Built from the inside out. By someone who sat on both sides of the table.
Elevate Career was founded on a single observation, made over and over again across 25 years of placing and advising senior executives at the highest levels of global business: the executives who most needed strategic support in navigating career transition were the ones least well served by what the market offered them.
What existed was either too junior in its thinking, too narrow in its scope, or too generic in its delivery to meet the reality of what a senior executive actually faces when the next chapter is unclear. Elevate Career was built to occupy that intersection. Precisely, deliberately, and without compromise.
Where the thinking comes from
Cyrille Gossé grew up on the shores of Lake Annecy, in the shadow of the French Alps. As a young man, he wanted to become a mountain guide. The mountains taught him to read terrain before crossing it, to respect conditions that changed faster than plans, and to understand that the person beside you was trusting you with something they could not navigate alone. He chose a different path — but that thinking never left. It became the foundation of the practice.
Instead of the mountains, Cyrille moved into the executive market — and stayed for 25 years. As a headhunter conducting senior-level search mandates. As a career transition director at LHH, the global outplacement arm of the Adecco Group. And then in corporate roles within the Adecco Group itself, working at the intersection of talent strategy, leadership development, and market intelligence.
Throughout those years, one conversation kept recurring. It happened after the placement was made, after the coaching engagement ended, after the outplacement programme was technically complete. It was the conversation where the executive finally asked the questions they actually wanted to ask: What am I really worth? Where do I genuinely belong? What does the market actually see when it looks at me? And why does no one give me a straight answer?
Elevate Career was built to answer those questions. With the honesty they deserve and the precision they require.
ALPS
Grew up on the shores of Lake Annecy, in the shadow of the French Alps. Dreamed of becoming a mountain guide. Chose business instead — but the mountains shaped the discipline: read terrain accurately, assess risk honestly, take clear responsibility for others in high-stakes environments.
SEARCH
Executive search director and global accounts director — Templar International / Adecco. 25 years evaluating, placing, and advising senior leaders across industries and continents. Bilateral understanding of every stage of the hiring process.
LHH
Career transition director. Working with executives navigating involuntary and voluntary exits. Direct experience of the gap between what executives in transition needed and what the market provided.
ADECCO
Corporate leadership roles within the Adecco Group. Talent strategy at scale. Internal visibility into how large organisations actually make decisions about senior talent — the criteria, the processes, and the biases that shape those decisions.
ELEVATE
Founded Elevate Career. Bringing the full picture together in a practice built for senior leaders. Proprietary methodology tested across 100+ engagements in 40+ countries.
What we stand for
Elevate Career is built on three convictions. They are not marketing statements. They are operational commitments that shape every engagement, every conversation, and every piece of advice we give.
— We work with very few people. We go very deep.
We work with very few people at any one time. Depth is not a feature of the model — it is the model.
— We bring market intelligence to questions that are usually treated as personal ones.
Executive transition is not only a market problem — though it is that, and most advisors are not equipped to treat it as one.
It is also a human event. The loss of a senior role touches everything: identity, relationships, financial security, and the quiet structure that a career provides to a life. We have worked with enough executives in transition to know that the professional challenge and the personal one arrive together — and that pretending otherwise helps no one.
What Elevate Career provides is strategic and market-grounded. What we do not do is mistake that for the whole picture. Where the work calls for professional psychological support, we say so directly — and we help our clients find it.
The executives who navigate transition well are not the ones who suppress the human dimension. They are the ones who address it and keep moving. That is the standard we hold ourselves to.
— We say what we actually think.
You have spent your career surrounded by people who tell you what you want to hear. We are not one of them. If your positioning is wrong, we will say so. If your expectations are misaligned with market reality, we will tell you — clearly, respectfully, and without hedging. That is the standard. It does not bend.
A methodology, not a method
A method is a set of steps you follow regardless of the person. A methodology is a structured way of thinking that adapts to the reality in front of it. Elevate Career operates on a three-phase methodology — each phase building on the one before, each calibrated to the executive’s specific situation, market, and ambition.
