LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky says, “I truly believe that your next top employee is most likely your current employee. And if you focus on skills and understand the skills of your existing workforce, and where you need to go as a company, there’s a huge opportunity to help your top talent find different roles inside of your company instead of learning and leaving. Our data shows that at the two-year mark, an employee who has made an internal move has a 75 per cent likelihood of staying as opposed to the mere 56 per cent likelihood for an employee who hasn’t made an internal move.”
If you dislike your job because it doesn’t align with your skills, you could miss out on opportunities by quitting without exploring other positions within the company. For instance, Paridhi completed her chemical engineering degree in 2008 from Pune. Since the jobs in the core sector were few, she took up a campus placement for a role in a leading IT services company. She quickly realised she enjoyed not the technical side but the business side of things. She moved to a business analyst role internally, eventually becoming a partner programme manager. She has been with the same organisation for over fourteen years, in a job she truly enjoys. It would have been a loss if she had quit without even exploring an internal change.
A lot of organisations provide their employees the option of taking a sabbatical, or to go for integrated learning; some even sponsor higher education of their employees. Before you decide to leave, explore these options in your organisation. Looking at your company’s website, especially the employee benefits section, or talking to your HR business partner can be a good starting point.
You may wonder how to determine if your organisation will allow an internal job change and support you in a new role. You can consider a couple of pointers to check this objectively:
Look for existing examples where employees in your organisation have made such moves. If there is precedence then it makes your case stronger.
Contact your HR business partner to learn about the company’s policies for supporting employees in transitioning between roles. Most forward-thinking companies have internal job posting systems that make such a move possible.
Your organisation can help you bridge the gap between your current role and your desired role. They can do this by providing in-house training, sponsoring training or education programmes, or offering a sabbatical.
Look for people within your organisation who can be your mentor/coach/sponsor for this cause
Five ways to make an internal move
Navigating the maze of a large organisation is often challenging. Despite working in an organisation for many years, most individuals don’t get to know about other teams, departments or even people. Thus, sometimes, being able to make an internal move feels more challenging than moving out of the organisation. Here are some ways that can help you make an internal move.
Take up side projects
A big advantage of working in a large progressive company is your ability to switch streams in your career. It may take time but it’s worth the wait. Gaurav spent ten years working in an IT role starting as a developer and eventually moving up to become a project manager. But this role was not bringing him joy. He wanted to switch to an HR role but he did not have a formal HR degree. So he started to gain experience by volunteering as a technical panellist in the company’s campus recruitment drive. He enjoyed interacting with engineering students who were eager but didn’t know much about getting a job in the IT industry. By volunteering, he learnt the basics of the role and gained some valid experience to apply for an internal move in the HR function.
Check sponsored courses
Companies also offer paid courses, certifications, and sometimes work-integrated degrees based on their benefit policy. You can check the company portal to see the options for seeking learning opportunities in your dream role. Ramesh wanted to pursue a career in data science. He was chosen for a master’s programme in data science by his company. His organisation sponsored a WILP (work-integrated learning programme) that allowed him to study for a master’s degree at a prestigious academic institute on weekends while still earning his salary.
Discuss your aspirations with HR and the leadership team
You can directly discuss your aspirations with HR and the leadership team. You’ll be surprised to find out that such discussions are slowly becoming common where employees no longer want to stick to the roles that their degree destined them for. One such example is that of Girish, an operations head for a large e-commerce company. He had spent almost a decade and a half across operations, analytics and pricing roles. During one of his annual appraisal discussions, he brought up the desire to try a completely different vertical such as Finance or HR to get a holistic understanding of the business to his manager. Six months later, his manager shared an opening in HR with him; the Compensation & Benefits team rolled up the role to him. If he was interested in the role, his manager was willing to put in a word to the hiring manager. He applied and interviewed for the role and eventually moved as an HR leader. This role opened his perspective to the business at large and helped him hone his business acumen.
Network with different teams to explore opportunities
Many off-the-record opportunities are discussed internally (like how it happened in Girish’s case), and your colleagues may put in a word for you. Gaurav helped his colleague Chaitanya get one such opportunity. Chaitanya told Gaurav that he wanted to switch from being an IT programmer in an internal organisation project to working as a business analyst. Gaurav immediately recalled a recent conversation with his previous project lead. She had a similar opening and was desperately looking for a suitable person. He connected with the project manager and referred Chaitanya for the role.
Chaitanya was selected for the role of a business analyst for a prestigious client project. A year later, this led him to visit North America for an assignment at the customer location. It also paved the path for his learning and future career growth. This role was not advertised internally. If he had not used a wider network, it would have been difficult and taken longer for him to make this career transition.
Chaitanya is a classic example of “building luck into your career”. He met Gaurav by chance, but he took the opportunity to talk about his interests.
You don’t have to limit yourself to your immediate colleagues. With social media, networking has blurred the borders of office premises.
Explore the option of a sabbatical to get a degree
With so many options available to make an internal move, we have kept taking a sabbatical as last. This is the right option when you have fewer financial responsibilities, or you are financially stable enough to afford a break. Also, you get admission to an institution that would be worth a break. In such cases, many companies provide two-year sabbaticals for you to pursue a degree and join back on completion.
Sumit joined a large IT services organisation as an entry-level software engineer. He worked for two and a half years. He realised that he enjoyed interacting with people more than sitting at his computer and would like to work as an HR rather than optimising code. He researched his options and discovered he could have the best of both worlds by taking a sabbatical. He ensured job security by taking unpaid leave to study for a two-year MBA programme in HR. He came back and joined the organisation in an HR role. His role was to lead campus hiring. He also got a higher salary when he changed his career path.
Minal’s story is also inspiring. While working in a central government department, she got a chance to study a fully funded master’s programme in Nuclear Safety at a leading university in South Korea. It would accelerate her career growth. But the dilemma was that she had a five-year-old child to take care of. But with the support of her family, she took this call, which eventually paid off in her long-term career. After her master’s, she got exciting assignments, and currently, she works with the United Nations in a strategic global role.
Gaurav has also changed careers multiple times in the past eighteen years. He went from being a software developer to a business analyst and switched from IT to HR to Research and Innovation. All while staying in the same company. He has learnt that making a big change requires taking a risk. You can easily use your transferable skills and leverage your network to easily change roles within the same organisation. People truly underestimate this aspect.
In the Indian context, attrition in the Indian IT industry touched 25 per cent in FY22. Big IT organisations can have between three lakh and five lakh employees. This means that in one year, more than one lakh employees could leave a big IT organisation. Many of them could be moved internally and companies are open to discussion.
When you change companies, you have to learn to take on new responsibilities and adapt to a new work environment. If you stay in the same company, you already know how things work and are familiar with the company culture. You can always rejoin the company, but in such cases, the company treats you like an external hire. You still have to go through an interview and selection process, which might not result in a job offer. Staying in one organisation is also helpful in the long run.
N Chandrasekaran is a great example of this. He joined TCS as an intern in 1987 and worked his way up to become the company’s CEO in 2009. Eventually, in 2017, he became the chairman of Tata Sons. By staying in the same organisation and building his skills over time, he was able to achieve great success.
Excerpted with permission from Career Heist: Seize Control of Your Professional Journey, Gaurav Gandhi, Lochan Narayanan, and Apoorv Bamba, Westland.
