First of all, let’s talk about the marketplace. The Fortune 500 companies combined have about 5,000 board seats in total (an average board is 8-12 members). But only about 250-400 of these seats turn over every year (about nine percent). In 2016, there were 421 open board seats that were filled, which was a record high. In 2022, Fortune 500 companies filled 414 new board seats with independent directors, which was a slight decrease from the previous year. Women made up 40 percent of those new directors in 2022, which was a five percent decrease from the previous year, so not much has changed in the last decade.

In 2016, 314 (fully three-quarters) of the men and women hired to these board positions had previous board experience. That leaves only 107 open positions for folks that are new to for-profit boards, meaning looking for their first board position. You can imagine the level of competition out there for those few positions.

If you think of Fortune 2000 companies and then add all the private companies, the opportunity would be considerably bigger – but still small! Getting on a board is a real challenge. And many of the board director positions that are going to newbies go to someone with a connection to the board, a friend of a board member, or someone the CEO knows.

It’s hopeless! OK, not quite. ... There are definitely some things you can do to increase your chances of getting on a for-profit board, and I am going to give you ten ways to do it right now.

Number One: Become a CEO or CFO of anything. 

In 2022, there was a decrease in the share of seats going to first-time public board directors: 32 percent, down from 43 percent in the previous year. However, there was an increase in the share of seats going to directors with CEO experience, 43 percent compared to 40 percent in 2021, and CFO experience, 18 percent compared to 14 percent in 2021. If you add those numbers up, it means 55 percent of board seats went to CEOs or CFOs. So think about that again - about 400 open board seats a year in the Fortune 500 and more than half went to CEOs and CFOs.

Number Two: Become the CEO of a public company.

As the CEO of a public company, you are guaranteed a seat on your own board. Ta-da – now you are a public company board director, just like that. So you definitely have your first board seat, but it may not help with your second.

Most boards favor a CEO – except when they don’t. I will share a personal example. When I was the CEO of a public company (that I took during my CEO tenure from a market value of $200MM to over $1BN) I got contacted by a head-hunter about a multi-billion dollar revenue French travel company that was looking to add a new board member. Hooray, I thought. I am a female public company CEO, with experience in the travel arena, who speaks fluent French and has worked all over Europe as well as America. I am a shoe-in! However, after submitting my resume, the head-hunter gave me the feedback that the board had said “one of our divisions is bigger than her entire company! What she is doing is too small!” Having run a division at a multi-billion dollar company myself, I can testify to the fact it is much harder to be the CEO, where the buck stops with you, than it is to run a corporate business unit. If you run a business unit, if you have an HR problem, corporate HR deals with it in accordance with the company policy; if you have a legal problem, the corporate legal department deals with it in accordance with the company legal policy, and so on. You don’t really have to deal with anything difficult except getting growth and keeping costs low enough that you generate profits. When you are a CEO, you are responsible for everything. But you cannot argue back and win, so just move on.

Another time, a head-hunter called about a board position with a financial services company. Hooray, I thought, I am the CEO of a public financial services company and ranked #1 CEO by all the investors due to the increase in share price under my tenure. This surely is a shoe-in. However, the head hunter proceeded to tell me that executive board experience does not count, meaning they wanted someone who was in a non-operating role on a corporate board. I actually had to manage the board, as well as attend all Audit, Compliance and Disclosure Committee meetings. But you cannot argue back and win, so just move on.

Number Three: Join a non-profit board. 

This is not a bad idea, because at least you are getting board experience – except that for-profit boards look for people with for-profit board experience.

Number Four: Be an expert in something that is a current hot topic, like cyber security, or digital marketing or – even better – today’s buzz word of AI. 

About 10-15 percent of board positions go to people with a very specific skillset that the board thinks they need help on. When I ran a public company, I, caught up in this wave of valuing specific skills, told our board we needed to get someone with cyber risk knowledge and someone with e-commerce marketing knowledge. They asked me why and I said, “Because that is what executive search firms tell me boards are looking for.” My board was not impressed. “If you need that expertise because you don’t trust your CTO or CMO, then you should just hire a consultant.” This was a very valid point. The goal for board directors is not to involve themselves in the details of running a company but to support the CEO in strategy and vision, to validate operating results, and to oversee audit and compliance so as to be sure the company procedures are legally and regulatorily correct. 

However, you could get lucky and find a board where they think they need your particular skillset. And if you do not have that skillset, you cannot argue back and win, so just move on.

Number Five: Be an expert in board rules. 

Actually, the best skillset that a board should look for is someone who knows all the complex board management rules. I have a friend who years ago ran a large division at a public financial services company and she retired early, learnt all the rules for what boards should and should not do procedurally, and parlayed that into a lucrative board career on multiple boards across multiple industries. The other board members who were mostly clueless about the legal side of boards were so happy to have someone who knew telling them what they could and could not do and how to do it and what to watch for that they found her invaluable. This is especially true for mid-size public companies where knowing these rules makes you indispensable. Smart woman!

