For senior leaders, career transitions are rarely linear. Whether triggered by choice or circumstance, navigating this phase requires more than updating a CV and speculative headhunter applications. A successful executive transition demands strategic clarity, positioning, and approaching the next stage with conviction.
Here are ten essential steps to help senior executives transition with intent and impact:
1. Pause, Don’t Panic
Resist the urge to jump into reactive job-hunting. Take time to reset, decompress and reflect. Clarity comes from space — not from hastily firing off applications. Treat this moment as a strategic phase, not a setback.
2. Get Clear on What You Want (and Don’t Want)
Define what success looks like in your next chapter. Are you aiming for another executive role? A portfolio career? Advisory work? Investment-led opportunities? Or perhaps a journey which leaves you open to some of these options. Write down your red-line non-negotiables, deal-breakers and aspirations.
Utilising personality and values questionnaires used by executive outplacement services is a great way to challenge your own assumptions of what that success looks like.
3. Build Your Strategy
Develop a strategy that links your achievements, values, and leadership style to what you want next. Having a plan and sticking to the conviction that plan has outlined will ensure that you stay focused on the long-term role which suits you and don’t jump into the wrong role for the wrong reasons.
4. Refresh Your Executive CV and Online Presence
Your CV should be tailored for board-level or C-suite audiences — results-focused, concise and commercially astute. Ensure LinkedIn aligns as many decision makers and headhunters will use this to validate that your public persona matches with your offline CV. Think beyond keywords: it’s about credibility, clarity, and positioning.
5. Identify and Activate Your Network
This is where most executives underperform. The vast majority of senior roles aren’t advertised. Map your network: past colleagues, investors, chairs, advisors. Reach out with purpose and stay visible. Outreach is a powerful and often untapped part of the career transition for executives, particularly those in C-Suite roles (and it is for this reason that CJPI’s c-suite outplacement solution includes a bespoke market map of prospective employers to outreach to – targeted against your objectives.
6. Engage with Trusted Search Firms (Strategically)
Don’t just submit your CV to every search firm you find on google, this rarely work. Senior level headhunters do not find jobs for people, they find people for jobs. You should understand how to get headhunted and become a ‘headhunter magnet’ for the roles and industries you are targeting.
It may be appropriate to contact specific headhunters who are specialist in your desired industry or seniority of role, but this should be approached carefully and leading with intentionality.
7. Understand Your Market Value
What are companies really paying for someone like you? Where’s the demand? Benchmark compensation structures, incentive models and common contract terms. Be ready to negotiate from a position of data-driven benchmarking, value-centric objectivity and confidence.
8. Prepare for the Right Conversations
Executive-level interviews are rarely about skills — they’re about demonstrating judgement, presence, and alignment. Be prepared to talk strategy, leadership, culture fit, and specialist capabilities (such as turnaround). Plan, get feedback, and stay outcome-oriented.
At the senior leadership level, assessment processes are looking for evidence of what you have done, how you have done it, and the results you have achieved. Aligning your experience with the strategic priorities and longer-term plans of the company is critical.
9. Be Open to New Shapes of Work
Some executives transition into portfolio careers — NED roles, interim leadership, consulting, or even founding ventures. Explore how your skills could stretch across multiple paths, and ensure your next steps are proactively and strategically orientated, rather than just going for the first opportunity which presents itself.
10. Invest in a Partner Who Knows the Landscape
Even the most experienced leaders benefit from having a sounding board. Outplacement support for active career transitions or executive career coaches with board-level experience for a proactive plan for your career ambitions and trajectory – can add significant value.
