Planning a Senior Career Move: What to Decide Before You Start Looking

Be clear about what has changed

Before defining the next role, examine the current one.

What is prompting the thought of moving?

There is a material difference between a difficult period and a role that no longer fits. A demanding project, temporary disagreement or disappointing quarter may pass. A permanent reduction in scope, a fundamental change in leadership expectations or a loss of confidence in the organisation’s direction is different.

The distinction matters because a search driven principally by the desire to leave can make an ordinary alternative look unusually attractive.

Ask:

• Has the substance of my role changed?
• Do I still have the scope or authority I expected to have?
• Is the issue the work, the organisation, the leadership environment or my own priorities?
• Is there a realistic change that would make staying attractive again?
• If the next twelve months looked much like the last six, would I choose to remain?

There is no need to create a case for leaving simply because you are curious about the market. Equally, there is little value in dismissing a persistent concern as a temporary frustration when the underlying conditions have genuinely changed.

The aim is to know what problem, if any, the next move needs to solve.

Define the work before the title

At senior level, job titles become increasingly unreliable descriptions of the work.

A Finance Director in one organisation may have broad commercial influence, board exposure and responsibility for a substantial operating team. The same title elsewhere may describe a considerably narrower functional remit.

The same applies across operations, technology, marketing, people, transformation and general management. Organisation size, ownership, maturity and structure can change the substance of apparently similar positions.

That may involve thinking about:

• scale of remit
• decision-making authority
• breadth versus specialist depth
• direct leadership responsibility
• proximity to the board, owners or investors
• growth, transformation, stabilisation or steady-state operations
• the amount of ambiguity in the role
• the resources available to deliver against expectations

For one person, progression may mean a larger organisation. For another, a smaller business may offer substantially greater influence.

A move into a more specialised role can be progression. So can moving from executive responsibility towards advisory work. Conversely, a more impressive title does not necessarily represent a more substantial job.

The useful measure is the work itself.

Reconsider what matters at this stage of your career

The criteria that shaped your previous moves may no longer be the criteria that should shape the next one.

At an earlier point, progression, remuneration or access to particular experience may have dominated the decision. Later, factors such as autonomy, leadership quality, working pattern, organisational purpose or the nature of the problems being solved may become more important.

Relevant considerations could include:

• scope and influence
• quality of leadership
• remuneration
• autonomy
• intellectual challenge
• location and travel
• flexibility
• organisational purpose
• stability
• pace of change
• ownership structure
• team quality
• working hours
• degree of operational involvement

The difficulty is not identifying desirable characteristics. Most people can construct a long list of them.

The useful work is deciding which matter most.

Non-negotiable

Conditions that genuinely need to be present for a move to work.

Strong preference

Important factors that could be traded against something of sufficient value elsewhere in the opportunity.

Open to discussion

Areas where you have a preference but would consider something different.

This is more revealing than a general wish list.

Wanting greater responsibility, better remuneration, more flexibility, a shorter journey, an excellent leadership team, less organisational politics and more interesting work is understandable. Expecting every one of those things from the same move is less useful as a decision framework.

Separate the role from the environment

An attractive role in the wrong environment can be a poor move.

Two positions with similar responsibilities may feel entirely different because of the organisation around them.

Consider questions such as:

• How are decisions made?
• How concentrated or distributed is authority?
• Is the organisation building, consolidating, restructuring or recovering?
• How much support does the function have from senior leadership?
• Is the expectation to improve something established or create capability from scratch?
• How much ambiguity and organisational friction are you willing to absorb?
• Do you want the infrastructure of a larger organisation or the breadth often available in a smaller one?

This is particularly important where a role appears to offer considerable accountability.

Accountability without sufficient authority, access or resources is not necessarily seniority. It can simply be exposure.

Understanding the environment you work well in can therefore be as important as identifying the job you want.

Decide how broad the search should be

Clarity does not require an excessively narrow specification.

If the search is defined by one exact title, one type of organisation, one sector and a very tight set of practical conditions, worthwhile opportunities may be excluded before they have been properly considered.

At the other extreme, if almost anything could be interesting, your criteria are not helping you make decisions.

A useful search tends to have clear boundaries and deliberate areas of flexibility.

