Tweet

Why External Diagonal Career Moves are Rare

Written by: Tom Hannemann

Article Overview: An external diagonal career move occurs when someone moves into a more senior or broader role in a different organisation in either the same or a different industry. For example, if a Marketing Manager in an organisation moves to become a General Manager or Chief Operating Officer or CEO in a different organisation, I call this a diagonal move. They are rare. Most of the time people move either vertically or horizontally.

Why External Diagonal Career Moves are Rare

A vertical move is when someone is promoted to a more senior or broader role within their own organisation because they have demonstrated that they are ready to move up, they understand the culture and they have earned the respect of their colleagues, peers and the executive team. Sometimes people move vertically because no-one else is crazy enough to take the job! Sometimes people get promoted when the organisation is reluctant to hire an outsider because they might take too long to become sufficiently familiar with the unique nature of the organisation’s business, markets, operations or culture to become effective within the required time frame.
Sometimes people move diagonally internally when their organisation acquires another business, when it spins off a new subsidiary, establishes a new division or expands to a new geographic market. For example, they might become the General Manager or CEO or Divisional Manager of the new entity after having been head of Marketing or Finance or Operations or even Human Resources (!) in their original organisation. Or they move from being the 2IC of IT to become the Chief Information Officer of the new enterprise.

These kinds of internal diagonal moves occur when an organisation considers a person is capable of managing a broader level responsibilities, they have the track record to prove they can handle the job, they don’t want to lose the person to a competitor or because there were the last person standing when the Chairman called for volunteers.

An internal horizontal move occurs when someone moves into a role at the same level within their organisation to benefit from gaining experience in a different function before being considered ready for elevation to a more senior level.

An external horizontal move occurs when someone moves into a role at or around the same level within a different organisation. They can then move vertically in the new organisation when they have proven their worth in the new organisation and when and if opportunities arise. This two-step approach to career advancement is much more common that external diagonal moves.
External diagonal moves are rare because a person has to convince someone they don’t know in an organisation they don’t know and (perhaps) in an industry they don’t know that they do know how to run the place. A client who happened to be the Group General Manager of a mid-sized enterprise with three operating divisions told me she wanted to move out of Marketing into a General Management or COO or CEO role in a different company. She wanted me to make sure her résumé reflected her senior / executive management and leadership skills and attributes (strategic, visionary, communication, values, team-building, financial and so on) more than her experience in sales and marketing per se so that she could present herself as a for CEO / COO / GM roles.
My take on this is that while it’s necessary, it’s not sufficient to state that you have leadership, visionary, communication, financial management and other attributes and skills needed at the more senior levels: the readers of your résumé will want to see evidence that you have such attributes and skills by virtue of experience and achievements. Your boss might believe that you are capable to moving to the next level, but successfully convincing someone who doesn’t know you is far more challenging.

For example, if you say that you are able to develop a vision and engage people in that vision or that you are able to set the strategic direction of a business or business unit or leap tall buildings in a single bound – challenges faced by any CEO or General Manager – the reader will look for evidence of this from amongst your experience and achievements. If you say you have executive level financial management skills, the reader will want to see evidence of this. The issue is not what you are capable but how what you have already done demonstrates you can do it.
It is uncommon for someone to move from a senior marketing role into a general management role in a different organisation (particularly if they are moving between industries or sectors) because there are likely to be other high calibre candidates who are already operating at the GM/MD/COO level. A risk averse employer (which most are) is more likely to select people who have a proven track record operating at a level rather than someone seeking to take a step up.

Employers and executive search consultants will typically focus on experience you have actually had and work you have actually done as opposed to the potential you might have. If you are to credibly promote your abilities in the strategic and visionary arenas, you need to identify specific achievements which illustrate your proven abilities, rather than your potential or capabilities. It difficult to convince an employer to hire a candidate at MD or GM level unless the person has demonstrated their achievements at that level, not matter how compellingly their experience and achievements are presented in their résumé.

Employers are also more likely to hire people with experience within their industry or sector than people from outside their industry or sector, particularly if those people don’t already have experience the more senior level.

If there is a pool of talented candidates already operating at the more senior level, the question on the employer’s mind might be: “I have six good candidates who have proven their worth as a GM or MD or COO and I have this other candidate who has been an outstanding senior marketing executive, but who has not actually had any experience as an MD or COO or GM: which should I choose?” The answer is obvious and there is not much we can do in or to a résumé which will change that.

When external diagonal moves occur, they often do so when someone you know who knows you very well provides you with an opportunity because they used to be your boss or because they are a close friend or your sister-in-law. For example, a client who was a senior finance executive had an opportunity to apply for a Chief Operating Officer role in a new division of a different organisation because the CEO of that company who used to be the client’s boss persuaded his Board to consider him for the role. The CEO knew he would be capable of handling the job because he had seen my client in action from the position of being his boss for several years and recommended him for the COO job because he could work well with him, trusted him and could rely on him to deliver against some pretty stiff challenges without complaining too much. His lack of experience in the industry and in working at the COO level was discounted in favour of his more enduring personal attributes and capabilities only because the CEO knew him well. Had the candidate not received such strong personal endorsement from the CEO, the Board would have not considered him.

