Your Team Is Being Restructured and You Have to Apply for Your Own Job

The meeting invitation had a vague title. The news was that your department is being reorganised. There will be fewer roles at your level, the roles will have new descriptions, and everyone currently in them is invited to apply. You have done this job well for three years, and now you have to interview for it.

It is normal to feel insulted. Let yourself feel it for a day, and then treat this as what it is, a selection process with rules you can learn.

Ask for everything in writing. The new job descriptions, the selection criteria, how candidates will be scored, who sits on the panel, the timeline, and what happens to people who are not selected. Ask whether there are other roles you can be considered for at the same time. HR expects these questions, and the answers are often more detailed than the announcement.

Read the new description carefully, because it is rarely the old job with a new title. Look for what has been added and what has disappeared. If the new role leans toward something you have done but never talked about, such as leading a migration or working with customers, that is exactly what your application needs to make visible.

Do not assume the panel knows your work. They may be new managers, people from another department, or people who were told to score strictly against the criteria and nothing else. Prepare as you would for an external interview. Two or three concrete examples for each criterion, with what you did and what changed because of it.

Be careful with colleagues. You may be competing with friends for fewer seats. Keep helping each other prepare if you can, and keep comparisons and rumours out of team channels.

Use the process to decide whether you want the new role at all. Sometimes the restructure turns a job you loved into one you would not choose. Knowing that early means you can ask about other roles, or start looking outside, while you still have a salary and a reference.

If you are selected, remember what this felt like when it is your turn to lead people through the next one.

– Asael Shinder