Lateral Career Moves That Accelerate Long-Term Success was originally published on Ivy Exec.
In many careers, you’ll often grow faster when you move across instead of only moving up. You can still aim for leadership and higher responsibility. However, you’ll build a stronger base by exploring different roles along the way.
Know which moves are great for your goals and current skillset so you can achieve long-term career growth.
☑ Moving From Sales Into Customer Success
If you have worked in sales, you already understand how to communicate value and build relationships. Moving into customer success keeps you close to consumers.
Your focus shifts from closing deals to helping clients get long-term value. You’ll spend more time solving problems after the purchase instead of before it.
Making career moves helps you build stronger relationship skills over time. Instead of short-term persuasion, you’ll focus on things such as:
- Improving customer retention
- Gaining trust
- Offering ongoing support
When working in sales, you may not have a deep understanding of what happens after a customer signs the contract. You might focus mostly on closing deals, meeting targets, and moving on to the next opportunity. You won’t always see how customers use the product day to day.
Once you move into customer success, you see that missing part of the journey. You understand what keeps customers coming back and what actually drives long-term satisfaction. Having a different perspective changes how you think about the entire sales process.
☑ Moving From Operations Into Project Management
Being in operations helps you understand how to keep things running smoothly. You learn how to solve day-to-day problems, manage processes, and avoid delays. You also get good at noticing where things break down and fixing them quickly.
When you move into project management, your focus shifts from keeping ongoing work stable to leading projects. Instead of handling routine processes, you’ll start planning structured work. Your tasks will have clear goals, timelines, and outcomes.
Your responsibilities will also involve organizing people and tasks. Rather than reacting to issues alone, you get to plan ahead and set expectations. You become the person who helps others stay aligned when priorities change. As a result, you’ll need to work on your communication skills to manage risks and avoid delays.
A career change into project management helps you build stronger leadership skills without a formal title. You learn how to guide work, not just complete it. Your experience prepares you for senior roles requiring extensive management skills.
☑ Moving From General Marketing Into Product Marketing
General marketers often deal with branding, content, or campaigns. A move into product marketing brings you closer to the product itself. You’ll be able to understand how it fits into the market.
A professional in product marketing works closely with production and sales teams. A lateral career move in the direction shifts your focus to:
- Positioning
- Messaging
- Customer needs
General marketers often create campaigns for products or the firm. They don’t have much influence over how customers understand specific products. In product marketing, you’ll have more say. You’ll decide what the product stands for, who it is for, and why it matters compared to alternatives.
You’ll also spend more time learning from customer feedback and sales conversations. Instead of guessing what might work, you can use direct insights to refine how the company presents products. Working with feedback will eventually make your work feel more practical and fulfilling.
After a while, you become the link between what the product does and how the market responds. Your role may then lead to stronger strategic positions.
☑ Moving From HR Into Talent Strategy
HR already provides you with a strong foundation in hiring, employee relations, and workplace policies. You understand how to support employees and keep processes running smoothly.
A shift into people operations or talent strategy builds on these areas. However, it allows you to focus more on the entire workforce. Instead of handling individual hiring needs or employee issues, you start thinking about the bigger picture. You get to ask questions like:
- How are the teams structured?
- Are people growing in the right roles?
- Are the right skills being developed for the future?
As a talent strategist, your job will prioritize employees’ experiences. You won’t just be bringing people in or handling problems when they come up. You’ll have a greater impact by shaping how employees feel throughout their time in the company.
Improving your company’s culture will be a key part of your job. You’ll look at what helps people stay motivated and how leadership affects engagement. Further, you’ll be keen to identify the patterns that emerge when teams succeed or struggle.
While in talent strategy, you’ll start connecting people decisions to business outcomes. Hiring, training, and retention won’t feel like unrelated tasks.
They become part of how the company performs as a whole. Such a perspective puts you in a strong position for leadership roles. You become a strong candidate in areas where people strategy and business strategy need to align.
☑ Moving From IT Support Into Cybersecurity or IT Operations
Working in IT support means you’re already used to solving problems under pressure. A lateral move deepens your involvement in system maintenance and protection. Instead of just reacting to issues, you start working to prevent them.
In cybersecurity, you begin to think more about risk. You’ll be able to identify weak points in a system and figure out ways to avoid unauthorized access.
If you choose a lateral career move into IT operations, your focus will be more on stability and performance. You look at system setups, how they interact, and how to keep everything running efficiently.
When you collaborate with IT support teams, you can facilitate long-term reliability rather than short-term troubleshooting.
Understand the Value of Lateral Career Moves
Lateral career moves may not always look impressive on paper at first. You might not get a bigger title right away, but over time, these moves can shape a stronger and more flexible career.
Each move you make adds something different to your experience. You learn how other teams work, how decisions get made, and how different parts of a business connect. The broad experience will help you understand the role of different employees in achieving the company’s goals.
