Insights
One conversation comes up repeatedly when speaking with Accounting & Finance professionals about their next career move. They're open to opportunities, but only if the move comes with a promotion or a significant salary increase.
It's understandable. Most people judge an opportunity using two things: title and remuneration. If neither improves, the assumption is usually that the move isn't worth making. The problem is that careers rarely work in a straight line and some of the best career moves don't look like progression at all.
A common misconception among candidates is that the market is full of employers willing to hire potential. In reality, most businesses are hiring capability.
The vast majority of roles exist because somebody has left. A Finance Manager is replacing another Finance Manager. A Commercial Manager is replacing a Commercial Manager. A Financial Controller is replacing a Financial Controller.
The hiring manager isn't looking for someone who might be able to do the role in twelve months' time. They need someone who can do it now.
That's why candidates who focus exclusively on promotion opportunities often find themselves waiting longer than expected. They're effectively competing for a much smaller pool of roles where a business is willing to take a chance on potential over proven experience.
Meanwhile, a much larger pool of high-quality opportunities gets ignored.
Titles matter. They provide structure, reflect responsibility, and help communicate seniority to the market. But titles can also be misleading.
Two Finance Manager roles can carry exactly the same title and be completely different experiences. One might oversee a relatively stable function with limited stakeholder exposure and little change. The other might sit within a major transformation program, provide direct access to senior leadership, and offer significantly broader commercial responsibility.
On paper, they're identical. In reality, they're career-changingly different.
Yet many candidates focus so heavily on the title that they miss what they're actually gaining.
Of course, not every lateral move is worth making.
Moving from one organisation to another with the same responsibilities, same challenges, and same development opportunities rarely changes much. The best lateral moves offer something your current role doesn't.
That might be exposure to a new industry, experience in a larger or more complex business, stronger systems and processes, greater commercial exposure, transformation experience, or a manager who actively develops their team.
What you're really acquiring isn't a different job. You're acquiring experience you don't currently have and experience compounds in the same way careers do.
Many of the strongest leaders have built their careers by deliberately broadening their experience before they broadened their title.
One pattern we see repeatedly is professionals spending years waiting for a promotion that never quite arrives.
They're performing well. They're respected internally. They've been told they're doing a great job. The assumption is that progression is only a matter of time.
So they wait.
Meanwhile, someone else makes a lateral move into a larger business, gains exposure to more complex stakeholder groups, works under a stronger leader, or gets involved in projects they simply wouldn't have seen otherwise.
Fast forward a few years and the gap becomes obvious. One professional is still waiting for the next opportunity internally.
The other has built a much broader skill set and is now competing for roles that weren't even on their radar before. Staying where you are can absolutely be the right decision.
But staying still has a cost too.
One reason lateral moves can be difficult to evaluate is because the benefit isn't always immediate.
A promotion provides instant validation. New title. New salary. Clear progression.
A lateral move works differently.
The return often comes twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four months later. The industry experience makes you more marketable. The stakeholder exposure builds confidence. The transformation project gives you skills you didn't previously have. The stronger leader accelerates your development.
Over time, those things compound and when the next opportunity comes along, you're competing from a much stronger position than you were before.
Looking back across the strongest careers, there is rarely a perfectly straight line.
There are sideways moves. Industry changes. Roles that looked unusual at the time but made perfect sense in hindsight.
What those moves often have in common is that they placed people in environments where they could learn more, contribute more, and develop faster.
That's what ultimately creates progression.
Not the title itself.
When evaluating an external opportunity, many candidates ask:
"Is this a promotion?"
A more useful question might be:
"Will this make me more valuable three years from now?"
Sometimes the answer will be yes because it's a promotion. Sometimes the answer will be yes because it's a lateral move that significantly broadens your experience.
The challenge is recognising the difference.
Career progression doesn't always happen in a straight line.
The people who build the strongest careers aren't necessarily the ones who chase titles at every opportunity. More often, they're the ones who make smart decisions about the environments they place themselves in, the leaders they learn from, and the experiences they accumulate along the way.
The question isn't whether the title changes today. It's whether your market value will be higher three years from now. Because sometimes the fastest way forward isn't a promotion.
It's a lateral move into a better opportunity.