Have you ever thought of changing your job within the organization instead of 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 the company. But how to change your job within the organization? This article will help you to improve your internal network and strategy to change positions within the organization.
Changing Organization for A Job or Change of Job Within The Organization – Which Is Better
within the organization.
You may be looking for a change because you are unhappy with your work. The danger of losing your job may have tempted you to look for opportunities in the market. But joining a new company in the current economic climate is also not 100% safe. The combination of a new environment and market uncertainties can add more volatility to your future job security.
It makes sense to change the job within the organization to get motivated with new responsibilities. You can also choose to change your job if your current position has limited scope to grow 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 trying to move around a known territory and avoiding open competition for jobs. You will be competing against a few internal employees instead of hundreds of candidates in the job market. Changing a department within an organization is less risky than looking for a job in a new company.
Different Options To 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:
- Position published on the company website.
- Informed by a colleague about an opportunity.
- The hiring manager offered you a job based upon your work and the value you are bringing to the table.
- 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.
- A manager recommended you for a job.
Competition For Job Within The Organization
What would you prefer among the above five options? Mostly you will choose 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 the decision-makers are the keys to your success.
You can be in the position to interact directly and show your value to the manager through your interactions with the 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 of how to develop your network within the organization. The quality of your connections will help you to change your job within the organization.
Quality Of Your Connections
How does your colleague think of you as an Individual? Your expansion of the network will depend on the impression of your colleagues. Let’s initiate the discussion with two questions on 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 the questions are negatives. You have lots of work to do if one of the answers to the questions is negative. The adverse response means that your colleagues have an unfavorable impression of you, and they do not enjoy working with you. You have to plan your networking activities to change the perception among your colleagues.
Start your networking activities as early as possible to plan for 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 the 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 other 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 favors.
The knowledge and experience of handling favors come with their time with the company. They are aware of influential employees of the company and who acknowledge and help in times of need.
The exchange of favor goes both ways. You will observe this in real-time in politics and business. Experienced politicians and people in business are flexible about their terms and conditions with their counterparts. They understand the limitations of their peer and accommodate their crucial requests. They know that this favor will help them in future negotiations to get flexible terms from the counterpart.
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 go hand in hand in the networking process. Exchange of favors indicates the quality of your network. Your benefits of internal networking depend on the trade of help with the right connections at crucial times.
Whom you are helping and expecting the return on the favor will impact how you will reap the benefits in the future. It is good to be conscious of the quality of your help and the person who is 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 of colleagues who do not admit your support and ignore giving you credit.
The starting point of your internal networking is to note whom you communicate and give favor.
Venture Out Of Your Department To Interact With Colleagues
You have to invest some time to develop a relationship with colleagues outside your departments for your career development. It is convenient to nurture the relationship 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 Departments within Organizations
It is crucial to have a better interaction with the finance and accounts department. It is good to know the financial forecast and investment plan of the organization. They know of: Which are the new initiatives by the organization? Where are they investing more to increase revenue?
An organization depends on The Human Resources and Operation Departments to be involved in the strategic decision. You can give attention to develop relationships with them. They know the demand for human resources from various departments and the scarcity of labor in different skills.
You can develop relationships with vendors and clients to expand your influence. They have an impact on the bottom line and the top line of the organization. A good relationship with the Audit team is relevant. Friendship will help you to showcase your achievements without any problem with your work.
The people who are working with you from the other department are the most credible connections for you. You will get more opportunities to interact with them for assignments with common goals.
Those relationships can be nurtured and develop 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, birthday parties, and many more to meet others and expand your influence circle. Now the risk of the infectious virus has completely changed social networking activities. We do not have opportunities to network with our colleagues at our office.
The companies are following strict guidelines on social distancing rules to safeguard the health and wellness of employees. They are allowing 20 or 30% of their employees to attend office. The networking practice you followed in the past will not work now. It would be best if you create a new strategy to rejuvenate the relationship and keep it warm.
Developing an Internal connection in the virtual world
You have to create a different strategy to develop your internal network.
You can follow a robust communication plan to have a better network of people within the organization.
The first stage is to create a hierarchal map of the departments you are dealing with or interested in working. 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 developing a strong relationship with one highly influential decision-maker. You can get more things done to support a highly influential and powerful authority than having multiple supporters with less 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 in hiring you for their team.
How To Change Your Job Within The Organization: Managing Your Image In The 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 to demonstrate you as an asset 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 at the in-person meeting and video meetings differ significantly. Attendees are more focused and involved during in-person gatherings due to the exchange of verbal and non-verbal communication. At the same time, video or audio calls focused more on verbal communication. You can grab the 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 the decision-makers. Explore the possibility of solving their problems through your project. You may add some functionality to the project or change the execution process slightly to support them in meeting their challenges or solving their problems. The effort and the result will communicate your value to them.
You are showing them your value by listening and helping them to solve their problem. Effective networking is always a mutually beneficial relationship. The quality of your network depends on the benefits that you can generate from the 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 to take notice of you. The positive impression will help you to 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 discussion about the assignment. You have already noted down their problem during your group call. Discuss the potentials to address some of their hurdles through your work. Your effort will show that you are also interested in them to be successful or efficient. They can also view you as someone who sees the broader picture and wants to improve the organization’s system. Top executives always like the kind of employees who are proactive and make their life easy.
The one-to-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 an idea of you as a person, worker, and team player. The feedback will always be positive as long as you are good at your job and maintain normal relationships with your team member. The hiring manager will take her interaction with you as the basis of the understanding of your candidature for the positions. She will give more weight to her experience dealing with you over feedback from your current or past colleagues as long as those are not serious in nature or has any legal implications. Take care to have 360-degree positive feedback to change your job with the organization.
Communication Plan For Network Development
The first step to develop a high-quality internal network is to create a list of stakeholders as per their influence and decision-making power. Then divide them into a group of three people working with different departments. Your target will be to initiate networking activities with one group at a time and gradually establish a connection 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. In case someone from the group is not available for a call, then schedule it for the 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 call is highly preferred to develop relationships in the virtual world. Few minutes of video call has more potential to establish good one-to-one relationships 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 relationships. You can follow it with phone and e-mail communications to keep it warm.
What To Talk
Keep a notepad with the talking point during your interaction over the phone or video call with your contacts. The talking point should contain talking points on your work activities with them and some topics from your personal life during the covid19. All of us are going through some form of social restrictions. But this is not enjoyable for us as social animals. You can share some activities or hobbies you have inculcated to feel motivated. It seems people have found a new love for baking. Or you can talk about anything interesting you are doing at home. It would be best to add some personal touch to transform the discussion from transactional interaction to a relationship development 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 not take more than 30-60 seconds to complete and keep you on their radar.
How Many Interactions To Build Effective Relationships
Please do not expect to build a strong and enduring relationship on 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 reciprocate feeling from your contacts. They may have other things running in their mind during some of your conversations with them. You will see remarkable changes in their attitude towards you if you will 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 and influential contacts to help and support you in changing your job within the organization.