Strategic Clarity — Phase One
Before you can move, you need to know where you stand. This phase maps your values, motivations, and operating strengths against market reality. The goal is not self-discovery for its own sake — it is strategic self-knowledge that directly informs positioning.
Market Positioning — Phase Two
Clarity without positioning is insight without leverage. This phase translates what you know about yourself into a proposition the market can respond to — shaping narrative, targeting specific opportunities, and building the materials that make you compelling to the right decision-makers.
Activation & Landing — Phase Three
Strategy without execution is theory. This phase is about moving — deliberately, precisely, and with full support. Interview preparation, stakeholder navigation, negotiation strategy, and the transition itself. We stay until the work is done.
The people behind the work
Elevate Career is a practice, not a person. The methodology, the frameworks, and the standard of delivery exist independently of any single advisor — and that is by design. What every client receives is one dedicated advisor, assigned to their engagement from beginning to end, with full ownership of the relationship and the work.
Every advisor in the practice operates with practitioner-level understanding of the executive market. They are not coaches repackaged as strategists. They are not consultants borrowing frameworks they did not build. They are professionals who have spent their careers inside the market they now advise on.
Practitioner background, not academic
Every advisor has direct, operational experience in executive search, career transition, or senior talent strategy. The knowledge is earned, not studied.
Training in the full methodology
Every advisor is trained across all three phases of the Elevate Career methodology and can deliver each with equal rigour.
Operating at peer level
Every advisor is capable of sitting across the table from a C-suite executive and holding a conversation that adds genuine value — not one that defers to seniority.
Committed to the honesty standard
Every advisor operates under the same commitment: say what you actually think. No hedging, no softening, no telling the client what they want to hear.
On working directly with the founder: Cyrille Gossé personally leads a small number of engagements each year — typically with executives facing the most complex or consequential transitions. Availability is limited and by application only.
The track record, stated plainly
Years in the executive market
Senior executives advised
Countries represented
Phases. One methodology.
In the words of executives who have been through it
“I had worked with executive coaches before. None of them understood the market the way Elevate Career does. The combination of strategic clarity and genuine market intelligence changed how I thought about my own career — and where it could go.”
— Former Group CEO — Financial Services, Europe
“The quality that distinguished the engagement was precision. Not vague encouragement, not generic frameworks — a specific, evidence-based view of where I stood, what the market valued, and what I needed to change. That level of honesty is rare.”
— Former Chief Strategy Officer — Technology, Global
“The practice does not pretend that what it offers is comfortable. It is not. But it is the most useful, most genuinely strategic support I have received in thirty years of professional life. I would not have landed where I did without it.”
— Former Managing Director — Private Equity, Asia Pacific
What every engagement guarantees
Regardless of the advisor, the phase, or the complexity of the transition, every Elevate Career engagement operates under the same non-negotiable standard. These are not aspirations. They are commitments.
One advisor. Full engagement.
You work with one person from start to finish. No handoffs, no rotating team, no junior associate running your engagement while the senior advisor moves on.
Market intelligence, not market opinion.
Every piece of advice is grounded in direct knowledge of how the executive market operates — not in assumptions, not in generalisations, and not in what worked for someone else.
Honesty without qualification.
If something is not working — your positioning, your narrative, your expectations — you will hear it directly. Delivered with respect, but without softening.
Confidentiality without exception.
Nothing leaves the engagement. No case studies without explicit permission. No references to your situation in any context, ever. This is absolute.
An engagement that runs until the work is done.
We do not sell hours. We do not sell packages with arbitrary end dates. The engagement continues until the transition is complete and the executive has landed. That is the commitment.
If this is the standard you have been looking for —
The next step is a 45-minute Executive Transition Strategy Session. A structured, confidential conversation with a senior Elevate Career advisor — designed to assess your situation, clarify your options, and determine whether this practice is the right fit for where you are now.
Schedule Your Strategy Session→Complimentary for qualified executives