Making a move well.

The best time to look is when you do not have to. Decisions made under pressure, after a bad appraisal, a reorganisation or a difficult manager, tend to be reactive, and reactive moves are the ones people regret. If you can name three things you want that your current role cannot give you in the next eighteen months, that is a reason to look. If you cannot, the problem may be fixable where you are.

A CV lists what you did. Positioning explains what you are for. Before you apply anywhere, write one sentence describing the problem you solve and the size of organisation you solve it in. Every application, profile and conversation should be consistent with that sentence. Candidates who are unclear on this end up appearing plausible for many roles and compelling for none.

Two pages, reverse chronological, with a one-line context statement for each company most readers will not recognise. Quantify: team size, budget, revenue influenced, cost reduced, systems delivered. Cut everything from more than fifteen years ago to one line. Avoid the skills bar charts, nobody believes them, and they take space that evidence should occupy.

Most counter-offers solve the symptom, not the reason you looked. Before you accept one, ask whether the underlying issue, scope, manager, trajectory, the work itself, actually changes, or only the number. If money genuinely was the only issue, a counter-offer is a reasonable outcome. If it was not, you will typically be having the same conversation within a year, with less goodwill.

Resign in person or on a call, follow it up in writing the same day, and give the real reason without a list of grievances. Offer a genuine handover plan. Your manager today is a reference in five years, and in most Indian sectors the network is far smaller than it appears.

Spend the first month understanding before changing anything. Meet everyone your role touches, write down what you learn, and identify one visible thing you can fix quickly. The people who struggle in a new role are usually those who arrived with a plan formed before they understood the organisation.