For example, you might be firm about:

• genuine executive responsibility
• a particular working pattern
• a realistic travel radius
• the minimum commercial terms you would accept

while remaining open about:

• precise title
• sector
• ownership model
• organisation size

Someone else may make completely different choices.

The point is not to find a standard specification for a good senior move. It is to distinguish the criteria that define your search from those on which you can be flexible.

Consider whether the form of work should change

For some professionals, the next decision is not simply which role to take, but how they want to work.

Permanent employment may remain the clear preference. But experience can also create credible options in interim, contract, fractional or consultancy work.

The question at this stage is not to decide every contractual detail. It is simply to consider whether the next phase of your career should be confined to one model.

You might ask:

• Do I want continuing responsibility for one organisation?
• Do I enjoy finite mandates with a defined objective?
• Would I prefer several clients or one employer?
• Do I want to operate inside the organisation or increasingly advise from outside it?
• How important is continuity compared with variety?
• How comfortable am I with the commercial uncertainty that can accompany independent work?

The distinctions between these models deserve fuller consideration in their own right. The important point here is not to assume that the way you have worked previously must determine how you work next.

Related Resource: Permanent, Interim, Contract, Fractional or Consultancy? Choosing How You Want to Work

Identify the trade-offs you are prepared to make

Most credible career decisions contain compromises.

Greater autonomy may come with less infrastructure.

A smaller organisation may provide wider scope but fewer resources.

A large organisation may offer considerable scale while placing tighter boundaries around individual authority.

A more flexible form of work may provide greater control over time but less predictability.

A recognised employer may add weight to a CV while offering a narrower mandate than a less prominent organisation.

These are not necessarily disadvantages. They are characteristics of different opportunities.

The question is whether the trade-off is acceptable.

That is a much more practical question than trying to describe an ideal job in which nothing has to be compromised.

It also gives you a better basis for evaluating opportunities as they emerge.

Do not let an opportunity define the search

Senior recruitment can be opportunistic.

A former colleague calls. A recruiter mentions an organisation with an excellent reputation. A role appears in a sector you had not considered. Someone suggests that you should “at least have the conversation”.

Often, you should.

A deliberate search does not mean refusing to consider unexpected opportunities.

The risk is allowing the existence of an opportunity to become the main reason for pursuing it.

Titles, brands and flattering approaches create momentum. Once several conversations have taken place, it becomes surprisingly easy to evaluate whether you can make a role work rather than whether you actually want it.

Returning periodically to the criteria established at the outset helps counter that effect.

That may mean:

• creating selective job alerts rather than constantly scanning vacancies
• speaking with recruiters who understand the kind of work you do
• being clear with trusted contacts about what would interest you
• keeping a search discreet where your circumstances require it
• stopping a process when a fundamental mismatch becomes apparent

Being selective is not the same as being inflexible.

Know what you need to establish about a serious opportunity

Once a role becomes genuinely interesting, the questions become more specific.

You need enough information to judge the substance of the opportunity rather than merely its presentation.

The mandate

What are you actually being brought in to achieve?

The scope

What falls within the role, and what sits elsewhere?

The authority

Can you make the decisions necessary to deliver what will be expected?

The organisational context

Why does the role exist now?

The leadership environment

Who will you report to, work alongside and depend upon?

The working arrangement

Are the expectations around location, travel and flexibility genuinely workable?

The commercial terms

Is the salary, rate or other structure within a range you would accept?

Not all of this will appear in a job advert. Much of it should emerge through a good recruitment process.

Persistent vagueness about fundamental aspects of the role, however, is worth noticing.

Before committing to a process, ask a few harder questions

Before investing significant time in an application or selection process, consider:

• Would I want to do the work if the organisation’s name were less impressive?
• Is the scope appropriate for my experience and what I want next?
• Does the authority appear proportionate to the accountability?
• Is there a real organisational need for what I bring?
• Does the working arrangement fit my life in practice, rather than in theory?
• Are the commercial terms realistically acceptable?
• Do the people involved appear aligned about what the role is there to do?
• Am I moving towards something I want, rather than simply away from something I do not?

None of these questions needs a perfect answer.

Their purpose is to stop momentum from replacing judgement.