Number Six: Contact head-hunters who specialize in putting folks on boards. 

Mostly, they will just put you into some database of “women ready to be on boards.” I was one of the first women in these databases for the Forte Foundation and also the Financial Times. This was ten years ago, and I have yet to be called about a single position due to this. Same for similar databases more recently set up by some of the consulting firms where I used to work. However, you might as well do it. It takes little time and effort. In my experience though, unless the head-hunter has a board opening that precisely meets your skills and experience at exactly the moment you call them, by the time they put down the phone, they have already forgotten who you are. Worse, the criteria are often not even helpful to the board or that company. “This is a growth company so we want someone with growth experience.” Or “This is a turnaround so we need someone with turnaround experience and you don’t have whatever it is you don’t have.” I want to reply, “Excuse me, but most boards do not (sadly) have term limits, and it’s not going to be a growth company forever is it, so later it could become a turnaround, and someone who knows turnaround could get it back to growth.” The vice versa is also true. But you cannot argue back and win, so just move on. You can help yourself by having a short write-up of the two or three things you bring to a board that are helpful, what you seek to gain from a board position (for God’s sake do not say money or prestige even though these are in truth the only two reasons people join boards), and what kind of companies interest you.

I wrote to one head-hunter, having been connected by one of my mentors who is a billionaire former CEO. The head-hunter did not reply. So I wrote again. To my amazement, he replied promptly - but only because he had just been contacted by a colleague in Europe about a board position at a major European bank where they wanted a female CEO, German-speaker, financial services expert, and someone with lots of international experience. Me, me, me! I was a perfect fit!

Then the head-hunter continued, “But you must attend eighty board meetings a year.”

I thought I must have misheard, “Sorry, did you say eighteen board meetings a year?”

“No, eighty, it is a very serious board. And they really want retired people as they are the only ones who can do this because if you have a job, you don’t have the time to attend all the meetings expected.” No kidding!

If I was the CEO, I would be asking the board why they had so little trust in me that they needed almost two meetings a week. I wondered what on earth they found to meet about each time. I’d also be asking how they expected to stay contemporary when they didn’t have a single board member who recently had held a job, let alone one who actually was currently employed. How is a retired person going to help bring about the change required? But you cannot argue back and win, so just move on.

Number Seven: Tell your entire network that you want a board position. 

Don’t do a massive email blast, as this will just be ignored. Do it one by one to the connections that you think could help. Make the messages personal. Yes, it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack but you never know. It only takes one needle to start you on your board career.

Some people say, “Don’t join a board where you are the only woman as you will be the token woman,” or “Don’t join a board where you don’t like the culture.” I don’t agree. Don’t be picky. As I explained earlier, there are few enough board seats as it is, why make it any harder on yourself? For example, there are only about forty board seats a year that go to women who have never been on a board. That’s hard enough to get without adding other limiting criteria. Then, when you are on a board, you can change it from within and get another woman or a diversity candidate on the board and make that part of your mission. Or if the board is a true nightmare, you can resign, and, now that you have been on a board, it will be easier to get the next one as you now have non-executive director experience.

Number Eight: Focus on your industry of expertise and form connections in it. 

Speak at conferences, become known, use all your business networks, forums and associations. Most board positions go to people with experience in the specific industry area of the company in question so this increases your chances.

Number Nine: Send letters to CEOs of companies where you would like to be on the board. 

Of course, the probability of hearing anything back is low, but the same is true for all the other strategies. If a mutual connection can contact that CEO on your behalf or forward your email, then even better. When I ran a public company, I got a couple of these kinds of ‘cold letters' every month, many addressed to the former CEO who had left more than two years before, and none showing any knowledge of what our company did. They went straight in the trash. But if one had been insightful, I might have brought it up to the rest of the board.

Lastly, Number Ten: Use agencies that offer to get you on boards.

There are specialist agencies who, for a fee, offer to get you on a board through their connections. This is almost entirely complete rubbish. All they do is send letters blasted out to multiple CEOs saying “I have a great board candidate for you, her resume is attached.” It does nothing to help you, and the probability is tiny, but, again, it only takes one lucky break.

I guess I should end with what I looked for in a new board member: the ability to think strategically and be a sounding-board for the CEO; intellectual curiosity; the ability to listen and share without showboating; having or having had a senior level position with a lot of responsibility and challenges; fitting the culture; and, finally, calmness under pressure, because those are the times when a CEO really needs a supportive board, when the chips are down.

So, if all the ten ideas are hopeless, what do you do? The answer is do everything everywhere all at once. And don’t listen to folks who say it will never happen. If I had listened to everyone who told me “That won’t work” or “You will never get to do that”, I would never have achieved anything in life. I’d be living in a hole in the ground eating worms.

So remember, you are the only one who has to believe in you for this to work, so believe in yourself and go for it. Good luck!