Made Redundant? The Job Search Strategy That Actually Works

The first thing most people do after redundancy is update their CV.

It feels productive. You are taking action. You are doing something. You open the document, add your most recent role, tighten the language, maybe ask ChatGPT to polish it. Then you start applying. Job boards, LinkedIn Easy Apply, recruitment agencies. Forty applications in the first two weeks. Volume feels like progress.

It is not. It is the most expensive mistake you can make, because you are burning your best opportunities on the weakest version of your materials.

I say this from twenty years of placing people into senior roles. The candidates who find the best positions fastest are never the ones who apply most aggressively in the first week. They are the ones who spend the first week doing something that feels counterintuitive: they stop, think, and position themselves properly before they approach anyone.

Here is what that actually looks like.

The first 48 hours: what not to do

Before we get to the strategy, here is what to avoid in the first two days.

Do not update your CV yet. Your CV is a positioning document, and you have not decided your positioning. Updating it now means updating it based on what you were, not what you are targeting next. That distinction matters more than you think.

Do not start applying. Every application is a first impression. You do not get a second one with the same company. If you apply with an unpositioned CV and get rejected, you cannot reapply with a better one in three weeks when you have figured out your strategy. That opportunity is gone.

Do not call every recruiter you know. Recruiters are useful, but timing matters. If you call a recruiter before you can clearly articulate what you are looking for and why, you are asking them to do the positioning work for you. Most will not. They will file you as "looking" and move on to the candidates who can tell them exactly what they want.

Do tell your close network. Not a LinkedIn post. Not a mass email. Specific, individual messages to the ten or fifteen people who know you best professionally. "I have been made redundant. I am taking a couple of weeks to work out my next move. When I have a clearer picture, I would like to talk to you about it." This preserves the relationship and sets up a much more useful conversation in two weeks' time.

Step 1: Decide what you are for

Before you touch your CV, answer this question: what kind of role are you targeting, and why are you the right person for it?

This sounds obvious. It is not. Most people skip it because they think they already know. "I want a similar role at a similar level in a similar sector." Fine. But "similar" is not a positioning. It does not tell a recruiter or a hiring manager anything about what specifically you bring.

The exercise is to get specific. Not "I am an operations director." Instead: "I am an operations director who has built and scaled ops functions inside PE-backed businesses growing from £30m to £150m in revenue. I am looking for a COO or senior ops role in a PE-backed business at a similar stage."

That level of specificity does three things. It tells recruiters exactly which mandates to consider you for. It tells hiring managers why you are relevant to their specific situation. And it gives your CV a clear structure, because every line of the document should support that positioning statement.

If you are considering a change in direction, this step takes longer but matters even more. A career transition requires a stronger positioning argument, not a weaker one, because you are asking the reader to see you differently from how your career history reads on the surface.

Step 2: Map the market

Once you know what you are targeting, find out where the demand actually is.

This is where most job seekers make their second mistake. They go to job boards and start searching for the role title they want. The problem is that job boards show you advertised roles, which in many sectors represent less than half the actual market. At senior levels, the proportion is even lower. The roles you most want are often filled through retained search, direct approaches, and referrals, none of which appear on Indeed.

Market mapping means identifying the companies where your target role is likely to exist, whether or not they are currently advertising. Use LinkedIn to find businesses in your sector and stage that have the type of function you would lead. Use AI tools to research company news, funding rounds, leadership changes, and growth signals. Build a list of thirty to fifty target companies.

This list is more valuable than any job board, because it gives you a proactive strategy rather than a reactive one. Instead of waiting for roles to appear and competing with two hundred other applicants, you are identifying opportunities before they are advertised and approaching them directly.

Step 3: Fix the materials

Now update your CV. But update it with a purpose.

Your CV should be built around the positioning you decided in step one. The professional summary should answer the "what are you for" question in the first three sentences. The experience section should lead with the evidence that supports your target positioning, not a chronological list of everything you have ever done.

