A shared document that travels — to the client, to partners, into tools you can't see — is a different answer. You want to know every pair of eyes.

2. Where does my information live? In a database? In email threads? In AI tools that draft candidate briefs and summaries? The firms themselves often don't know until someone asks. Ask.

3. Will anything with my name on it be shared before you check with me? This is the consent gate, and it's the heart of the whole list. The answer you want is simple: no — nothing identifiable moves without your yes, each time.

4. At what point does the hiring company learn who I am? Serious firms present confidential candidates in stages — background and track record first, name when there's real interest. Know which stage you're agreeing to before you're in it.

5. When this search ends, what happens to my file? How long is it kept? Does it circulate into other searches? Can you have it removed? A file that lives forever in someone else's system is exposure you didn't choose.

You don't need a speech for any of this. You need five questions, asked calmly, early. A firm that handles leaders at your level will not be surprised by them — and a firm that bristles at them has told you something important.

What I can't control — and why I won't pretend to

I'll be straight with you about the limits, because a confidentiality page that promises everything protects nothing.

I control my side of the table completely: my email, my files, my calendar, my conduct. That's the protocol above, and you can hold me to every word of it.

I do not control a search firm's database, their software, or their habits. No advisor does — and any advisor who guarantees what happens inside someone else's systems is telling you what you want to hear. That is exactly why the five questions exist: so the parts outside my control get asked about, out loud, before your name is in them.

One more limit, and it's yours to manage: anything you open on a work device or a work network can be visible to your employer. Keep our work on your own phone and your own email, and there's no trail at work to find.

Start with a private conversation

If you're exploring quietly, the first step is a free Clarity Call — one private, no-pressure conversation. You'll leave with a clear read on how the market sees you, whether or not we work together.

Book it from your personal email, and that's where everything stays: https://tinyurl.com/mc4tm54z

Go from undersold to sought after and secure work that fulfills you personally, professionally, and financially.

— Robyn Feldberg, Executive Resume Writer & Career Coach