In Stay Relevant: Conquer Workplace Change at Every Phase of Your Career, authors Chris Flakus and Candace Moody deliver a concise, practical roadmap to help professionals continually adapt, reinvent themselves, and thrive through every stage of workplace change. Author Chris Flakus talks to Book Glow about the book.

What inspired you to write Stay Relevant at this moment in your career?

Honestly, it was the volume of talented people sitting across from me who had no idea why they kept getting passed over. I’ve been in this industry for over 30 years. I’ve placed hundreds of professionals in roles earning $75,000 to $500,000. And over and over again, I’d see someone with a genuinely impressive background walk in convinced they just needed someone to hand them the right opportunity, when the real problem was that they’d stopped evolving. The market had moved and they hadn’t moved with it. That gap, between who someone thinks they are professionally and how they’re actually being perceived, is costing people – jobs, promotions, income, confidence. I wanted to write something that didn’t sugarcoat that reality but also gave people a real roadmap out of it. This wasn’t just a good time to write the book. It felt overdue.

In one sentence, what is the core message of the book?

If you aren’t actively working to stay relevant, you are passively becoming irrelevant, and the good news is, that’s completely fixable in 12 weeks.

You introduce “mindsets, skillsets, and mirrorsets.” Which is hardest for most people to develop?

Mirrorset, without question. And the reason is that it requires you to confront something most high-achievers genuinely struggle with: the gap between the professional you believe yourself to be and the professional others actually experience.

Your Mindset is internal, so you can work on that in private. Your Skillset is measurable; you can take a course, earn a certification, get objective feedback. But your Mirrorset is about perception, and perception is shaped by other people. It requires you to ask hard questions, sit with uncomfortable answers, and then actually change behaviors that may feel completely natural to you.

I’ve watched people with brilliant Mindsets and sharp Skillsets stall out entirely because their Mirrorset was working against them. They had no idea. That’s the most dangerous version of irrelevance: when you’re the last person in the room to see it.

What workplace shift today surprises professionals the most?

How much coachability has become the differentiator. Not experience. Not credentials. Coachability.

People come in expecting that their track record will speak for itself, and it should matter, and it does matter; but what hiring managers and leadership teams are evaluating now is: can this person adapt? Are they willing to learn? Do they have a growth Mindset or are they defending a past version of themselves?

I’ve seen candidates with 20-year careers lose out to candidates with 5-10-year careers, not because of what they knew, but because of how they showed up. Their willingness to grow, to be redirected, to not be the smartest person in the room, that’s what’s winning right now. Most experienced professionals don’t see that coming.

What’s one sign someone may be losing relevance without realizing it?

They’re explaining their value exclusively in the past tense.

Listen to how someone talks about their career. If every proof point is something they accomplished five or ten years ago, that’s a signal. Not that the accomplishment doesn’t matter, it does. But the question hiring managers are silently asking is: what are you doing now? What are you learning now? How are you growing right now?

Relevance lives in the present tense. The professionals who stay relevant are constantly adding to their story, not just retelling the same chapter.

Why did you choose a 12-week step-by-step format?

Because real change doesn’t happen in a weekend, and I wasn’t interested in writing another book that made people feel motivated for 48 hours and then go back to the same patterns.  Twelve weeks is enough time to actually build something. It gives you time to work through your Mindset, sharpen your Skillset, understand and reshape your Mirrorset, and practice new behaviors long enough that they become habitual rather than effortful. That’s what sustainable relevance looks like.

I’ve spent over 30 years watching what actually works for people navigating career transitions. The ones who make lasting changes are the ones who work systematically, week by week, with clear actions and honest self-assessment. The 12 week format isn’t arbitrary – it mirrors what I’ve seen produce real results.

How did your experience leading the CSI Companies shape the book’s content?

Everything in this book is grounded in what I’ve seen from the other side of the desk. As CEO of CSI Companies, and having been deeply involved in executive search for over a decade, I’ve participated in thousands of hiring decisions. I’ve watched companies pass on candidates. I’ve heard the feedback that never makes it back to the person being evaluated. Building CSI from a small regional firm to a company that has achieved a fifty-fold increase in revenue and EBITDA gave me a very specific vantage point: I’ve had to stay relevant myself. The strategies, technology, talent expectations, and leadership demands have changed dramatically over three decades. You don’t survive that kind of growth and market evolution by staying static. You survive it by continuously evolving.  So when I write about relevance, I’m not writing from theory. I’m writing from a front-row seat, both as someone who evaluates talent and as someone who has had to do exactly what this book asks readers to do. 

What is your favorite lesson or exercise from the book?

That’s easy – it’s the core question that runs through everything: Would you hire you?

It sounds simple. It’s not. Most people have never genuinely sat with that question, really examined it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know them, doesn’t owe them anything, and is evaluating them against a competitive field. When I use that question with people I’m working with, there’s usually a pause. A real one. And in that pause is where the honest work begins. It cuts through ego, through defensiveness, through all the ways we tend to protect our self-image, and gets right to the thing that actually matters: Are you presenting the most competitive version of yourself right now? If the answer isn’t a confident yes, this book gives you a 12-week path to get there.

What do you hope readers will feel after finishing Stay Relevant?

Capable. Not just inspired, capable.

I want someone to close this book and feel like they have a clear, concrete understanding of where they are, where the gaps are, and exactly what to do about it. Not motivated in a vague, pumped-up way, but genuinely equipped.

And I want them to feel seen. Because the professionals who need this book the most are often the ones who have worked the hardest and feel the most invisible right now. That frustration is real. The situation is real. But so is the path forward, and I want readers to finish Stay Relevant believing that, because they’ve actually got the tools to prove it.

What’s the next career challenge you think people should prepare for?

AI. It isn’t coming for jobs, it’s already here, and the professionals who thrive won’t be the ones who resist it or panic about it. They’ll be the ones who learn to use it as a force multiplier for their own expertise.

The next challenge is essentially a relevance challenge disguised as a technology challenge. Because the underlying question is still the same one it’s always been: Are you evolving fast enough to stay valuable? Are you coachable enough to learn what’s new? Are you self-aware enough to know where your gaps are?

AI is just the most recent, most visible disruptor. The professionals who’ve been doing the work, building their Mindset, Skillset, and Mirrorset consistently are going to adapt to AI the way they’ve adapted to every other major shift. The ones who haven’t are going to feel it acutely. That’s exactly why now is the time to do this work.  I believe this book can help!

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