The call you're supposed to ignore, and why the smartest women always take it

Just after 11:40 on the morning following your best quarter yet, an unknown number lights up your screen in San Antonio. You decline it. The voicemail is from a recruiter whose name you know, though she won't say the role out loud on a message. You're 50, running operations as chief operating officer in all but name, and you're in the middle of the year you spent a decade working toward. The board respects you. The CEO relies on you. The plan is on track. Every common-sense instinct tells you to erase the message, and you've already erased the last three.

Your gut already tells you what this is. Put simply, the market is checking how much you are worth. Could you really justify skipping that check, given what it might cost you in San Antonio?

Option A. Let it go

You silence the voicemail and go back to the work you had planned. The cost is slow and cumulative. Recruiters keep running lists, and after three polite refusals your name drops onto a different list, the one they don't bother calling. People who can see what you produce are the ones who decide what you are worth on the market. Where no one is making contact, no one is keeping watch. This is the year your value peaks, and you've just chosen not to learn what that value is.

Option B. Take the call, for information only

You phone back and say the line that costs you nothing: "I'm happy where I am, but I always take these calls. Walk me through the role, and if it isn't a fit I'll tell you who it might suit." The cost is half an hour and the small risk that you end up liking what you hear. The payoff is a real number, a title, and a sense of how the market sees you, which is often a level above how your current company sees you.

Option C. Go through the whole process

You sit for the interviews, in the middle of your best year, in a building where someone will sooner or later notice your Tuesday afternoons. The cost is attention you can't spare, an awkward loyalty question if it leaks, and a genuine chance of an offer you'll have to decide on. The payoff is leverage, and a clear answer to a question you've never said out loud: what would it actually take to get me to leave?

What seasoned leaders recommend

Executives who have led big organizations across South Texas and beyond recommend this without a second thought: pick up every time. This is not a sign that you are heading for the exit; the call simply yields information, and taking it is free. A deloitte 2025 study of 7,500 women revealed that a mere 5% intend to remain with their present employer beyond five years. Women who move on successfully were not restless to begin with. Long before any offer arrived, they had a clear sense of their own value.

Career advisers in Texas also note that a recruiter can reveal the level at which the market sees you, something a manager rarely mentions. When a headhunter from Live Oak calls about a COO position while your title at work is still senior vice president, you are not being handed a real offer. It's a correction, and you can put it to work inside your own company without walking out the door.

The verdict

Choose B without exception. It isn't really a decision. Think of it as a thirty-minute reality check: women who go through it are not thrown by their own worth or by anyone else's appraisal of it. Go with Option C only if the figure is enough to make you take a seat.

Your vote

What's your next step? Let it ring, take the call, or run the full process. Cast your vote below. Next week we will share the findings, including the figure that left most of our readers needing to sit down.