UPLIFT: June 10, 2022

Professional Conundrum

Question: How do I achieve an internal job movement within my organization?

Career growth isn’t always about looking for greener pastures and opportunities outside of our current organization. There is merit in exploring new opportunities within our current organization, for three key reasons.

1.       You are often better placed to know what the real work is (vs. what gets advertised) and therefore have better alignment on work expectations

2.       You can leverage your existing credibility (especially if you are a top performer) to get access to roles that maybe out of bounds in a new organization (for lack of direct experience or pedigree)

3. Often, internal movements enable you to build a wider bouquet of skills that enable you to distinguish your career trajectory and enables you to carve out our your differentiation (think of an HR person who has worked as an engineer, or a sales person who has worked in operations, etc.)

To actively pursue the internal job rotation route, four things are essential

A.    Opportunity Mapping and

B.     Understanding Internal Job Rotation Policy

C.     Candid Conversation with Your Manager

D.    Having a Back-up in Place

A.      Opportunity Mapping

Knowing what opportunities exist is the first step in trying to source a new role for yourself. A good starting point here is mapping out the internal job site (that most companies have) to gather intelligence on the potential roles.

However, tapping into the informal network or even having proactive chats with managers in other teams of your interest is another good way to know of potential roles even before they open up. The latter takes effort and time, but can be a great skill to build.

 B.      Policy Understanding

 The second aspect is to know the organizational policy w.r.t. internal movements. This is a hygiene factor as you don’t want to come across as not having done your homework on the policy and procedures.

 Some organizations require a minimum tenure before which you aren’t eligible for a move, some require manager consent etc. The more you know of the fine print, the better prepared you will be to curate a move.

 A sound thing to do is also connect with people who have successful made role transitions within your organization. They can help you understand whether the policy is followed only in letter or also in spirit also.

C.      Candid Conversation with Your Manager

 Having a candid conversation with your manager is the next step, as no manager likes a surprise when it comes to a team member’s movement. The conversation needs to focus on two aspects –

1.       Why you feel what you need to move to a different role/ opportunity – the focus of the conversation maybe highlighting greater learning opportunities, or how some role(s) better align with the future direction of your career etc.

2.       It’s important to ensure that you talk about not leaving the team in a lurch but rather in a more stable or better place than when you joined. Giving comfort to the manager and visibility a few months ahead could work well.

D.      Having a Back-up in Place

A lot of people do A, B and C, but many fail in achieving a role transition because they believe that it’s the manager’s job to find their replacement. However, the fact remains even when your reporting manager is vested in your career, he/ she needs your help in finding the right replacement as well as comfort that things will not fall apart when you transition out (especially if you are a high performer).

By helping your manager find your replacement, you increase the odds of the manager and the organization supporting you role transition.

Some of the best examples of success stories of job rotations I have seen, especially at mid to senior levels, are when the incumbent employee worked to find/ train their replacement. It’s almost like making yourself redundant. You can do this by either upskilling or training a team member, and/ or by actively trying to source both internal and external for relevant candidates.  

PERSPECTIVES

“We don’t gain wisdom by going through new experiences, meeting people or even reading books.

We just increase the odds of gaining wisdom by doing these things.

True wisdom come from by

-          Reflecting on our experiences,

-          Being open to learn from people that are different from us

-          Critically thinking about what the books have to say, and then internalizing what resonates”

Point to Ponder

Are there other parallel, nonlinear, roles in your organization that would enable you to move faster or better in your chosen career direction? If you haven’t explored these yet, who do you within the organization would you want to connect with to explore these opportunities.