What happens when you stop waiting to be invited?

Why visibility and action matter more than feeling ready

Candy Liu in conversation with host Holly Staff

What could an elderly esports team, an unexpected job offer and a conversation in a pub possibly have in common?

For global technology leader Candy Liu, each began with the same decision: to take action rather than wait for an invitation.

Throughout her career, Candy has led international sales teams, mentored professionals, spoken at industry events and championed women in STEM. Yet her progression has not simply been shaped by qualifications or experience. It has come from repeatedly stepping into unfamiliar situations, building relationships and creating opportunities before knowing exactly where they might lead.

Confidence is built by doing

Many women wait until they feel completely qualified before applying for a role, speaking at an event or accepting a new challenge.

Candy has seen highly capable women remain in place because they are worried about making mistakes, being judged or discovering they are not ready. Instead of putting themselves forward, they hope somebody else will recognise their potential and choose them.

The problem is that opportunities rarely work that way.

“If I don’t promote myself, people will not come and find me,” Candy explains.

That does not mean she has never experienced doubt. Moving between countries, cultures and organisations has regularly placed her in unfamiliar environments. Her confidence came from taking action despite that uncertainty, then learning from what happened.

“The more action I take, the more I learn, and the more confident I become.”

It is a subtle but important distinction. Candy did not wait until she felt confident enough to act. Acting was how she became confident.

Learning to enter the room

When Candy moved from Hong Kong to the UK, she found herself adapting not only to a new workplace but also to a different way of building professional relationships.

Her male colleagues would often go to the pub after work. Candy was unfamiliar with the culture and initially found herself outside the conversations taking place there. She soon realised that if she continued waiting to be invited, she risked becoming increasingly isolated.

So, she joined them.

“If I continued waiting for people to invite me to the pub, I would not have survived in that company for long,” she says.

What may appear to be a small decision became an important lesson in cultural awareness, communication and relationship-building. Candy learned the rhythms of British conversation, including the Monday morning discussion about the weekend just gone and the Friday questions about the weekend ahead. More importantly, she began forming the relationships and alliances that helped her establish herself in a new country.

“You need enough courage to do it,” she explains. “Even if people don’t invite you, you have to join them.”

She did not wait to feel comfortable before participating. Participating was how she became comfortable.

The leaders who made success feel possible

Visibility is not only about being seen. It also allows people to see what might be possible for themselves.

Early in her career, Candy attended events where she heard senior women speak about their experiences. Rather than admiring them from a distance, she approached the women whose stories resonated with her and asked them directly to become her mentors.

To her surprise, they agreed.

“If you cannot find a mentor inside your company, go outside and find one,” she says. “That is what changed my life.”

Three significant mentors would go on to influence both her professional and personal development. They were highly successful global executives, but speaking with them privately revealed something Candy could not see while they were standing confidently on stage.

They had concerns. They experienced doubt. They were parents and mothers navigating many of the same pressures as other women. They were not superhuman.

“One of the most important things was realising that when she spoke to me, she was just like a normal woman,” Candy recalls. “She had concerns and sometimes doubted herself. I thought, ‘One day, I can be like her because we are all normal.’”

That realisation did not make their success less impressive. It made it feel more attainable.

It is an approach Candy now brings to her own mentoring. She does not want the women she supports to see her as an untouchable example of success. She wants them to understand that she has experienced failure, uncertainty and difficult decisions too.

A role model should not make success look effortless. They should make it feel possible.

Creating the invitation for somebody else

Candy also recognised that not everyone would feel able to approach a senior leader after an event and ask for their support.

Some women work in businesses where there are no senior female role models. Others reach a particular stage in their career and find themselves stuck, unsure where to turn for honest advice. Meanwhile, many experienced leaders are willing to help but do not know who needs them.

Candy decided to bring the two groups together.

She invited 16 senior women from her network to join a mentoring programme. They all said yes. Applications quickly followed, but Candy deliberately kept the first group small because she wanted each participant to receive meaningful, personal support.

“Senior women are busy. They will not go out and look for a mentee,” she explains. “But once they commit, they commit.”

The transformation was not always about technical knowledge or career strategy. One mentee had been out of work for more than a year and had become trapped in an increasingly negative mindset. Candy asked her to record the language she used each day and count how frequently she spoke negatively. Together, they began changing that language and the outlook behind it.

Six months later, the woman secured a new role.

For Candy, the programme confirmed something she already suspected.

“People want to help people,” she says. “Sometimes they are also waiting to be invited.”

When contribution creates opportunity

Candy’s work outside her formal roles has been equally important to her career, although professional progression was never the reason she began volunteering.

Her father was a soldier who believed strongly in community service, and Candy grew up seeing voluntary work as a natural part of life. She became involved in charities, professional communities and initiatives supporting women and older people because she genuinely wanted to contribute.

Over time, however, that work created opportunities she could never have planned.

Community projects allowed people to see how Candy brought teams together, led initiatives and turned ideas into action. They also connected her with senior professionals she would rarely have encountered through her day-to-day work.

“More than participating, take a leadership role,” she advises. “That is how you show people what you can do.”

