Expertise

Career crossroads: How freedom of opportunity fosters growth in Exness

31 January 2025

Change is our only constant.

This statement, engraved into the fundamentals of Exness ideology, is based not on the whim of our top management, but on the realities of an industry that is always on the move.

On the bigger scale, market trends come and go, major events dictate rapid changes, and new tools appear to disrupt and revolutionize the ordinary flow of business.

But any industry is built and maintained by people – and people don’t stay still either. We experience growth through shifts in perspective, changes of interests, goals, and sometimes even values. This is especially true in career development, where a lack of opportunities can feel like wearing clothes that you’ve grown out of and feel uncomfortable in.

Exness is very aware of this, and keeps creating Internal Mobility opportunities for all employees. But what exactly is Internal Mobility, how does it work, and what caveats are there to consider before pursuing a change? These questions are often asked by Exness employees, and our Talent Development Specialist Kris Korepina is there to provide answers.

We want to create a culture of inspiring leadership where letting people develop and apply their skills freely is a reason to feel pride for creating awesome professionals."

Kris Korepina Talent Development Specialist

Mental mobility matters!

We all have our periods of doubts and aspirations at work: one month we want to stay home and not talk to anybody, the next we feel like becoming the CEO and tearing down the current structure to rebuild it from the ground up. Even these thoughts and impulses can be considered part of our internal mobility – one that creates demand for change.

Internal Mobility as a concept starts with recognizing this demand, and – wherever possible – supplying it with potential solutions. “Am I in the right place? Should I grow? And if I do, in which direction? How do I handle it?” – all legitimate questions that can however create internal blocks and bring unnecessary mental turmoil.

Having an official company process and a dedicated person to discuss these worries goes a long way in alleviating them. This is how career consultations came into being – one of the fundamental tools that set our Internal Mobility framework in motion. Not all of them lead to actual ‘formal’ mobility: even if such discussions end up with people being content with their current job position – which in practice happens half of the time – it’s a huge step for the person who had been spending mental energy on thoughts and doubts that are no longer there.

Should they wish to move on with their career, there are plenty of paths for them to take. But before we take a deeper look into our career toolbox, it’s important to understand why it was once empty and what prompted us to fill it up.

Growing pains

Feedback is the bread and butter of our awareness. Explosive headcount growth that kicked off in 2020 improved our operational capabilities, but internal surveys also highlighted a lack of career development opportunities for existing employees – a challenge we had to address quickly. 

At the time, Exness recruitment followed a crucial agenda: hire people better than us. While a great principle both at the time and in retrospect, the influx of seniors upon seniors left virtually no wiggle room for our own employees to apply for vacancies. Those who tried would often get discouraged by their managers or simply outshined by the more experienced external candidates. A demotivating reality that denied many people their growth opportunities, and one we did not want to be a part of the company.

We had our work cut out for us, and started ‘building the rails’ on which our Internal Mobility framework could move forward. Every step that followed was made with four main principles in mind:

  1. Build approach to talent management;
  2. We consider our employees to be key decision makers;
  3. You’re free to apply for any role in the company;
  4. Based on transparency, non-discrimination and respect.

Taking the steps

With these principles in mind, we’ve introduced career consulting, developed an internal career website specifically for Exnessians, and implemented a new hiring rule, where most vacancies would stay internal for two weeks before going out to the global job market, giving employees a headstart to grab the position.

Hiring managers became gradually more aware of the pros of internal recruitment. While an external candidate could indeed possess the hard skills for the position, an existing employee was already culturally adapted within Exness, and had the soft skills that made them fit with the company environment, removing the long adaptation period of a complete newcomer. Learning the necessary hard skills would only be a matter of time and practice.

Talent Development sparked as a separate direction of HR, with long-term focus on people retention, development, continuity, and – should we lose a key employee – having a replacement ready to step in. This required evaluating not just our people’s existing skillset, but also their potential, pinpointing top talents, discovering the company ‘stars’ and employees on their way to ‘stardom’.

Regular performance appraisals now included formalized talks about career aspirations and paths within the company.

As the project moved along, the surveys started showing a better picture, as people who previously reached a career ceiling finally saw it open up to a clear sky of opportunities.

Trial without error

Today, our career development menu is full of appetizing entries, and will only keep growing as we keep cooking.

New roles come with new responsibilities and the natural fear of failure, which is why we don’t drop the support for people after they’ve switched roles. There’s development plans, coaching, guidance, mentorship, and further consultations still on the table to ensure a smooth transition is followed by gradual adaptation.

All of this is available to every Exnessian regardless of their current position or even performance grade, and they don’t have to warn their managers about looking into Internal Mobility. But this kind of freedom comes with its own unique challenges.

Balancing supply and demand

Internal hiring involves making some tough compromises when trying to balance the freedom of career paths with avoiding internal competition between departments. Hunting specific people from other teams and giving them job offers is forbidden, but company-wide, non-targeted marketing of your vacancy is a valid approach. We facilitate it through an internal database where employees can post their skills – even those unrelated to their current position – and get notified about internal positions with requirements that match their skillset.

Should they apply and get accepted, it’s crucial to be delicate and timely in telling their current manager about their plans. This is followed by a careful agreed-upon transition period during which the employee wraps up and delegates their current projects, while their manager has the time to find a replacement. The employee’s new team should also account for the waiting time before their internal mobility hire can hit the ground running full-time.

Regardless of how fair and smooth the transition process is, not all managers will be thrilled with losing a team member. But our Talent Acquisition is always working with hiring managers on two-way communication, ensuring that all sides understand the risks of their decisions. While it may not be in the manager’s best interest to let a member switch teams, stifling their interest is a recipe for demotivation and potentially losing the valuable employee completely.

However, opposite cases exist among mature managers who understand and encourage people’s need for change and growth. We even have a manager who ‘grew’ 36 people and let them go to other teams for new aspirations. We want to create a culture of inspiring leadership where letting people develop and apply their skills freely is a reason to feel pride for creating awesome professionals.

And that’s precisely where we’re aiming with our Internal Mobility project, which keeps growing and evolving – just like our awesome people.


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