Now that you have decided to change your career for a better opportunity, you will start looking for positions that interest you.
Have you ever considered changing your job within the organization rather than exploring the job market? There is a proverb that it is better to have a known enemy than an unknown friend. It is advantageous for you to move within the organization on a new profile rather than changing companies. But how to change your job within the organization? This article will help you improve your internal network and strategy to change positions within the organization.
Changing Organization for A Job or a Change of Job Within the Organization – Which Is Better
You may be looking for a change because you are unhappy with your work. The risk of losing your job may have prompted you to seek opportunities in the market. But joining a new company in the current economic climate is not 100% safe either. The combination of a new environment and market uncertainties can increase volatility in your future job security.
It makes sense to change jobs within the organization to gain motivation from new responsibilities. You can also choose to change jobs if your current position offers a limited scope for growth within the organization. Changing your department within the organization is similar to looking for a new job in the market. The only difference is that you are navigating a known territory while avoiding open competition for jobs. You will be competing against a few internal employees instead of hundreds of candidates in the job market. Changing departments within an organization is less risky than seeking a job at a new company.
“A strong social network within the organization is crucial to change your job within the organization.”
Change Your Job Within An Organization
Let us look at the internal hiring process followed by an organization. It will help us to understand the different factors behind the decision to hire you for a position.
You will know of an open position:
1. Position published on the company website.
2. Informed by a colleague about an opportunity.
3. The hiring manager offered you a job based on your work and the value you are bringing to the table.
4. You talked to the hiring manager about the possible scope to work with her, and she asked you to apply for a position in her department.
5. A manager recommended you for a job.
Competition for Jobs Within the Organization
What would you prefer among the above five options? Mostly, you will choose the third, fourth, and fifth options. You will face competition on the first two options. There will be no competition for the job through references or recommendations.
You can expect competition for a job within the organization without a strong internal referral. An executive or decision-maker cannot hire you or help you if they have not heard of you. High visibility and a good impression among decision-makers are the keys to your success.
You can interact directly with the manager and demonstrate your value by engaging with decision-makers and influencers. Organization-wide networking will determine your influence and capability to land a job without any competition.
Now, this brings us to a crucial question: how do you develop your network within the organization? The quality of your connections will help you change jobs within the organization.
Quality Of Your Connections
How does your colleague think of you as an Individual? Your network expansion will depend on your colleagues’ impressions. Let’s initiate the discussion with two questions about your relationships with other employees.
· Do they think you have taken help from them and supported or responded to them to return a valid favor? (Yes / No)
· Will they take up your call in the middle of the night? (Yes/ No)
You are in a big problem if your answers to both questions are negative. You have a lot of work to do if any of the answers to the questions are negative. An adverse response indicates that your colleagues have an unfavorable impression of you and do not enjoy working with you. You have to plan your networking activities to change your colleagues’ perceptions.
Start your networking activities as early as possible to plan a change. It may take some time to strengthen the connections with VIPs within the organization. The approach given in this article is easy to follow. Being an Introvert is not a problem. You have to plan your activities to expand your network.
Give And Take
You may have seen some of your colleagues get things done faster with less resistance from others. You will find a few things in common among those employees with more influence. They have been with the organization for a relatively long time and have good relationships with colleagues from other departments. Second, they are flexible in accommodating reasonable requests from colleagues from different departments. The flexibility in accommodating requests is why they can get things done with less friction from other departments. Those who have received help from their colleagues also reciprocate by returning the favor.
The knowledge and experience of handling favors come with time in the company. They are aware of influential company employees who acknowledge and help in times of need.
The exchange of favors goes both ways. You will observe this in real-time in politics and business. Experienced politicians and businesspeople are flexible in their terms and conditions with their counterparts. They understand their peers’ limitations and accommodate their crucial requests. They know that this favor will help them in future negotiations to get flexible terms from their counterparts.
Where Do You Stand in Terms of The Exchange of Favors
Here is one question: if someone from other departments has approached you for help, have you considered it?
Giving favors and asking for favors goes hand in hand in the networking process. Exchange of favors indicates the quality of your network. The benefits of internal networking depend on the trade of help with the right connections at crucial times.
Who you are helping and who you expect to return the favor will impact how you reap the benefits in the future. It is good to be mindful of the quality of your help and the person receiving it. Helping others without any expectation is not bad. But it is the receiver’s ethical and moral obligation to acknowledge the help and give you due credit in front of others. You have to be careful around colleagues who do not recognize your support and refuse to provide you with credit.