One community project led to a lunch with the chairman of an organisation that had supported an event for elderly people. Candy arrived believing he wanted to thank her for her contribution. As their conversation developed, he began asking about her career and experience.

She gradually realised it was not simply a thank-you lunch. It was an interview.

Having already seen her leadership in action, the chairman later recruited Candy as a General Manager.

A conventional interview might have given her an hour to describe what she could do. The community project had allowed somebody to witness it directly.

Candy’s advice to people seeking leadership experience is therefore practical: do not limit development to what an employer is currently prepared to offer. A charity, community, society or professional network can provide opportunities to lead, organise and collaborate long before the same responsibility appears in a job description.

Eventually, people begin to recognise the individual, not simply the company behind their name.

“At first, people might meet you because you work for a big company,” she says. “Later, people know you because you are Candy.”

Make the interview a conversation

The same focus on human connection shapes Candy’s approach to interviews.

Candidates often concentrate so heavily on proving their technical capabilities that they forget about the person sitting opposite them. They prepare answers to every possible question, then panic when the conversation moves somewhere unexpected.

“Many women spend so much time preparing,” Candy says. “But sometimes what they prepare is not what comes up in the interview. Then they panic because the conversation has moved outside it.”

Candy believes research should extend beyond a company’s history, products and competitors. Understanding the person conducting the interview can help create a more natural and memorable conversation.

Before interviewing for a Head of Sales position, Candy learned that the CEO had twins the same age as her son. The shared experience opened a wider conversation that lasted approximately three hours. By the end, the CEO had missed his remaining interviews and produced an offer on his laptop.

“The most successful interview is when the interviewer forgets what they wanted to ask,” Candy says. “Make it a conversation.”

Technical ability still matters, but candidates are rarely remembered for reciting a list of skills. They are remembered for the connection they created and the stories they told.

“At the end of the day, it is about your story. People remember when you tell them something interesting.”

That includes being willing to discuss failure. When hiring, Candy asks candidates about occasions when things went wrong and what they learned. Somebody who claims never to have failed may simply never have challenged themselves enough to grow.

“I succeed because I fail a lot,” she says. “You need to fail. That is how you learn.”

As AI makes technical knowledge increasingly accessible, Candy believes adaptability, communication and character will become even more valuable.

“Hard skills are easy to learn,” she explains. “The only thing that is hard to learn is soft skills.”

For Candy, the ability to communicate, remain curious and build trust is what distinguishes people in an AI-driven world.

From helping her mum to setting a Guinness World Record

Perhaps the clearest expression of Candy’s philosophy began with something deeply personal.

Around ten years ago, Candy’s mother suffered a fall. Although she recovered, the experience made Candy think about how frequently falls affect older people and whether technology could help them improve their balance and concentration.

“What can I do with technology to help elderly people learn how to balance?” she remembers asking herself.

Candy visited elderly centres and found that many residents had limited opportunities for stimulating physical or social activity. She began exploring whether esports could provide something different, helping participants exercise their bodies and minds while creating a reason to connect.

Before she had sponsors, funding or any certainty that the idea would work, Candy took her family’s PlayStation into several centres and began teaching residents to play.

“I brought my PS4 to the elderly centres and trained them to play esports,” she says. “Then I thought, ‘I need to make this big. How can I make it big?’”

Her answer was characteristically ambitious: attempt to set a Guinness World Record.

Candy brought together hundreds of people aged over 65 to play esports simultaneously. The attempt succeeded, generating extensive media attention, attracting support from major technology companies and eventually helping to introduce esports to more than 1,000 elderly centres across Hong Kong.

Yet the impact went far beyond the record itself. Children and grandchildren began playing alongside older relatives, creating conversations and connections across three generations, including one outcome Candy could never have anticipated.

“I started because my mum fell and I wanted to take one step to help,” she explains. “When I look at it now, I can see that it made a much bigger impact.”

None of it would have happened if she had waited until every detail was resolved or every risk had been assessed.

“If you think too much, you will never start,” she says. “Sometimes you take one little step, and it evolves into something much bigger.”

What do you lose by trying?

Throughout her conversation with Holly, Candy repeatedly returns to one question:

“What do you lose if you apply?”

The same question can be asked about approaching a potential mentor, attending an event, volunteering for responsibility or pursuing an idea that initially feels too ambitious.

Rejection is possible. Failure is possible. Feeling uncomfortable is almost guaranteed.

But waiting until every risk has disappeared usually means waiting forever.

Candy’s career demonstrates that visibility is not empty self-promotion. It is allowing people to see what you care about, what you can contribute and what becomes possible when you act.

Confidence does not always arrive before the opportunity. Sometimes it is the result of accepting it.

“Go outside your comfort zone,” Candy says. “Success is waiting for you outside.”

Listen to the conversation

In the second episode of The Women Behind the Network, Candy Liu joins host Holly Staff to discuss building confidence through action, finding and becoming a mentor, creating visibility beyond the workplace and making interviews more human.

They also explore why failure is essential to growth, the qualities that will matter most as AI transforms the workplace and how one small act can develop into an impact far greater than anyone imagined.

🔗Connect with Candy Liu on LinkedIn here.