Why is a job change a buying signal?

New people review the tools and suppliers they inherit, often within their first months, and bring preferences from their last role. A former customer or fan who moves takes that preference with them.

When should I contact someone after they change jobs?

Not in the first week, when they are buried in onboarding. A few weeks in, once they have seen what they inherited, is usually better, and before they have settled on replacements.

Whose job changes should I track?

People who already fit your customer profile: past customers and champions, prospects who scored well but were not ready, and people in the exact roles you sell to.

How do I find out someone changed jobs?

Their LinkedIn profile and a company announcement are the usual sources. Checking a list by hand monthly works for dozens of people; beyond that you need a tool that re-reads profiles.

Job changes: following good-fit people to their next company

Why a move matters more than most signals

People rarely change tools in the middle of a stable job. They change them when something forces a review, and a new job is the most common trigger. The new head of sales looks at the CRM she inherited. The new marketing lead asks why the agency costs what it does. The new operations manager notices the spreadsheet everyone hates.

Two kinds of mover are worth knowing about:

People who already liked you. A customer or champion who moves can bring you into their new company. They know what you do and have no reason to start from zero.
People who fit but were not ready. A prospect who said "not this year" at their last company may be in a role with the authority and budget to say yes at the next.

Both depend on one thing: you knew about them before they moved.

Who to track

Do not track everyone. Track people who already fit:

Group	Why
Customers' main users and buyers	Strongest: they know your product works
Champions who pushed for you, even if the deal was lost	They wanted it; something else blocked it
Prospects who scored well but were not ready	The timing may now be right
People in your exact buyer role at target companies	A move into or out of a target account changes the map

A list of a few hundred good-fit people is plenty for a small team.

What the signal looks like

The move itself is the signal, but the details decide the message:

Same role, new company. They know the job; they will want their old tools. The strongest case for a former user.
Promotion with the move. New authority, new budget. Strong.
Move into your target industry or size band. Their new company may be a better fit than the old one.
Move out of your market. Note it and stop. Someone who leaves sales to become a teacher is not a lead.
Move into a company that is already your customer. Not a sales lead; possibly a new user to welcome.

How to do it by hand

Build the list from your CRM: customers' key contacts, closed-lost champions, high-scoring prospects. Record their current company and title.
Once a month, check each profile on LinkedIn for a new employer or title.
For each mover, note the new company, new title and start date.
Check the new company fits your profile: size, industry, place.
Wait a few weeks after the start date before writing.
Write as someone who knows them. "Congratulations on the move to [company]. If you are looking at how the team handles [problem], happy to show what has changed since we last spoke."
Update your CRM so the old company does not still list them as a contact.

Checking a hundred profiles by hand takes around an hour a month. It does not scale much past that.

What you can and cannot learn

You can learn: new employer, new title, location and start date, if they update their profile. Many people update within weeks, some take months, some never do.

You cannot learn: whether they will have budget or say over tools in their new role, or their new work email, which has to be found and verified again from scratch.

Etiquette

Congratulate briefly; do not make the whole message about their move.
Do not write in their first week.
Do not imply you have been watching them. "Saw your news" is fine; "our system flagged your job change" is not.
If they ask not to be contacted, record it and honour it wherever they work next.

Why it fails

No list to start with. You cannot spot a move by someone you never recorded.
Stale profiles. Many people update late, so your timing is often behind the real move.
Assuming authority. A senior title at a new company does not mean they can change suppliers in month one.
Pitching a stranger. Job-change outreach to someone with no history with you is just cold outreach with a congratulations attached.

How Sluice does it

In Sluice, people who scored well against your customer profile are re-read monthly. Anyone who moved company is flagged and re-scored against the profile at their new employer, so a mover into a better-fit company rises and a mover out of your market drops. Because the list is people who already cleared the bar, you are tracking the right group by default, not everyone you ever looked up. If you use HubSpot, customers and people at customer companies come back from it and are never cold-pitched, which matters when someone moves into an account you already serve.

The honest limits: Sluice re-reads monthly, so a move is seen within a month of the profile changing, not the day it happens, and only for people who scored well in the first place. A new work email still has to be found and verified, and is billed only if a verified address comes back. Event signals like "raised money" are not available yet.

To fill the list in the first place, start with LinkedIn engagers, G2 reviewers or companies hiring in your space. If you were relying on Trigify for LinkedIn and social signals, see Sluice vs Trigify before it shuts down on 22 October 2026.