The starting point of your internal networking is to note whom you communicate with and who you favor.
Venture Out of Your Department to Interact with Colleagues
You have to invest some time in developing relationships with colleagues outside your department to support your career development. It is convenient to nurture relationships with colleagues in your department. Have you considered engaging with colleagues from other departments? You are already dealing with colleagues from
· Finance and Accounting,
· Sales and Business Development.
· Marketing,
· Logistics,
· Information Technologies,
· Software Development,
· Help Desk,
· Auditing,
· Human Resources
· And many more.
Why You Need to Network with Other Departments within Organizations
It is crucial to improve interaction with the finance and accounts department. It is helpful to know the organization’s financial forecast and investment plan. They know of the organization’s new initiatives. Where are they investing more to increase revenue?
An organization depends on the Human Resources and Operations Departments to be involved in strategic decision-making. You can focus on developing relationships with them. They know the demand for human resources across departments and the scarcity of labor in various skill sets.
You can develop relationships with vendors and clients to expand your influence. They impact the bottom and top lines of the organization. A good relationship with the Audit team is relevant. Friendship will help you showcase your achievements without any problems with your work.
The people working with you from the other department are your most credible connections. You will get more opportunities to interact with them for assignments with common goals.
Those relationships can be nurtured and developed through continuous engagement. It is possible to achieve the desired result through strategic planning.
How to Develop Relationships with Colleagues from Other Departments
We had various ways to develop relationships with colleagues outside your department. There were many occasions, such as office parties, coffee breaks, lunch meetings, and birthday parties, to meet others and expand your influence circle. But COVID-19 affected the organization’s social life.
Even as companies try to return to pre-COVID office practices, the flexibility of remote work will remain a motivating factor for employees. The networking practice you followed in the past will not work now. It would be best if you created a new strategy to rejuvenate the relationship and keep it warm, considering colleagues’ incentives for work-life balance through a combination of office and remote work.
Developing an Internal connection in the virtual world
You need a different strategy to build your internal network.
You can follow a robust communication plan to build a stronger network within the organization.
The first stage is to create a hierarchical map of the departments you are dealing with or are interested in working in. Rank them based on their power to make a hiring decision, influence over the decision-maker, and the gatekeeper. You have to connect with the right stakeholders to change your job within the organization. Keep in mind that you will get a better return on your investment by building a strong relationship with a few highly influential decision-makers. You can get more return on investment of your time and resources to support a highly influential and powerful authority than you can with multiple supporters of lesser power and influence. Invest your time and effort wisely.
The second stage is to leverage your communications plan. You have the e-mail ID and contact number of decision-makers and influencers. Create a communication plan based on details to contact them at regular intervals. Remember that they should be aware of you and your value before you start approaching them with the intention that, in the future, when opportunities arise, they will be interested in hiring you for their team.
Managing Your Credibility as a valued resource for your Company
There are a few office activities to project your positive image. The group meeting is one such activity that can play a crucial role in demonstrating your value to the company. All the stakeholders attend group meetings to drive the effort of multiple teams. Always come prepared with relevant talking points. Be careful not to take too much time talking on a video call or phone meeting. The concentration of team members during in-person and video meetings differs significantly. Attendees are more focused and involved during in-person gatherings because of the exchange of verbal and nonverbal communication. At the same time, video or audio calls focused more on verbal communication. You can grab attention by focusing on the quality of your input within a reasonable talking time. Focus on the quality of your contribution during the discussion.
“Why would someone want to develop a relationship with You? They would like to know what value you are bringing to the table.”
Take note of feedback and information communicated by the decision-makers during the virtual meetings. Try to understand the problems or challenges faced by decision-makers. Explore how your project could help solve their problems. You may add functionality to the project or tweak the execution process slightly to help them meet their challenges or solve their problems. The effort and the result will communicate your value to them.
You are showing them your value by listening to them and helping them solve their problem. Effective networking is always a mutually beneficial relationship. The quality of your network depends on the benefits you can derive from your relationships. The other person in your connection is also expecting the same from your side. The decision-makers can only be genuinely interested in relationships with you if they know that you are bringing something of value to the table. The effort during the virtual call will help them take notice of you. A positive impression will help you engage in further discussion.
