Your Next Career Move May Already Be in Your Work: Discovering Career Evidence with Work IQ

Intro:
You see a target role that feels like a leap. Your current experience is rooted in one specific domain, but the new role asks for a blend of strategy, leadership, and cross-functional capabilities that seem just out of reach.

At first glance, the instinct is familiar to many of us:
“My current job title does not match. I am not qualified.”

But that is the wrong question to ask. Instead of asking if your current title matches the role, the better question is:

“What capabilities is this role actually hiring for—and what evidence already exists in my work?”

That is where Microsoft 365 Copilot and Work IQ become surprisingly useful. Work IQ helps Copilot use authorised work context—such as relevant files, emails, meetings, chats, people, and work relationships—to provide a grounded response. Using / references, you can focus Copilot on specific priority material, such as a performance review, a major project wrap-up, and the target job description.

The Problem with Traditional Career Planning
Most of us assess our career readiness through static artefacts:

• Our job title
• Our current CV
• An organisational chart
• A formal job description

These documents are useful, but they are fundamentally incomplete. They show what you have historically been hired to do. They rarely capture:

• What complex problems people increasingly bring to you
• How you manage ambiguity and align stakeholders
• The cross-functional projects you are driving
• The leadership capabilities you are developing before a promotion formally recognises them

Your next role may be visible in your day-to-day work patterns long before it makes it onto your CV. Job titles are just labels; capabilities are evidence.

A senior or stretch role is rarely hiring just for domain expertise. It is looking for individuals who can define roadmaps, govern risk, translate strategy into delivery, and move an organisation from experimentation to scale. Those capabilities exist across many roles, even if the job titles look completely different.

The goal of this exercise is not to use Copilot to artificially convince yourself you are ready. The goal is to objectively separate your background into three categories:

• Demonstrated experience: Capabilities you have explicitly executed and delivered.
• Adjacent experience: Work you have done that is highly comparable and transfers directly to the new context.
• Development gaps: Genuine areas where you lack evidence and need to build skills.

Prompt: Decode the Role and Map Your Evidence
Use this prompt as the first step in your career transition journey.

Act as a recruiter and career coach.

Analyse the target job description attached below and identify:

Core responsibilities

Hiring goals and business outcomes

Technical, strategic, and leadership capabilities being assessed

Important ATS keywords

The characteristics of a successful candidate

Then, use the Work IQ experience in Microsoft 365 Copilot to analyse my authorised work context for relevant evidence. Consider relevant work files, meetings, emails, Teams conversations, project activity, and stakeholder interactions that I am permitted to access.

Use the items I attach with / as priority evidence.

Create a table with these columns:

Target capability (from the JD)

Evidence from my work context

Source or cited work item

Why the evidence is transferable

Classification: demonstrated experience, adjacent experience, or development gap

Do not invent experience or outcomes. Clearly distinguish documented evidence from reasonable inference. Be honest about gaps.

What to Attach Using / References
To get the best results, start small and specific. Good first attachments include:

• Your current CV
• The target job description
• Your latest performance review
• A major project summary, business case, or closure presentation
• A documented stakeholder feedback email

Decoding the Output
When you run this prompt, the output shifts your perspective from "Do I have the title?" to "Do I have the proof?" Here is an example of what that output might look like regardless of your specific industry:

Target Capability	Evidence from Existing Work Context	Classification
Cross-Functional Leadership	Chaired the weekly steering committee, aligning three distinct departments on the Q3 delivery schedule and resolving resource bottlenecks.	Demonstrated experience
Strategic Roadmapping	Authored the business case and phased rollout plan for the internal tool migration, translating user pain points into a delivery timeline.	Adjacent experience
Enterprise Governance	Established the risk review matrix used by the wider team to evaluate third-party vendors before onboarding.	Demonstrated experience
Executive Communication	Drafted monthly status briefings for the VP group, synthesising complex project metrics into clear, decision-ready updates.	Demonstrated experience
Specific Platform Expertise	Limited evidence of direct hands-on configuration or certification in the target proprietary software.	Development gap

Using Work IQ Responsibly
A career mapping exercise should be handled carefully when using enterprise tools:

• Use only information you are authorised to access.
• Do not use confidential work content (like financial data or proprietary architectures) in external job applications.
• Verify all evidence and citations before relying on them.
• Treat Copilot as a reflection and drafting partner, not the final decision-maker.

Choose one stretch role that interests you this week. Do not start by rewriting your CV. Start by asking what capabilities the role actually requires, and let your existing work provide the evidence. In the next article, we will take the evidence you uncover and turn it into a compelling CV and LinkedIn narrative.