Last updated: July 2026
"I'm on four weeks" is usually the first thing a candidate tells me after their salary. It's also the number most candidates have thought about least. Your notice period shapes when you should start looking, how employers read your availability, and how the last month of your current job plays out.
This is the practical guide I wish I could send every candidate before our first call.
What is a notice period and what does it commit you to?
Your notice period is the time your contract requires between resigning and finishing, and it binds both directions. You can't walk out the day you resign, and your employer can't march you out without paying out the period. Your contract sets the number, with statutory minimums sitting underneath it. Check the actual clause in your actual contract before you plan anything, because plenty of people are confidently wrong about their own notice.
While you're in the contract, find the restraint clause too. Notice tells you when you can start. A restraint can affect what you can do when you get there, and you want to know both before you're sitting in front of an offer. I've covered restraints in Non-Competes for Building Products Sales Reps.
How long are notice periods in building products sales?
Four weeks is the standard I see across most rep and BDM contracts, with senior roles commonly on eight or twelve. State and national sales managers are often on twelve weeks, and I've seen six-month clauses at the executive end. The pattern is simple: the more relationships and strategy you carry, the longer the business wants to manage your exit.
If you've been promoted a few times without re-signing anything, dig out the original contract. I regularly meet NSMs still technically on the four-week notice they signed as a rep, and occasionally the reverse: a rep who signed a template with a manager's notice clause in it.
How does your notice period change when you should start looking?
Count backwards and the answer is almost always "earlier than you were planning to." A move takes the search itself, which in a niche market usually runs weeks to months, then interviews across two or three rounds with diaries that never align, then the offer and paperwork, and only then does your notice start. On four weeks' notice, the realistic gap between deciding to move and sitting at a new desk is a quarter. On twelve weeks, you're planning half a year ahead.
That maths changes behaviour. If you want to be in a new role by January, a twelve-week notice means your search starts in winter, not spring. And if you're waiting until you're miserable to start looking, your notice period guarantees you'll be miserable for months more. The best moves I see come from people who started conversations while things were still fine.
Do long notice periods put employers off?
Less than candidates fear, and more than they'd like. For a genuinely good hire, most hiring managers in this industry will wait twelve weeks, grumbling. What they won't do is wait in silence. A long notice gets managed with a proper timeline, agreed start date in the contract, and contact through the gap, a coffee, a product day, an invite to the Christmas do. A candidate who signs and disappears for three months makes everyone nervous, and nervous employers keep interviewing.
Tell your recruiter your real notice on day one. I'd rather build twelve weeks into the plan than discover it at offer stage, when it lands as a surprise and reads like something you hid.
Can you shorten a notice period?
Often, by agreement, and more often in sales than in most jobs. Once you've resigned, a rep with one foot out the door is a risk around clients and pipeline, and many employers would rather agree an early release once the handover is done than pay someone to be half-present for twelve weeks. You can also offset accrued annual leave by agreement, and some employers will simply waive part of the period.
Two rules if you want an early release. Ask, never assume, because leaving early without agreement is a contract breach and it follows you. And earn it with the handover: the fastest route to an early release is a handover document so complete that keeping you serves no purpose. I walk through what that looks like in How to Resign From a Building Products Sales Role Without Burning the Relationship.
What is gardening leave and how does it affect your start date?
Gardening leave means you're paid through your notice but told to stay home, and it exists precisely because of what a departing salesperson knows. Your employer keeps you contracted, and therefore away from their clients and their competitor, without keeping you in the building. For search timing it cuts both ways: you're unavailable for work but very available for interviews, and your start date stays exactly where the notice period put it.
If you're senior enough to have a gardening leave clause, factor it into the conversation with your new employer early. A twelve-week gap where you're rested, free for onboarding chats, and untouchable by your old employer is a different pitch to a twelve-week gap where you're working against them.
How honest should you be about your notice during a search?
Completely, from the first conversation. Your notice period is a fact, and facts that surface late in a process look like concealment. The candidates who handle this best treat their notice as part of their professionalism pitch: "I'm on eight weeks and I'll work every day of it properly, which is exactly what you'll get from me when someone tries to hire me out of your business."
Hiring managers hear that sentence exactly the way you'd hope.
If you're thinking about timing a move and want to sanity-check the numbers against what's live in the market, start at the for candidates page.