Turn performance conversations into a live internal talent market where people discover real opportunities, managers surface hidden skills and HR fills roles faster with less spend.
To unlock internal mobility before year-end reviews, build a clear skills inventory with adjacent skills, turn your ATS into an internal opportunity marketplace, align manager incentives with guardrails, offer micro-moves and secondments, then track mobility metrics that matter.
Most organisations track job titles, not capabilities. Flip that.
Create a lightweight, living skills inventory that maps the core capabilities you have in your organisation today and the adjacent skills that will make mobility possible tomorrow.
How to do it quickly
Pull skills from recent projects, learning records and role profiles. Keep it to 8 to 12 core skills per role to start
Tag adjacent skills that are 70–80% transferable. From service desk to customer success as an obvious example; Python scripting to test automation; employer branding to social content copy.
Let employees self-validate and add proof points: work samples, badges, projects
Keep it simple and easy to understand - use bands like novice, working, proficient, expert
Why this works
Adjacent skills shorten time to productivity for internal movers and help managers say yes to non-obvious fits.
More resources: Unlocking talent: finding candidates with transferable skills
Stop treating your ATS as a one-way gate for just external applicants. Make it an internal opportunity marketplace too where people can see temporary roles, projects, secondments and permanent roles in one view.
What good looks like
Internal-first visibility: flag roles and short term opportunities to employees for 5 to 10 days before advertising externally
Sync employee profiles to a skills inventory so recommendations are based on adjacent skills, not just titles
Use quick signals, not long onerous forms: a one-click "I'm interested" triggers a short internal flow rather than a full application
Project & gig posts: 4–12 week deliverables with a named sponsor and time allocation
Hiring manager view: shortlists of internal matches with readiness scores
If you’re using Jobtrain, we’ll configure internal-first postings, build adjacent-skills matching and route “raise a hand” signals straight to hiring managers without unnecessary admin.
Learn more about Talent Networks and Talent Pools
Managers worry about losing great people from their team. Solve for that with incentives and guardrails so mobility feels safe and rewarded.
Incentives
Make internal moves count as a management win in performance objectives
Fully supportive process to backfill roles left empty by internal moves guaranteed within an agreed SLA
Recognition for managers who actively look to help their team progress at quarterly business reviews
Guardrails
Minimum tenure in role before being allowed to progress on, except for critical projects
Notice periods aligned to project timelines, not just calendar months
A clear return path for secondments and micro-moves to reduce perceived risk
Using these tips changes perceptions of mobility as a leadership behaviour, not a resource drain.
Not everyone is capable of switching roles immediately. Offer low-friction options that build capability and confidence amongst movers and managers.
Micro-moves
Set aside 10–20% of the week for shadowing, taking on slightly bigger or unfamiliar tasks, or joining a small project group with colleagues from other departments.
Run short, fixed-length pieces of work with one clear outcome and a named mentor
Secondments
3–12 month placements with defined outcomes and a "home" team to come back to
This is ideal for bridging skill gaps before a permanent transition
Micro-moves create proof of success at a lower risk. Secondments de-risk bigger shifts and can unlock capacity immediately where it is needed most.
Read more about managing talent from the (CIPD).
Measure what proves mobility is working, not just how many jobs you posted.
Here's the suggested scorecard
Internal fill rate: % of roles filled by internal talent
Time to fill (internal vs external): the delta is your business case
Readiness ratio: employees marked “ready in 0–3 months” who move
Secondment uptake & completion: how many, how effective
Manager export rate: managers who develop and move people on
Retention after move at 6 and 12 months
Diversity of movers across gender, ethnicity, disability and grade
Publish the scorecard on your intranet or internal resources hub and reference it in monthly people updates to keep momentum and positivity.
Week 1: Seed the skills inventory for 5 critical job families. Launch to employees to self-update with the whys, prompts and examples
Week 2: Switch on internal-first postings in your ATS and enable quick access for employees to show interest. Train managers on incentives and guardrails
Week 3: Publish 6–10 micro-moves and 2–3 cross-department secondments. Nominate sponsors
Week 4: Redeploy 3–5 people and publish the Mobility Metrics scorecard to the business
What is an internal talent marketplace?
A central hub where employees find projects, short-term roles, secondments and roles matched to their skills and interests.
How do adjacent skills help mobility?
They reveal near-matches so people can move without full retraining, cutting time to productivity.
What counts as a micro-move?
A small, time-boxed shift like a two-day-a-week project or a six-week stint in another team.
How do we prevent talent hoarding?
Tie manager performance to export rates and guarantee backfill support within clear guardrails.
Year-end reviews are a goldmine. With a visible skills inventory, a live ATS-powered marketplace like Talent Networks and leadership behaviours that reward mobility, you’ll convert conversation into movement and movement into measurable business value.