About
We work for you.
Not for the company hiring you.
That one sentence is the entire business model. Everything else follows from it.
Who We Are
We have been where you are.
We are a group of alumni from India's leading business schools. Between us, we have held leadership roles across industries, navigated our own transitions, and spent years watching the executive job market from the inside. We know how decisions actually get made. We know what gets said in rooms, and what does not.
Here is what we noticed. Somewhere around 40, careers plateau. Not because the person stops being valuable. Usually the opposite. But the market stops seeing it clearly. Options narrow. The obvious next move stops being obvious. And the people being paid to help, recruiters and search firms, are paid by the company. Not by you. They manage your expectations. They do not fight for you.
We built Decoding Work because we believed someone should. Someone who understands your value, can articulate it to the right people, and will represent you through positioning, conversations, and negotiation until you land where you should be. That is what we do. And we are paid by you to do it.
Let's Be Precise
What Decoding Work Is Not
A lot of services in this space sound similar. They are not.
Not a recruiter
A recruiter is paid by the company to fill a seat. Their incentive is to close quickly, at the budget available. They represent the company's interest. Always. Even when they seem friendly. We are not a recruiter. We are never paid by the hiring company.
Not a job board
A job board shows you listings. It has no stake in your outcome, no understanding of your actual situation, and no ability to get you access to roles that are not posted. Most CXO-level hiring in India never appears on a job board. We work where roles actually get filled.
Not a career coach
A career coach gives you frameworks and feedback sessions. That can be useful. But they stop at advice. They do not run your outreach, manage your pipeline, negotiate your offer, or sit across from the company with you. We do the work, not just the advice.
Not a CV writing service
We do build your executive narrative and brand. But that is one output of a deeper process. It is not the product. The product is getting you into the right role, on the right terms, in the right timeframe. The positioning work is in service of that outcome.
Why Candidate-Paid
The Model Is the Message
The executive job market in India has a structural problem. Most people accept it without questioning. Recruiters and search firms are paid by the hiring company. That fee, typically 8 to 15 percent of CTC, creates a fundamental conflict. The recruiter's incentive is to close quickly, at the company's budget, and to keep the candidate manageable. They are not working for you. Even when it feels like they are.
Senior leaders deserve better than that. A Director-to-VP transition or a VP-to-CXO move is worth crores in lifetime earnings. Which company, which role, which terms, which timing: these decisions compound across decades. Getting them right matters.
When you pay us, we work for you. That is not a slogan. It is a structural fact. We do not earn placement fees from companies. We do not manage your expectations on behalf of a hiring client. We have one job: get you the best outcome possible. The candidate-paid model is not a differentiator we invented for marketing. It is the only model that actually aligns incentives correctly.
How We Operate
What You Can Expect From Us
Candidate-first, always
Every decision is made in your interest. Which roles to surface, how to advise on offers, what to say about a company. Not the employer's interest. Not the market's. Yours.
Honest, not comfortable
If your positioning is weak, we tell you. If a company is not right for you, we tell you. If your compensation expectations need adjusting, we say it before you waste time, not after. The hardest feedback, given early, saves months.
Transparent at every step
Written proposals before payment. Clear fee structures, no hidden components. Everything is documented before we begin. We do not do vague arrangements.
Specialists, not generalists
We work only with senior leaders: 15+ years of experience, Director to CXO level. We are not a general career service. The focus makes us sharper at the specific challenge of executive transitions in India.
If this resonates, let's talk.
A 30-minute conversation costs nothing. We will tell you plainly whether we can help. And if we cannot, we will say that too.