The call you're supposed to ignore, and why the smartest women always take it
At 11:40 the morning after your best quarter yet, an unknown number lights up your screen. You let it ring out. The voicemail is from a recruiter whose name sounds familiar, and she will not say what the role is in a message. You are 50, running operations as chief operating officer without the title to match, in the year you spent a decade working toward. Your board values you. Your CEO relies on you. The plan is on track. Every cautious instinct tells you to delete the message, and you have already deleted the last three.
You already understand what the call is about. In effect, the market wants to know what you are worth. What matters is whether ignoring that question will cost you more than answering it.
Option A. Let it go
You erase the voicemail and get back to the strategy. The cost is quiet and builds over time. Recruiters keep notes, and after three polite silences your name lands on a different list, the one they stop calling. People who can see your work are the ones who decide what the market thinks you are worth. Silence from recruiters means no one is paying attention to you. The year you are succeeding is the year your price is at its peak, and you have just chosen not to learn what that price is.
Option B. Take the call, for information only
You call back and say the line that costs you nothing. "I'm happy where I am, though I always make time to hear what's out there." Tell me about the role, and if it isn't a fit for me, I'll tell you who it might suit." The cost is thirty minutes and the small chance that you like what you hear. The benefit is a salary range, a title and a clearer picture of how the market sees you, which is often a level above how your own company sees you.
Option C. Run the full process
You go through the interviews during your best year, in an office where someone may eventually notice the Tuesday afternoons. Taking the call does cost you something: some of your scarce attention, the risk that colleagues wonder about your loyalty if it leaks, and the possibility of an offer you then have to weigh. The benefit is leverage, along with a clear answer to a question you have never said aloud: what would it take to get me to leave?
Counsel from seasoned executives
Executives who have led large organizations insist on one rule: take the call every time. You do not take it because you intend to leave, but because hearing an opportunity is useful intelligence and costs nothing to receive. A 2025 Deloitte survey of 7,500 women revealed that just 5 percent anticipate staying with their present employer beyond five years. The women who transition successfully were never impatient to leave. They had their figure ready well before the moment arrived.
They also point out that a recruiter will tell you something your boss never will: which role the market thinks you fit. When a headhunter rings about a chief operating officer role but your employer still carries your title as senior vice president, what you are holding is not an actual offer. It is a correction, and you can use it inside your own organization without ever leaving it.
The decision
Option B, no exceptions. Nothing has been decided yet. What you have is a half-hour reality check on the market, and women who accept one rarely get blindsided, whether by their own worth or by how others estimate it. Only pick Option C if the figure you hear is enough to make you stop and think.
Your vote
Which path would you choose? Ignore the call, accept it, or see the entire process through. Cast your vote below. Next week we will publish the findings, including the figure that stopped most of you in your tracks.