Design director
Hello folks, I am a Design Director with 12+ years of experience. I relocated to the US about 5 years back, and I am settled here for good. I have been looking for a change and its hard to break the ice. I even had several phone interviews and in-person interviews with product/ consulting companies and it never worked out. The interviews seem pretty good with some great feedback from the HR and then it just stalls for several months. It's not that I am not good enough for that role, but something stops moving forward. Have you ever experienced this? How to overcome this issue?
At a director level a lot of the times they are looking for your business acumen and your ability to influence their business. Also, you mentioned that you are an immigrant to the States. While it’s not applicable to all of the situations, but great office soft skills is what propels people to the top of the corporate ladder in the States. Playing the office politics has a bad stigma associated with it, but realistically it means to be able to navigate people and their personalities to get things done, and not necessarily brown-nosing.
Teach and consult!
At the director level, they are usually looking for very specific qualities to enhance their team. Either someone with experience in their system/style of working -or- someone completely different from their existing practice to turn things around. You need to interview them to find out what it is they want from you. Then prove that you can be that person.