How to Get Promoted When You Switch Jobs

 

Something shifted in the room when I said this: “If your resume says Director and the role says VP, most people will not do the imagination work for you.”   I was teaching a three-hour bonus workshop inside Success Builders called The VP Leap: How to Level Up to VP by Switching Companies, and I could feel the reaction immediately.   Not because it was shocking. Because it explained what so many people had already experienced.   These were smart, ambitious, high-performing leaders. The kind of people who had already led teams, owned big outcomes, influenced across the business, and operated at a level that often exceeded their title. And yet, when they thought about applying externally for VP roles, the same doubt showed up.   “Will they take me seriously if my title still says Director?” “Do I need to take another lateral move first?” “Am I being unrealistic?”   This is the part nobody tells you about senior-level career moves.   More often that you think the problem is not your experience. The issue is whether the market has enough context to understand your potential. And when your current title does not match the role you want next, context matters more than most people realize.   Because if you apply cold to a VP role with a Director title, you are asking a recruiter, hiring manager, or executive to connect a lot of dots in a very short amount of time.   This is why so many talented Directors apply to VP roles, hear nothing, and assume the silence means they aimed too high. So they shrink the goal.   They apply for another Director role. And they tell themselves, “I’ll make the leap next time.”   But that “next time” can quietly become another two, three, or five years.   I see this pattern all the time. And the people who break it usually do one thing differently: They stop waiting for the market to figure them out. They make their value obvious.   The Real Problem With Trying to Make a VP Leap Externally The traditional job search process is built for obvious matches.   Director applying to Director. VP applying to VP. Head of Marketing applying to Head of Marketing.   When the title, scope, and story all line up neatly, the market does not have to work very hard. But when your current title says one thing and your target role says something bigger, the burden of proof changes.   Now you have to make the case. Most people try to make that case by polishing their resume. That makes sense, but it is incomplete.   A better resume can help, but it cannot carry the full weight of a skip-level move. It cannot explain your judgment in a conversation. It cannot show how you think through trade-offs. It cannot build trust with someone who has never met you. And it cannot create access to opportunities that are never posted or are already being discussed quietly behind the scenes.   The real challenge is not just getting your materials ready. The real challenge is helping the right people understand why you are the right bet before your title becomes the filter.   That is the difference between a regular job search and a skip level VP leap.   A regular job search starts with applications. An external VP leap starts with positioning.   And this is not theory. This is the strategy that helped Jessica go from Director to VP in six months.   It helped Shauna go from Director to VP in 90 days. And it helped Jennifer, D.J, Samir and Nick do the same.   Different people. Different companies. Different paths.   But the pattern was the same: once they stopped relying on their current title to tell the whole story, they started creating better opportunities.   Inside the workshop, I taught a simple framework called POLO: Positioning. Offer. List. Outreach.   That is the heart of the strategy.   You need clear positioning so people understand where you fit. You need a strong offer so they understand why you are the right bet. You need a focused list so you are not networking randomly. And you need outreach that opens conversations before the formal hiring process reduces you to a title.   Let me show you how that works.

