I ask candidates a version of the same question most weeks: when did you start looking? The honest ones tell me a role had been open for months before they applied. Not because they didn't want it. Because they didn't feel ready.

That gap, between wanting a role and feeling entitled to apply for it, is where careers lose their momentum. And it isn't a small gap. Ask around and you'll find QSs who describe watching a commercial manager role sit open for the best part of a year while they told themselves they needed one more project, one more sign-off, one more year under their belt before they had the right to put their name forward.

Here's the pattern I see most often once I get people talking properly: the ones who move well don't wait for a feeling of readiness. They move when the role stretches past what they've already proven, and they back themselves to close the gap on the job. The ones who move badly, or move a year late, are waiting for a level of certainty the process was never designed to give them. Nobody hiring a commercial director wants someone who has already done the job at that level. If they'd already done it, they'd have kept it. They want someone one level below who can grow into it fast. That isn't a flaw in how hiring works. That's the whole point of it.

I think the readiness feeling is really just competence lagging behind opportunity, and mistaking the lag for a warning. You will always feel slightly out of your depth in the role that actually stretches you. That feeling doesn't disappear once you're qualified for the job. It disappears once you've been doing the job for six months. Wait for it to arrive before you apply and you'll always end up applying for the role you could have done a year ago, not the one you're capable of growing into now.

There's a cost to this that never shows up as an obvious mistake. Nobody notices the promotion round you sat out. There's no line on a CV for "considered it, decided I wasn't ready, said nothing." But compound that over ten years and you get QSs who are genuinely excellent at their jobs, and one, sometimes two, steps behind where their ability says they should be. Not because anyone blocked them. Because they blocked themselves, quietly, every time the timing felt slightly wrong.

If there's a role in front of you right now that you've talked yourself out of because you don't tick every box, that feeling is not information about your suitability. It's just what stretching feels like from the inside. Apply anyway, and let someone else make the call on whether you're ready. That was never supposed to be your decision alone.