rethink

The IFTM will once again gather those who shape tourism, from September 15 to 17.

For three days, badges will cross in the aisles, appointments will follow one another, business cards will be exchanged, and conversations will sometimes extend well beyond the official salon hours.

Because a B2B show is primarily a place for business. People come here to meet clients, partners, discover markets, discuss innovation or prepare for the months ahead.

But there is also something more subtle at play.

You will reconnect with former colleagues and you will cross executives you have known for a long time. You discover that someone has changed companies, that someone else has created their own activity, or that another has just taken on a new responsibility. You then measure the evolutions of a sector, sometimes without even realizing it.

And within this collective movement, a personal question sometimes makes its way.

And it is not necessarily because one is looking for a job, but sometimes simply because one senses that something must evolve.

After a few years in the same company or after a reorganization, a departure, or simply the desire to give one’s career a different direction, a show like the IFTM can become a revealer, because you find your market but also a part of yourself.

This is particularly true for executives, because when an executive leaves their post, voluntarily or not, the temptation is strong to want to very quickly find a comparable situation (same level of responsibility, equivalent scope, same title).

One must “bounce back.” And if possible, quickly.

Yet, the real challenge of a professional transition often lies elsewhere. It is not only about finding a job. It is about finding a direction again.

After ten, fifteen, or twenty years of a career, a manager never starts from scratch. They depart with solid experience, know-how, an understanding of organizations, but also a more precise awareness of what they no longer want. Their professional capital has evolved.

The problem is that we often keep presenting ourselves by our last job title. We have been HR directors, sales directors, marketing directors. We have held certain roles in certain companies and, when that tenure ends, we naturally seek to reclaim its equivalent.

However, a career path is not reducible to a job title.

Behind a post lie skills, experiences, problems solved, transformations supported, environments in which one has learned to be effective. It is precisely this process of putting things into perspective that enables moving from a search logic to a positioning logic.

In a period of professional transition, the reflex is often to multiply approaches. As if volume would automatically generate more opportunities (more resumes, more applications, more contacts).

Yet, by trying not to close any doors too many, one can end up not being clearly identified behind any door.

A professional who presents themselves as “open to any opportunity” signals availability but does not necessarily give a precise reason to consider them.

Conversely, the one who can explain what they bring, in which contexts their experience is particularly useful, and what they now wish to build becomes much more legible.

The market does not necessarily notice those who can do everything. It notices those whose value is identifiable.

That is also why a professional show can be valuable during a period of transition. Not to distribute their CV there, nor even to find a job there, but to listen attentively. Observe sector transformations. Understand leaders’ concerns. Hear new needs. See new ways of working emerge.

There is a substantial difference between saying “I’m looking for a position” and being able to talk about one’s experience, its professional convictions, and what one would like to contribute in the future.

In the first case, you are seeking an opportunity. In the second, you open a conversation.

And it is often in these conversations that trajectories one had not imagined arise. It could be a mission, a consulting activity, an entrepreneurial project, a meeting that leads to another meeting or simply a discussion that helps understand that a skill acquired over the years can have value in a very different context.

In this perspective, the network is no longer a mere list of people to call when one needs a job. It is a professional ecosystem that one nourishes over time.

A show like the IFTM is one of those places where this ecosystem meets in person.

The field shows that career paths are not as linear as one might imagine. That some professionals switch sectors, that others leave salaried jobs, that some accept a role less obvious on paper and find new momentum there.

Perhaps that is, ultimately, the true interest of a rendezvous like the IFTM for a professional in reflection: to rethink what comes next.