The POLO Framework In Action 1. Positioning: Know the VP Lane You Are Playing In The first thing we worked on in the workshop was positioning. This is where a lot of ambitious people make the same mistake. They try to stay open to everything because they do not want to close doors.   They say something like: “I’m open to VP Marketing, VP Strategy, Chief of Staff, Product Marketing, Partnerships, or anything where I can make a bigger impact.”   I understand the instinct. Flexibility feels safe. But at the executive level, broad positioning often creates more confusion than opportunity.   If someone cannot quickly understand where you fit, they cannot easily refer you. They cannot introduce you to the right person. They cannot hear about a role and immediately think, “This is exactly who they need.”   Your positioning has to make you stand out for something specific.   That does not mean you are only capable of one thing. It means you are choosing a lane so the market can understand your value.   In the workshop, I had everyone build what I call a VP Thesis. This is not a tagline. It is not a LinkedIn headline.   It is an internal strategy memo that helps you decide what roles to pursue, what opportunities to ignore, and what stories to lead with.   A strong VP Thesis answers a few simple questions: What VP lane are you targeting? What business problem are you best equipped to solve? What proof do you have that you can operate at that level?   Weak positioning sounds like: I’m looking for a VP Marketing role where I can use my background in growth, brand, product marketing, partnerships, and strategy.   There may be nothing wrong with that experience, but the message is too broad. It makes the listener do too much work.   Stronger positioning sounds like: I’m targeting VP Marketing roles where I can own pipeline and revenue outcomes for a B2B SaaS company that needs to improve conversion, efficiency, or expansion.   Your positioning should help people place you. If it does not, it is not working hard enough. 2. Offer: Turn Your Experience Into a Future Impact Pitch Once your positioning is clear, the next step is learning how to talk about your value in a way that resonates at the executive-level. This is where many strong Directors lose momentum.   They finally get in a conversation with a recruiter, senior leader, or potential referral partner, and when the person says, “Tell me about yourself,” they walk through their career history. They explain where they started, what they owned, what team they managed, what projects they led, and how they moved from one role to the next.   It is accurate. It is also usually not what they were asking for.   At the VP level, people are not listening for a full timeline. They are listening for judgment, scope, ownership, and repeatable impact.   They want to know: What problem do you solve? How do you think? Where do you create leverage? Why should I believe your success can translate here? That is why we build a Future Impact Pitch.   The pitch has four parts: Positioning: what you do best in business terms Proof: one story that shows scope, judgment, and outcomes Fit: why your strengths match the company’s current mandate Operating system: how you approach the work in a repeatable way   Here is a simple version: “The through-line in my work is building revenue systems that are measurable, repeatable, and not dependent on heroics. In my last role, we had strong marketing activity, but inconsistent pipeline quality, so I tightened our ICP, rebuilt the handoff with sales, and shifted spend toward the channels that were actually producing revenue. That improved conversion and gave leadership a clearer view of where growth was coming from. For a company trying to scale without wasting budget, that is exactly the kind of problem I know how to solve.”   That is only four sentences, but it does a lot.   It gives the listener a lane. It proves the lane with a real business problem. It shows judgment and decisions, not just activity. And it connects your experience to the kind of impact the company likely needs next.   This is the part people underestimate.   When you are trying to move from Director to VP, your story cannot just be a record of what you have done. It has to help people see what you can be trusted to own next. That is a very different conversation. 3. List: Strategic Networking That Opens Doors The list is the least glamorous part of the process, but it is an important one. Once you know your positioning and pitch, go to LinkedIn and build a list.   A company list: the companies you would want to work for, and you are uniquely positioned to help. And a people list: The people inside those companies who might hire you.   The company list should include organizations where your background makes strategic sense. If your strength is building scalable go-to-market systems, look for companies where growth is getting messy and the business needs more structure.   If your strength is operational transformation, look for companies dealing with complexity, inefficiency, or integration.   The people list should include leaders inside those companies who would be the ones hiring you. This list is your access to the hidden job market.   This matters because VP opportunities often do not work the way individual contributor or mid-level manager roles work.   By the time a VP role is posted, the company may already have a short list. Someone may have been referred.   A trusted leader may have already made an introduction.   If your entire strategy is “I’ll wait for the perfect posting and apply,” you are showing up late to a conversation that may have started months earlier.   That is why the external VP leap is not just a resume strategy. It is a positioning and access strategy. And this list is how you get access in advance. 4. Outreach: Create Conversations Before You Need the Job This is where the strategy becomes powerful. Most people only network when they need something, which is exactly why the outreach feels awkward.   They reach out and say some version of, “I’m looking for my next opportunity. Do you know of any openings?” The problem is not that the message is rude. It is that it asks too much, too soon.   If someone does not know you, they have very little reason to put their reputation on the line. And if they do not have an opening, the conversation ends before it starts.   Strategic outreach makes the first step smaller.   You are not asking them to solve your job search. You are opening a conversation around something relevant: their career path, a topic they have spoken about, a challenge you are studying, or a transition they have made that connects to your own goals.   A weak message sounds like this: “Hi Sarah, I’m exploring my next career move and would love to pick your brain about your leadership journey. Are you open to a call?”   A stronger message sounds like this: “Hi Sarah, I listened to your interview on leading through a turnaround, especially the part about resetting priorities without burning out the team. I’ve run into a similar challenge as I’ve taken on bigger scope, and I’d love to ask you 2–3 questions about how you made that shift. Would you be open to a quick 20-minute conversation in the next couple of weeks?”   That message works because it gives Sarah a reason to respond. It is specific. It is human. It shows you did your homework.   And it does not make her responsible for your job search five seconds after meeting you.   Then, if the conversation goes well, you can share what you are exploring. You can explain the kind of role you are targeting. You can make it easy for the other person to connect the dots between your experience and a possible opportunity.   This is how people begin to experience you before they ever lay eyes on your resume. And when an opportunity comes up, you are no longer a cold resume in a pile. You are a person they already understand.   That is the real advantage.

Your Next Steps Your title matters. I am not going to pretend it does not.   If you are a Director applying for VP roles, some people will overlook you. Some recruiters will filter you out. Some companies will decide they want someone who has already held the title. That is real.   But it is not the whole story.   Your current title is one data point. It is not your entire business case.   The mistake is letting that title decide the size of your next move before you have even made the case. If you are not ready for VP, close the gaps. Build the scope. Get the experience. Strengthen the proof.   But if you are ready, or close enough that the right role would stretch you in the right direction, do not assume a lateral move is your only option.   Follow the POLO framework. It generated dozens of VP promotions, including my own.