I wrote about the difference between a CV that describes what you did and a CV that positions you for what you want next in why you are not getting interviews. That distinction is the entire ballgame.

Your LinkedIn profile needs to tell the same story. Not identical text, but the same positioning, the same narrative, the same direction. A recruiter who reads your CV and then checks LinkedIn should have their impression confirmed, not contradicted.

If you are not sure whether your CV is positioned correctly, this is the point where an outside perspective is most valuable. Not a friend's opinion, not a career coach's generic feedback, but a recruiter's assessment of how the document reads against the roles you are actually targeting. That is what the CV Intelligence Report provides: a recruiter-grade read of your CV with every change annotated, two tailored CVs, and a full LinkedIn assessment.

Step 4: Build a target list

Your market map from step two gives you the raw list of companies. Now turn it into a working target list.

For each company, identify the person who would hire you. In most cases, this is not the HR team. It is the hiring manager: the person who would be your direct report line, or the person one level above the role you are targeting. Use LinkedIn to find them. Look at the company's leadership page. Check recent press coverage for names.

Your target list should have three columns. The company. The person. And the angle: why you would be relevant to this company specifically, based on what you know about their stage, their challenges, and what your experience maps to.

This is the preparation that makes the direct approach work. Without it, a direct email is cold outreach. With it, the email demonstrates that you have done the work to understand their business, and that your background is specifically relevant, not generically impressive.

Step 5: Activate the channels

With your positioning clear, your materials built, and your target list ready, you now approach the market through three channels simultaneously.

Direct approaches. For your top fifteen target companies, send a tailored email to the hiring manager you identified. Not a cover letter. Not a CV attachment. A short, specific message that demonstrates your understanding of their business and articulates what you would bring. I will write about the mechanics of this in detail in a separate piece, but the key principle is relevance: every direct approach must be tailored to the specific company and person.

Recruiters. Now is the time to call your recruiter contacts, because now you can tell them exactly what you are looking for. "I am targeting COO and senior ops roles in PE-backed businesses at £30m to £150m revenue in consumer or industrial sectors." That gives a recruiter something to work with. "I am open to opportunities" does not.

Network. Go back to the fifteen people you contacted in the first 48 hours. Now you have a clear picture to share with them. "I am looking for this type of role, at this type of company, and here is why. Do you know anyone at these three companies?" Specific asks generate specific referrals.

The 90-day framework

If you follow this strategy, the timeline looks roughly like this.

Week 1-2: Position and prepare. Steps one through three. Decide your positioning, map the market, build the materials. This feels slow but saves weeks of wasted applications later.

Week 3-4: First wave. Launch direct approaches to your top fifteen targets. Brief three to five recruiters. Have detailed conversations with your network. Track responses.

Week 5-8: Iterate and expand. Analyse what is working. If direct approaches to a particular sector are generating responses, lean in. If recruiters are coming back with roles in an adjacent space, consider whether your positioning needs adjusting. Expand the target list. Follow up systematically.

Week 9-12: Convert. By this point, you should have multiple conversations active. Focus on the opportunities with the strongest fit. Prepare specifically for each interview. Use every rejection as data about whether your positioning is landing.

This is not a passive process. It requires two to three hours of active work per day for the first four weeks, dropping to one to two hours as conversations progress. But the work is targeted, strategic, and efficient, not the scatter-gun application approach that burns energy without generating results.

The first step

The entire strategy depends on getting the positioning right at the start. Everything flows from it: the CV, the LinkedIn profile, the direct approaches, the recruiter conversations, the network asks. If the positioning is wrong, or vague, or generic, everything downstream is compromised.

If you are not sure how your CV currently reads to the people who make hiring decisions, that is the gap the CV Intelligence Report fills. I read your CV the way I would read it for a real search. I tell you what is landing and what is not, with the reasoning behind every change. Two tailored CVs, a LinkedIn assessment, and a positioning strategy.

It is designed to be the first step, not the last. Because once you know how you read to the other side of the table, everything else in this strategy becomes sharper, faster, and more effective.