After you apply: rosters, follow-up and offers

Six to twelve weeks between closing and interviews is normal. Silence is not rejection, and chasing rarely speeds it up — but being easy to reach and easy to verify does influence the outcome.

• Keep your profile on the agency's own recruitment portal current; many shortlists are drawn from rosters before a post is even advertised.
• Answer referee requests quickly and warn your referees that an agency may email them from an international domain.
• If you are offered a consultancy, read the deliverables and payment schedule before signing; the fee is rarely negotiable but the milestones often are.
• Ask for feedback only after a rejection is confirmed, and only once. Keep it to two lines.

Rosters are the real pipeline

Agencies maintain rosters of vetted candidates by function and country. A roster place is not a job, but it is a standing invitation to shortlists. Applying to two or three roster calls a year, in your exact function, quietly outperforms sending fifty unrelated applications.