36 candidate conversations.
Four clear reasons people start looking.
What people say they want from their next role, and what actually makes them leave the one they’re in, aren’t always the same thing. I’ve seen that gap up close for years, but this year’s numbers made it impossible to ignore.
Last year, I sat down myself with a number of senior leaders, mostly here in the Netherlands, to understand what really sits behind a senior-level career decision : What would make someone stay, leave, or choose one opportunity over another. Those conversations challenged some of the obvious assumptions. Salary mattered, of course, but so did impact, autonomy, intellectual challenge, cultural fit, trust in leadership and continued growth.
This year, as we headed towards the end of 2026, I wanted to come at the same question from a different angle. Rather than asking people what would make them move, I wanted to look at people who were actually open to moving, and ask why. And rather than relying only on senior leaders, I pulled a representative sample of 36 candidate conversations recorded between January and September 2026 — across the full breadth of roles I work with, not just leadership and had each one analysed for the main reason that candidate gave for being open to something new.
The results weren’t dominated by salary or benefits, and that in itself says something.
Contracts were ending, businesses were restructuring, and people were frustrated with leadership or how their organisation operated. Others felt they’d stopped learning, or wanted the chance to make a bigger impact. All good, honest reasons to start looking.
Comparing this year’s conversations with last year’s research revealed something I think is genuinely useful for employers to hear:
The reason someone becomes open to leaving isn’t necessarily the reason they’ll choose where to go next.
So what actually made people open to moving? Four themes stood out.
Job or contract insecurity – 19%
Seven of the 36 candidates were dealing with contracts ending, projects disappearing, restructures, acquisitions or departments being dissolved.
For these people, entering the job market wasn’t about dissatisfaction circumstances had simply changed around them. One candidate described themselves as a “free agent” the moment their contract ended; another was sitting on the “bench” because their consultancy couldn’t find enough new projects. In one case, an acquisition led to an entire team of 70 people being let go.
That sits within a wider picture of a more cautious employment market. Statistics Netherlands reported that 3.8% of employees changed employer in Q2 2025, compared with 4.7% in Q2 2022. It’s an important distinction for employers: someone being available doesn’t necessarily mean they were looking to leave.
More challenge, growth or impact – 19%
Another seven candidates felt their current role no longer gave them enough room to learn, develop or make an impact. One, after 14 years with the same employer, simply felt ready for a change. Another was specifically looking for a role with “significant impact,” while others wanted greater scientific depth or hands-on experience with new technologies.
What stood out to me was that growth didn’t necessarily mean promotion. For experienced professionals, progression can mean learning a new technology, tackling a harder problem, going back to more hands-on work, or simply being somewhere their expertise makes a visible difference. Progression still matters , it just doesn’t only point upward anymore.
Academia to industry – 17%
Six candidates were looking to move from academia into industry , a pattern I noticed particularly as our work in Medtech, Biotech, Deeptech and AI has grown this year, and one I don’t think is a coincidence. As we’ve built deeper relationships in those spaces, we’re simply talking to more PhDs and postdocs who are ready to see their expertise translated into something tangible.
It’s a distinctive pattern within this sample rather than something I’d claim represents the whole market, but the reasoning behind it was striking. Several candidates wanted to move away from publications and towards building something real: a product, a technology, a measurable outcome. One spoke specifically about wanting to move from publications to product development with impact; another simply wanted to “build a tangible product rather than just publish.”
Which brings us back to something that came up again and again in last year’s research too: impact. Different career move, very similar underlying motivation.
Frustration with the current employer – 17%
Six candidates talked about culture, leadership, slow decision-making, resistance to change, growing workloads or unrealistic expectations. One described constantly having to “fight” for modern tools; another felt their employer was too focused on “how things used to be done.” One candidate simply called it a “toxic work culture,” pointing to a clash in leadership style.
This is where this year’s conversations start to sound remarkably like last year’s. The circumstances differ, but experienced professionals still want to feel they can do good work in an environment that lets them do it. Culture and leadership aren’t only retention issues. They can be exactly what starts someone looking.
What about salary and flexibility?
Neither made the top four this year, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. Pay, workload and progression still shape decisions across the wider workforce, and flexibility came up in my own sample too, as a hard requirement for two candidates. The distinction is important: salary might not be what makes someone start looking, but it can decide whether they accept an offer. Flexibility might not be why someone leaves, but a lack of it can rule out where they land next.
The trigger and the destination are different decisions
Someone’s role disappearing in a restructure may be the trigger that puts them into the market, but it doesn’t tell you what they’ll choose next. Someone frustrated by slow decision-making might become open to leaving, but their next decision could be driven by autonomy, leadership or the chance to make an impact. Someone who’s stopped learning might not want a bigger job. They might want a harder problem.
The push explains why they’re talking to you. The pull explains why they might say yes. And a lot of those pull factors look remarkably like what leaders told me in last year’s research.
Worth mentioning too: push factors showed up roughly four times as often as pull factors across this sample. Job insecurity and the academia-to-industry move are the two clearest, most concrete clusters: insecurity because these candidates tend to be available and motivated fast, and academia-to-industry because it’s such a clearly identifiable group with a shared underlying motivation. Frustration with the current employer and the pull towards more challenge or growth, taken together, account for close to 40% of the sample, the largest “soft” motivator in the mix.
Beyond the four big themes, a few smaller patterns kept recurring: relocation (moving for a partner’s opportunity, or wanting to return to a country whose research culture felt right), freelancers looking for more stability or a purer focus on technical work, remote work as a genuine dealbreaker for a couple of candidates, people wanting to move from leadership back into hands-on, individual-contributor work, and a small number simply taking time for themselves before re-entering the market on their own terms.
So, what’s actually changed?
Honestly, less than I expected. The circumstances around career moves have shifted. There’s more insecurity and caution out there, and this year’s conversations included plenty of people affected by restructuring, acquisitions and expiring contracts. But underneath that, what professionals actually value has stayed remarkably consistent.
Challenge. Impact. Growth. Autonomy. Culture. Leadership.
So maybe the question for employers going into 2027 shouldn’t stop at “Why are you looking?” It should also ask: “What would make your next move worth making?”
So what can you actually do to improve retention?
If the themes above are anything to go by, retention isn’t one lever it’s several, and they don’t all sit with HR.
Be honest about insecurity before it becomes a surprise. Restructures and contract endings will always happen, but how they’re communicated makes the difference between someone feeling blindsided and someone feeling informed. Early, transparent conversations about what’s changing ,and what it means for someone’s role,go a long way toward keeping trust intact, even when the news itself isn’t good.
Redefine what growth looks like. Not everyone who’s ready for “more” wants a promotion. Give people real alternatives: a harder technical problem, a lateral move, more ownership on a project, a return to hands-on work. If the only growth path you offer is upward, you’ll lose people who simply want to be challenged differently.
Make impact visible. This came through strongly, including among candidates moving from academia into industry: people want to see the line between their work and a real outcome. Where you can, show people what their work actually changed for the product, the client, the team.
Fix the everyday friction before it becomes the reason someone leaves. Slow decision-making, outdated tools, unrealistic expectations — none of these are dramatic on their own, but they add up. Leaders who actively ask what’s getting in people’s way, and act on it, tend to hold onto their best people longer.
None of this replaces a good salary or a fair package. Those still matter, and they’re often what decides whether someone accepts an offer once they’re already looking. But if you want to influence whether people start looking in the first place, the conversation has to go beyond compensation, and it has to happen before someone is already talking to me.