Related Articles
  A Small Set of Simple Moves
  Store Layout
  CONDUCTING A SUCCESSFUL JOB SEARCH
  Overcoming Objections with the "Turn Device"
  New Career Path? Look Over Your Shoulder

Article Tags: 2ic, business markets, ceo, chief information officer, colleagues, competitor, diagonal moves, divisional manager, elevation, executive team, finance, horizontal move, human resources, marketing, new enterprise, outsider, peers, subsidiary, time frame, volunteers
Referred by: http://www.kyliehammond.com.au



Related Forum Posts
Re: My Favourite 7 Boldest Entrepreneur Moves of All Time - Hi Evan, I have a new suggestion for "Boldest Entrepreneur Moves of All Time" and a suggestion for your Learning from the Masters series: 1. Boldest Entrepreneur Moves of All Time = Christopher Columbus: "... he saw the possibility of treasure and commerce where others saw only danger. He committed so wholeheartedly to that vision that not even dozens of rejections and ongoing penury could dissuade him from pursuing a journey to Asia via the West. He built on his technical strengths as a seaman to plan a viable journey and eventually marshal an expedition." - Christopher Hoenig, 6 Essential Secrets for Thinking on a New Level I bought Hoenig's book about 10 years ago but couldn't make head or tail of it then... reading it now and finding it inspirational... 2. Nomination for Learning from the Masters video: Dee Hock, founder of VISA. (Source = Hoenig.)
Re: Picking an external hard drive to backup my files - So I ended up buying a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini 250GB External Hard Drive from TigerDirect.ca for $97.99. While I wasn't able to get the pre-installed software to work on my computer for whatever reason... I was still able to transfer all 14 GB of my personal files via the old fashioned "copy" and "paste" method. Hopefully this won't compromise the safety of my stored data.
Re: Require Info on CAD Fed/Prov Grants for Restaurant Start-up - I know the Ontario government is starting a "Second Career" campaign, full of internship opportunities for new chefs and catering staff. It may be worth your while to research the possibilities with that. It may work itself out to be cheap labor in the form of a grant. Good luck regardless!
Book: Comeback Moms - Comeback Moms: How to Leave Work, Raise Children, and Restart your Career even If you Haven't Had a Job in Years Monica Samuels and J. C. Conklin 2006 Jacket: Millions of educated, professional women are quitting their jobs to stay home and raise their children. That would never be you, right? You worked hard for your degree and even harder to get to this point in your career. Quitting now, even for a few years, would kill your career, right? That's what Monica Samuels thought when she found out she was pregnant... Over 60 percent of professional women who leave work to raise children want to get back into the workforce someday. If you even think you might want to go back to work, be it in one year or twenty, you need to lay the groundwork now for a successful reentry or your options will be limited. 1. Quitting: When is the best time to cut the cord 2. Feathering the nest: How to financially prepare before you quit 3. Departure strategies: leaving the office 4. Money and Power: Constructing a new life on the home front 5. Backlash: handling family, friends and angry strangers 6. One foot in, one foot out: How can they miss you if you don't really go away? 7. Part time: It ain't perfect, but it's doable 8. Going back: the when and how of returning to work full time 9. Career counseling: When you need a change 10. Entrepreneurs: True Stories Resources Index
SEO for your small business: 4 tips - Hey all. I just wrote this entry about using SEO for your small business over at the Entrust Cash Advance blog. Let me know what you think. These days it is common to hear a lot of new buzz-words and acronyms being thrown around when it comes to internet marketing. But among the most common (and important) terms to know and understand is SEO: Search Engine Optimization. SEO simply means optimizing your business’ website so it shows up higher in the rankings of search engines like Google and Bing. SEO involves pinpointing the keywords that your customers are using to locate businesses like yours, and optimizing your website so search engines believe it is the most relevant to those keywords. Why is it important? Because search engines are becoming the primary way that customers search for products, so it is important your website to rank highly. Here are four basic tips for small businesses for how to make their websites more competitive in the search-engine ranks: 1) Some HTML editing While search engine optimization does require a little bit of HTML knowledge, don’t fear! The edits you can make on you website are simple and don’t require being a computer master. It is important that search engines can quickly read every page on your website to understand what it is all about. They do this by scanning each page’s Title tags, Meta tags, H1 tags, and more – but these three are the most important. Learn about how to edit these features to include keywords and terms that are the most relevant – and the most heavily searched for – in your industry. 2) Content People who design search engines edit the algorithm used by these engines every day to ensure that only the most relevant and informative sites are being ranked highly. This is why it is important to take another look at your website’s content: is it fluff that simply talks about how great your business is over and over? Or does it provide the user with actual, useful answers to their questions? Run through your site to look for spelling and grammar errors, make sure that you are clear and concise, and be sure to throw in valuable keywords. But don’t overdo it: “keyword stuffing” is a common mistake made by many business owners. Remember that search engines are smart, and they can tell when you’re trying to fool them. 3) Internal and External Links Linking is one of, if not the most, powerful tools behind increasing your business’ SEO success. Linking is both internal and external: internal links are links from one page to another within your site, and external links are links on other websites that point to your site. When editing internal links, be sure to select anchor text – the text that the user read and clicks on – that is relevant and features important keywords. External links are arguably the most important feature of a good SEO strategy but also one of the hardest to obtain. The most important thing to learn about external links is that, while it is tempting to try to “fool” search engines by figuring out quick ways to include your links all over the internet, this is not always useful. You need actual people and companies to decide to link to your site because the content is useful – search engines do in fact know the difference! 4) A social media presence Social media is playing more and more of a role in how search engines decide which sites are useful. If you include important pages or updates about your company on other sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and especially if your followers re-post that update – search engines will consider your content to be valuable and relevant. Encourage your followers to re-tweet or re-post the posts you make on social media sites – it can definitely impact your business’ rankings and ultimately bring in more traffic to your website.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

How to develop the best lateral thinking skills

Environment and productivity at the office

3 Health Insurance Misconceptions

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.