Welcome back to Your Path to Career Success - the podcast that helps you build the skills, confidence, and strategies to thrive in your career.

In this special bonus episode, inspired by listener Andrew Malinow, we explore a question that sits at the heart of every successful career transition:

“How do you ensure job seeking starts with the right conversation, rather than just hoping one happens?”

Too often, job searching becomes a waiting game - updating CVs, refreshing LinkedIn profiles, sending applications and crossing your fingers. But at senior and executive levels, your next opportunity rarely appears in a job advert. It begins with an intentional conversation you initiate, one rooted in clarity, curiosity and strategic connection.

This episode reframes job seeking from a passive process to an active, conversation-driven strategy so you can stop waiting for doors to open and start opening them with purpose.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• The mindset shift from “applicant” to strategic conversationalist
• How to start the right conversations that uncover real, unadvertised opportunities
• Practical ways to network with confidence, authenticity, and value
• Common conversational traps that slow down a job search (and how to avoid them)
• A guided reflection exercise to help you build your own conversation strategy for career transitions

At every level, but especially in senior leadership, the most meaningful opportunities emerge not from applications but from conversations. When you lead with clarity, curiosity and value, you become someone people want to refer, recommend and open doors for.

What Next?

Thank you for tuning into this bonus episode of Your Path to Career Success — where ambition meets actionable advice.

🦉 Ready to start more intentional career conversations and transition into your next role with confidence? Book a free discovery call to explore how my Unlock Your Career Potential coaching programme or my 1-2-1 ad hoc support can help you turn conversations into opportunities: 👉 https://calendly.com/thecareerowl

🦉 If this episode helped you rethink your job search strategy, subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone navigating a career transition.

🦉 Connect with me on LinkedIn for daily insights on career strategy, leadership development, and intentional networking.

Useful Resources

📘 The 20-Minute Networking Meeting by Marcia Ballinger & Nathan Perez — a practical guide to mastering purposeful career conversations
📘 Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans — tools for prototyping career possibilities through conversation and exploration
📘 The Startup of You by Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha — strategies for building career opportunities through networks and continual reinvention

Next Steps

Your challenge this week:
Choose one person whether that is a peer, mentor, former colleague, or leader you admire and start a curiosity-led career conversation. Don’t wait for the “right moment.” Create it with intention, insight and authenticity.

And remember, opportunities rarely arrive fully formed. They begin with a single, well-crafted conversation.

Career success doesn’t start with luck. It starts with the right conversation.

I would love to know what you think of the episode