Looking to support someone through career transition?
Explore career transition for your organisationWhat gets in the way.
The pressure to find another role can make it tempting to start moving before you've worked out where you're actually trying to go.
Lack of clarity
Knowing you want change isn't the same as knowing what you want next.
Without real clarity about what matters, what you're good at and what the right opportunity looks like, it's easy to pursue roles simply because they're available.
Wasted effort
Untargeted applications, indiscriminate networking and conversations with the wrong people consume time without necessarily moving you closer to the right opportunity.
Opaque market
Senior hiring doesn't always work the way it appears from the outside.
Executive search, referrals, networks, reputation and relationships all influence how opportunities emerge and how hiring decisions are made.
Going it alone
Making important career decisions alone makes objectivity difficult.
Independent perspective, challenge and support can help you see what's really happening, make better decisions and maintain momentum when the process becomes difficult.
MEET JAMES
James has a distinctive perspective on career transition: he understands the individual, the hiring market and the commercial realities of the organisations people are moving between.
Calm, challenging and highly practical, dedicated to creating the space for people to think properly while maintaining focus on the actions that move people forward.
ExploreI've spent my career on the other side of the table.
For more than 20 years, I've worked in and led recruitment and executive search businesses, helping organisations identify and hire exceptional people.
I've built executive search brands, personally delivered complex executive and Board-level search mandates and worked with organisations ranging from high-growth founder-led businesses and private equity portfolios to major listed companies.
That experience has given me an inside understanding of how senior hiring really works, how people get noticed, how search firms identify candidates, how shortlists are built, how opportunities emerge and how hiring decisions are made.
I've seen the process from the other side. Now I use that experience to help people navigate it.
Careers move through relationships.
Executive search taught me something that has shaped my entire career: opportunities are created through people.
It's a capability built through more than 5,000 meetings and thousands more conversations. More than 50 recommendations on LinkedIn provide visible evidence of something I've always believed in, the value of building trusted, long-term relationships.
Career transition isn't about collecting connections. It's about understanding who matters, where opportunities might exist, how to approach people and how to create conversations that lead somewhere.
I help people understand and activate their own networks more effectively, identify the relationships they need to build and navigate the market with greater purpose.
The right role. Not just the next role.
Speed matters in career transition. But speed without direction can take you to the wrong destination.
My approach starts by getting underneath what you initially think you should do next to understand what really matters. Your strengths, ambitions, motivations, circumstances and definition of success.
From there, we turn clarity into a focused strategy for the market.
Clarity
Know where you're going.
Understand what matters, what you want, where you create value and what the right next opportunity actually looks like.
Position
Build a compelling career story and positioning that communicates your experience, strengths and relevance to the market.
Connect
Create the right conversations.
Identify the organisations, search firms and people that matter and use relationships intelligently to create access and opportunity.
Move
Navigate the opportunity.
Approach conversations, selection processes, interviews, decisions and offers with greater insight and confidence.
Luke, Chief Information Officer
My time with James has been extremely beneficial, and I'm grateful for the hours spent. As background we have covered a range of topics starting initially with levels of change within my own organisation, leading to options internally and externally, an enormous amount of thinking at each stage needed on my part, that needed shaping and action planning for approach.
Our sessions always help me pull at a thread on a knotted ball of wool, and in the session unwind it, getting to root causes, thus leaving me clearer headed, clarity on my meta-thinking and an action plan.
I am super grateful for James' approach. James is able to flex in a natural fluid way that help us / me get the outcome I need!
SOMETIMES THE RIGHT CONVERSATION CHANGES EVERYTHING
You don’t need to have your next move figured out.
If you’re considering a change, facing an unexpected transition or simply questioning what comes next, the next best step is to start a conversation
