If you are amongst the 75 percent of working professionals who are dissatisfied with their current gig, and you're looking for new opportunities, do whatever is necessary to secure that next opportunity before you walk. And don't inadvertently reveal your plans, because finding a job while working full time is tough, but it's a walk in the park compared to finding a job when you are unemployed.

Here are six tips to help you keep your job search discreet:

Avoid Careless Mistakes That Get You Fired

In a world where downsizing is the easiest way to cut costs, using company time and equipment for anything job search-related is signing your own death warrant. Make no mistake; you are being watched. So don't use you work email to contact your resume writer or recruiter, surf job sites from your work computer or leave your resume in the copier.

Find Ways To Secure Your Job

Keep your departure plans 100 percent confidential. This is gossip almost no one can resist, and sooner or later management will find out which will hurt your credibility and you could find yourself replaced. Even if you confide your plans in one work friend during a mutual whinefest, you've told one person too many.

Don't let anything about your conduct reveal that you're losing interest in your job, and exercise discretion about time off for interviews and meetings with recruiters. Everything should go on as before. Maintain normal behaviors and performance. Dress the way you've always dressed, contribute to meetings what you've always contributed, and keep the same hours.

If anything, increase your commitment to your boss, your work, professional competency and your team. Become the ideal professional you are selling to potential employers and gain valid illustrations from current activities to complement your presentation.

Consider Upgrading Your Skills

Many people think that job change is a good opportunity to get a promotion. Sometimes this is possible, but mostly it is not. People get hired based on their credentials, not on their potential, while the majority of promotions happen with a current employer where you are already a known quantity. You'll typically need at least 75 percent of the required skills for a job to land an interview and to be seriously considered as a candidate. Your most realistic strategy is to pursue a job similar to the one you have now, but that offers different opportunities more in tune with your goals.

Your surfing for potential job options should also help you determine if there are in-demand skills that you are lacking. Your renewed enthusiasm and commitment at work puts you in a perfect position to immediately pursue training and projects that will enhance your marketability.

Manage Your Emotions

You cross an emotional bridge when you make the decision to move on, and there is often a temptation to make your workspace less personal as a visual reminder that this is no longer your home, but you should keep everything normal. Don't pack up your photographs or other personal touches in your workspace, keep everything as it is until you achieve your goal and have resigned.

Define Your Sales Message

Probably the most financially important document you will ever own is your resume. It is literally the document that opens the doors of professional opportunity and when it works you work, but when it doesn't you don't.

The Internet has changed the way recruitment works and consequently changed everything about the way you conduct a successful job search, and nothing has changed more than the way a resume is built, it has to be both search-engine optimized to be discoverable in resume databases and at the same time, visually accessible to tell the right story in a recruiter's initial six-second scan.

Before starting your job search you need to invest in a professionally written resume or learn how to write one that captures a carefully defined sales message within a succinctly written story focused in the target job.

Build Your Professional Networks

If you don't have a LinkedIn profile, you should create one to reflect the story told in your new resume. You don't need to advertise that you're looking, but your existing profile should be updated to showcase your professional persona. Simultaneously, you need to start expanding your professional networks by connecting to everyone with whom you have worked before.

Then join the LinkedIn special interest groups that are relevant to your job and profession. With these groups you are looking for a membership that reflects your job title, the job titles one, two and three levels above yours, and also those titles with which yours interacts on a regular basis. Reaching out to people with these job titles based on membership in a common group allows you to build a professional network optimally focused to help you land that next step on your professional path with the minimum of fuss and fanfare.

An ex-Silicon Valley headhunter & HR Director of a publicly traded storage company, N.Y. Times bestseller, Martin Yate CPC, brings a lifetime of street-wise career management experience to his work.

The Knock Em Dead career management books unfold a new and unique approach to getting what you want out of life rather than becoming a powerless drone trapped in some high-rise salt mine.

With 17 career management books collectively published in 81 domestic and 63 foreign language editions, he is increasingly thought of as the father of the new career management. Perceptive, direct and witty, you can join Martin here to change the trajectory of your life forever. As Dun & Bradstreet says, "He's just about the best in the business."

Knockemdead.com delivers exemplary resume and coaching services and encourages affiliate relationships with professional colleagues.