While it is never much fun to look for a job, it is far less enjoyable when you’re unemployed. When you are out on your own, you are not as squarely on the radar screen of recruiters, and you may have an air of desperation about you that can be pretty unattractive to a potential employer. It is a far better strategy to start your job search early—and interview from a position of stability than to wait until you “need the job.” Here are five warning signs that it is time to dust off the Rolodex and update your résumé.

1. You report to the CFO now, not to the CEO. Once the CEO restructures and puts you under finance, he or she is sending a clear sign that IT is not strategic; it’s a cost center. Unless cutting budgets and watching your pennies is your thing, it is probably time to get out.

2. You've gone as high as you can go. When John von Stein, currently CIO of Options Clearing Corporation, had been VP of IT at Cargill for several years, he knew that the next level up, the CIO role, was one that would not be open to him for some time. So, he assessed the likelihood of a move over to the business side as a division president.

"Since I came from the commercial side of business earlier in my career, so I expressed interest in going back over to that side as a business unit leader," he says. "Not much materialized there for me since most business units had their own pipeline filled with people already. After 18 months or so it became obvious that neither 'up' nor 'over' were going to work out for me at Cargill, so 'out' was the only alternative left."

3. Your company is on the block. If the parent company announces its intention to sell your division, your future will most likely take one of three paths: 1) in the typical cost-cutting that happens before a sale, you will be asked to downsize your organization, 2) you will be asked to take a package and leave yourself, or 3) once the sale takes place, you will be replaced by the CIO of the acquiring company. Of course, it is possible that the sale of your division will provide new opportunities for you in the acquiring company, but it is better to have a job search under way as you wait to find out.