STOP AND THINK: Did you ponder your career goals while you were on leave?

The holidays are over. The children are back at school and you are at work again. The August heat and hiatus have passed, as have those lovely, structureless days of idle endeavour.

For many, the holidays will have offered a chance to reflect on their lives. Unconstrained by the tyranny of the urgent e-mail and meeting addiction, many people use the time to reassess their careers — to take a fresh look at where they are going. Is it time to think about moving on? If these thoughts have flitted across your mind, you are not alone. Your co-workers and your boss have also had the opportunity. They have probably reflected on you as well as themselves; where both of you are, or should be, going.

Moving on always has implications for others. So for lots of us there are questions: Is it time to sow the seeds of a new career? To ease up and shift down? To start a new business in the great spirit of enterprise? Or move up to the next step on the existing career ladder? We know that people regret more what they did not do rather than what they did do in life. Those counselling the dying notice that almost nobody said they wished they had worked harder or longer.

Some regret they traded off risky adventures for dreary security; that excessive caution or lack of imagination prevented them from realising their potential. They never moved on when they should or could have.

So what is moving on all about? How do you move on, or up, or across? How do you fulfil your (real) potential . . . or more prosaically, how do you get another (better, more fulfilling) job? Whose responsibility is it? All this career planning and development stuff: is it entirely up to you? Should your human-resources department give you opportunities to think about your career and offer appropriate training and assessment? What role should your boss play? Should he or she be giving you timely and honest feedback about your strengths and developmental opportunities? In the “old days”, when we had jobs for life, it was clear that the organisation thought about you and your career. It decided when and where you should move on (within the organisation). Somehow, someone somewhere ensured that you moved justly and wisely up the corporate ladder to some place that reflected fully your loyalty and talent.

But in these times of “portfolio” career management it seems we must take primary responsibility for deciding what to do and when. Often it is friends and family who are as useful as any professional in providing good advice on what to do next. They probably know you better than most and have your best interests at heart. They can confront uncomfortable truths like few others. It is not a bad idea to dust down, upgrade and update your CV. But beware: there are now firms that check the accuracy of all those half-truths and exaggerated claims about achievements and qualifications.

You should also make a check-list to help you make up your mind about what action to take (two columns, benefits v drawbacks). It could include, for example, your personal strengths and weaknesses; your job-related likes and dislikes. Of course, you might even do a five or ten-year career plan, but these can be as meaningless as those grand economic plans of communist countries in the past. The problem with grand plans is that they get overwhelmed by events. They can also prevent people from exploiting opportunities that come their way.

Some try a life coach or organisational consultant or therapist to help improve their self-awareness and consider more widely the options open to them. They can be helpful but also expensive, as can professional headhunters. Others call in favours; and reconnect with old networks. Lunching and networking can pay big dividends. And suddenly the appointments pages seem the most intriguing part of the whole paper. They indicate what sectors, places and jobs are booming.

But one problem of the whole moving-on experience is that often it has to be cloaked in secrecy. Many believe that looking for a new job shows disloyalty, signals the beginning of disengagement or demotivates staff. As a result, some end up making very surprising announcements that they are leaving (after 10 years) at the end of the week.

By tradition it seems wise not to announce the move until the next job is securely in place. This means that people are often unaware of the job searching of colleagues until the process has ended. Look around you; perhaps most people in your workplace are having “moving on” thoughts in this post-holiday time.

©The Times