There is a particular kind of quiet that settles in when you know, before you have said it out loud to anyone, that it is time for career transition. It is not always dramatic. A restless Sunday evening can be the first sign. Other times the shift is slower: the role that once stretched you now simply contains you. Career transition rarely announces itself with a single moment of clarity. It builds quietly until you have already made the decision somewhere inside yourself, and all that is left is the practical work of catching up with it.
My own career has transitioned across sectors more than once. I spent four years in higher education, nearly four in local government, and two years in the NHS, most recently leading a People function bringing together organisational development, learning, EDI and staff wellbeing. Each move taught me something the last one could not, and each one asked the same question before I made it: is it time for another career transition?
Transitioning: Knowing When It Is the Right Time to Move On
There is no single signal that tells you it is time for career transition. For some people it is a ceiling, a sense that a role has gone as far as it can go and further growth means going elsewhere. For others it is misalignment, when the values of an organisation and the values of the person doing the work start to pull in different directions. I have usually felt a combination of both, alongside a simpler truth: sustainability matters as much as impact. You can be doing genuinely meaningful work and still reach a point where doing it in the same place, at the same pace, no longer fits.
Career Growth or Variation? The Question Worth Asking Yourself
Try asking yourself this if you are weighing up a move: are you deciding from a place of growth, or a place of depletion? Chasing something new feels very different to running out of road, even when the practical steps look identical from the outside. The answer shapes how you talk about your reasons for leaving, and how kindly you treat yourself in the gap between roles.
Do not underestimate what you have built before you decide to leave it, either. In my most recent NHS role I reshaped the OD offer so that L&D, EDI, wellbeing and organisational development stopped operating as four separate strands and started triangulating off one another, each informing the others rather than working in isolation. Work like that takes time to land. Being proud of it does not contradict knowing it is time to move on. Both things can be true at once.
Support Networks Matter More for your Career than the Job Search Itself
Nobody talks enough about how emotionally demanding a career transition can be. Applying for roles is not simply an administrative task. It puts your professional identity in front of strangers, repeatedly, and tells you no more often than it tells you yes. That takes a toll, even when you are confident in your own value. My OD Practitioner and EDI Practitioner self-assessments exist for exactly this stage, to help you take stock of where your skills sit before you start applying anywhere.
Building Your Network Before Your Career Needs It
A genuine support network earns its keep here, and I would encourage anyone going through a move to build one deliberately rather than hope it appears. Mine has looked like a mix of things. My CIPD local branch gave me both connection and perspective, a room full of people who understood the language of my work without needing it explained. An external coach gave me a space entirely separate from my old organisation or my next one, somewhere I could think out loud without it being anyone’s business but mine. Local business and networking meet-ups, the kind with nothing directly to do with my sector, turned out to be surprisingly grounding. They reminded me I had a professional identity that existed outside any one employer.
Sitting With the Downtime
The gap between jobs deserves particular attention. It can feel like limbo, a stretch of time where your identity comes unmoored from a role and a title, and that discomfort is real even when the move itself is positive and chosen. Rejection compounds it. A no after a strong interview can sting far more than you would expect, because by that stage you have often started imagining yourself in the role. People who can sit with that disappointment, rather than rushing you towards the next application, make a genuine difference to how you come through the process.
The Value of Moving On for Career Growth and Breadth
Career progression has more than one shape. One version happens by staying still, deepening expertise in one place over many years. Another happens by moving, by deliberately seeking breadth alongside depth. Both have merit. But crossing organisational boundaries teaches you something the first version cannot: it shows you which parts of your knowledge travel, and which parts were specific to where you learned them.
What Breadth Actually Teaches You
Higher education taught me how to influence without formal authority. Local government taught me how to hold complexity across huge, varied stakeholder groups. The NHS taught me how to lead through relentless operational pressure without losing sight of people. None of those lessons would have landed the same way if I had stayed in one sector for my whole career. Breadth changes how you see problems, and it changes what you can offer the next organisation you join.
I was named South Yorkshire Degree Apprentice of the Year in 2025, and I became a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD in January 2026. Both felt like markers of a career built deliberately across sectors, rather than despite the moves between them. Growth and breadth are not indulgences. They are part of how good practitioners are made, and they are worth the discomfort it takes to get there.
If you are weighing up a move right now, sitting in that particular quiet from the start of this piece, trust that the discomfort of an ending is not evidence you are doing something wrong. Build your support network before you need it, not after. And be proud of what you built in the role you are leaving, even as you get ready to leave it.