Asking to help out in another department at a startup

Question

I just started a new job last Monday at a startup. My role is Customer Success, but I am currently in school for marketing analytics. I took this job to change industries and with the hopes I could get a chance to move departments. The last two companies I worked for were branch environments with little growth opportunity.

Anyways, I want to let them know I have this analytics skills I am working on in school that I would like to apply at work. Is it better for me to tell them sooner or later. How much later if so? Should I reach out the marketing dept directly or go through my boss? I disclosed I was in school during my interview so they know already. I think this would be a refresher to them. I don't want to be in customer success long term nor do I want to grow within customer success and become a manager there. My goal is to apply my analytics knowledge so what do you think I should do? thanks!

Answer 1

I think you should have sought a job that had a more direct route to an "analytics" job.

Telling an employer after one week on the job that you don't really want the role is probably a mistake. I know that if I was the hiring manager, that isn't something I'd want to hear.

Since you are still in school, your best bet might be to wait until you conclude your education, then seek an internal transfer if it becomes available. If that is more than a year down the line, then it's not unreasonable to expect you might be considered.

Meanwhile work hard and excel in your current role. People like to help great employees, and tend not to like to help workers who don't seem to care about their role much.

Answer 2

As Joe said, telling a manager after one week that you aren't enjoying your job, isn't a good idea.

So, along with Joe's suggestion, this is what I would like to add:

Do some really nice data analytics experiments for your department. (I am the data science lead of a customer service software company, and I see a lot of exciting experiments which can be done with analytics in that domain). Make sure your manager likes them. Get some actionable insights from the analytics.

So, in that way you can impress your manager along with displaying your analytics skills.

Answer 3

I worked for a small company that had numerous internal moves. Almost all of the moves which happened had two components. First, the person changing departments cultivated a relationship with the team he/she was joining. This usually involved eating lunch together, after work activities, showing interest in that department at all team meetings, etc. Second that department had an opening.

So my advice would be to make friends with the people on the team you wish to transfer onto, including the manager, then wait for an opening to show up. A disclaimer though, the company I worked for placed a high premium on employee retention, happiness, and collaboration. It was not unusual for people across teams to know each other really well, and management supported internal moves as a way to keep employees happy and make the small teams more cross functional.