Networking With Colleagues In One-To-One Calls
You can take the initiative of one-to-one video conversations with colleagues from other departments on the pretext of discussing the assignment. You have already noted down their problem during your group call. Discuss the potential to address some of their hurdles through your work. Your effort will show that you are also interested in their success or efficiency. They can also view you as someone who sees the broader picture and wants to improve the organization’s system. Top executives always like proactive employees who make their lives easier.
The one-on-one call will strengthen your relationship. But be sure that you are not asking for additional resources or falling behind your primary responsibilities.
Your effort should focus on preventing risk factors in hiring decisions. The hiring manager will do reference checks with your colleagues and managers. They will avoid someone who is not helpful and not a team player. Sometimes the hiring manager does not want to hire a nuisance as a member of his team.
The hiring manager will try to have a formal or informal talk with people who have worked directly with you. The hiring manager may try to get a sense of you as a person, a worker, and a team player. The feedback will always be positive as long as you are good at your job and maintain normal relationships with your team members. The hiring manager will use her interaction with you as the basis for understanding your candidature for the position. She will give more weight to her experience dealing with you than to feedback from your current or past colleagues, as long as that feedback is not serious in nature or has any legal implications. Take care to ensure 360-degree positive feedback to advance your career within the organization.
Communication Plan for Network Development
The first step to developing a high-quality internal network is to create a list of stakeholders based on their influence and decision-making power. Then divide them into groups of three, each working with a different department. Your target is to initiate networking activities with one group at a time and gradually build connections with each individual from all the groups.
Start your Get to Know Your Colleagues activities with a group of three people in the first week. If someone from the group is unavailable for a call, schedule it for next week. Next week, you will contact the next group member and the leftover member from the last group. Gradually, you can increase the number of new connections in a week to expand your contacts.
Video Call or Phone Call
Video calls are highly preferred to develop relationships in the virtual world. A few minutes of a video call has more potential to establish a good one-to-one relationship than phone calls or e-mails. Your objective should be to have at least a few minutes of a video call with all your contacts. The video call will drive your relationship. You can follow it with phone and e-mail communications to keep it warm.
What To Talk About
Keep a notepad with the talking points during your phone or video call with your contacts. The talking points should cover your work activities with them and some topics from your personal life. The objective of the call is to strengthen your professional network by highlighting the significant activities you have done or are doing, as well as establish a personal human-to-human relationship. You can share some activities or hobbies you have developed to stay motivated or to try new things in life. Or you can talk about anything interesting you are doing at home. It would be best to add a personal touch to transform the discussion from a transactional interaction to a relationship-building exercise.
Follow-Up Activities
Keep a reminder in your calendar for future interaction. You can set a reminder on birthdays or some other special occasions. People love birthday wishes, and adding the reminder is effortless to put on your calendar. You will get an alert each year to send a sweet birthday wish. Updating your calendar with special occasions will take only 30-60 seconds and keep you on their radar.
How Many Interactions Are Needed to Build Effective Relationships
Please do not expect to build a strong, enduring relationship in your first interactions.
It takes a minimum of seven interactions to develop sustainable relationships. So do not get disheartened if you are not receiving the reciprocal feeling from your contacts. They may be thinking about other things during some of your conversations with them. You will see remarkable changes in their attitude towards you if you keep up your regular interactions with them.
Result
Keep a tracker with all the details to monitor the progress. You will see exponential growth in your network with high-quality connections. The improvement in your relationships will help you to have an enjoyable working environment. You will have high-quality, influential contacts to help you change your job within the organization.
Conclusion
Changing roles within your organization can be one of the smartest career moves—lower risk, faster trust-building, and often less competition than the external market. But internal mobility rarely happens by simply applying online; it happens when decision-makers already know your value, trust your character, and can picture you on their team. That’s why your internal network matters as much as your skills.
Start early, be intentional, and focus on quality over quantity. Build relationships across departments through consistent, mutually beneficial interactions—especially with influencers, gatekeepers, and hiring managers in areas you want to move into. Show up prepared in group meetings, listen for pain points, and look for ways your work can solve other teams’ problems. Follow up with short one-to-one calls, keep a simple communication plan, and track your progress.
With steady effort and a reputation for being helpful, capable, and easy to work with, you’ll create “pull” opportunities—where managers invite you to apply or recommend you—rather than competing in crowded internal postings. Over time, your network becomes your career safety net and your most substantial advantage for landing the next role inside the company.