The job search that starts from a place of urgency rarely produces the strongest outcome. By then, the search for something new feels pressured, and the options feel more limited.
When the search begins like this, the decisions about where to go next often reflect the stress of the moment rather than any considered thinking about where you want to be and how this next role will help you get there.
People who make the strongest moves, both internally and externally, are typically the ones who plan ahead, often looking six months to three years into the future so they can position themselves for their next role before they feel under pressure to move.
In This Post
- Why most career moves happen at the wrong time
- What thinking ahead actually looks like in practice
- How to stay visible to the right people
- Keeping your market awareness current
- Next steps
Why most career moves happen at the wrong time
The pattern is familiar, someone reaches a point where a role feels stale, a relationship with their manager has deteriorated, or a restructure has changed things enough that staying no longer makes sense. In worse situations, the role may have lost any work/life balance and be having a real impact on their personal life and health.
At that point, they begin a job search in earnest, update a CV that has not been touched in years, and start reaching out to contacts who have not heard from them in just as long. The search that follows is often successful eventually, but it is rarely optimal, because every decision is being made under time pressure and with a network that has been left to go cold.
Maintaining awareness and preparation, so that when the right opportunity appears or when circumstances change quickly, you are already in a position to act.
What thinking ahead actually looks like in practice
Thinking about your next role before you need it has nothing to do with secretly interviewing or signalling dissatisfaction. It means keeping a clear understanding of where your career is heading, what you would want from a move if it came, and whether the work you are doing now is building the experience and profile that would support it.
A useful starting point is being specific about what a next role would need to give you that your current one does not, in terms of the work itself and the environment it happens in.
The learning versus earning framework is a practical tool for this kind of honest assessment, because it forces you to evaluate your current role against what it is actually giving you rather than assuming it is still working simply because it is comfortable.
How to stay visible to the right people
The relationships that tend to produce the best career opportunities usually formed over a period od months and years. They are built over time with people who know your work, respect your judgement, and think of you when something relevant comes up.
Staying visible to those people has little to do with networking in the transactional sense. It is more about maintaining professional relationships through consistent, low-pressure contact rather than reaching out only when you want something.
Building a personal advisory network is the structured version of this work, and it matters more at senior level because the roles worth having are not always advertised openly. They are filled through conversations between people who trust each other, and being part of those conversations requires a long-term investment in the right relationships.
The habits that keep a professional network in good shape are not time-intensive, but they require consistency rather than occasional bursts of activity when you suddenly need something.
Keeping your market awareness current
Knowing what is happening in your sector and what is valued in roles beyond your own is often ignored when someone feels settled and comfortable in their role. At the senior level this matters more than it did earlier in your career, because the moves you are likely to be considering are more competitive.
Market awareness at this stage means knowing what comparable roles look like, what they pay, and which organisations are growing or contracting in your area. It means staying across what is being written about in your sector and having enough external reference points to understand how your experience translates outside your current organisation.
According to research published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, professionals who actively maintain their awareness of the broader market report significantly higher confidence in career decisions when the time comes to make them. That awareness is far more useful built up gradually than under pressure when you suddenly need to make a move.
Next steps
Here are a few things to think about now so you are prepared for future role changes
- What you want next Write down, briefly and honestly, what you would want from your next role if you were to move in the next 12 months. Focus on substance rather than title, the kind of work, the scope of responsibility, and what it would need to offer that your current role does not.
- Review the state of your external relationships Think about the people in your network who are senior enough and well-connected enough to hear about relevant opportunities, and ask yourself honestly when you last had a substantive conversation with any of them. If the answer is more than six months ago for most of them, then now is a great time to reignite the relationships.
- Look at your professional profile from the outside If someone who did not know you looked at your LinkedIn profile and what is visible of your work, would they see someone whose experience and expertise are clear? Would they understand what you are good at and what kind of role would suit you? If not, that is what the people who might put your name forward will be looking at, and it is worth addressing before you need them to. The 1-hour LinkedIn Refresh post can help you update your profile and make it relevant for where you want your career to go.
- Set a short quarterly market check in your calendar Look at what is being advertised in your space, note any organisations that are moving in interesting directions, and reach out to two or three people in your network.
- Update your CV Most people leave this until the moment they have decided to look, at which point they are trying to reconstruct two or three years of work from memory and invariably understate what they have actually done. Updating your CV while you are still in the role, when achievements are recent and specifics are easy to recall, produces a much stronger document and often clarifies something useful – whether the work you have been doing in the last 12 months is the work you want to be known for.
- Track your impact in your current role Start tracking your impact in your current role if you are not already doing so. Keep a running record of projects delivered, decisions influenced, revenue generated, costs reduced, or teams led, with enough detail that you could speak to any of it specifically in an interview or a pay conversation. The career tracking habit is something you can implement weekly that should only take 10-15 minutes to complete.
Thinking ahead does not mean being constantly poised to leave your current role, rather it means making sure that when something worth moving for appears, you are in a position to recognise it and act.
Read Next
- Internal Promotion vs External Move: How to Make the Right Decision When you have decided it is time to move, how to work out whether the right move is up or out
- The Career Conversation You Should Be Having With Your Manager Right Now Before you look elsewhere, make sure you have had the conversation that could change what is possible where you are
- Is Your Job Worth It? The Learning vs Earning Framework A clear framework for working out whether your current role is still giving you what you need
- Building Your Board of Directors: Creating a Personal Advisory Network The relationships that will support your next move and how to build them before you need them
- The Year-End Career Audit: 10 Questions to Ask Yourself A structured way to take stock of where you are and whether it is still where you want to be
Dive Deeper in the Members’ Library
Want more practical resources to support your career and life? Peer Suite members get exclusive access to our resource library, including:
- First 30 Days Guide directly on-topic, linked in both the Job Hunting and Skills sections of the library
- Professional Email Templates Collection highly relevant for someone new in a role who needs to communicate professionally from day one
- Coffee Meeting Guide and Conversation Starters ties directly to the one-to-ones and informal relationship-building advice in the post
- Networking Tracker supports the stakeholder mapping and relationship-building sections
Plus workshops, guides, courses and tools to help you navigate every stage of your career.
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