how do I know if a job I’m interviewing for is a lateral move or a step up?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I’m in early stages of interviewing for a new position. This would be a change of sector for me, and at a much smaller organization, so I honestly can’t tell from the job description if I should think of this as a lateral move or more of a step-up. What kinds of questions would you ask interviewers to figure that out?

More details: it would be a moderate pay increase (15%). At my last organization, I felt I was operating at a senior director level but had been denied a promotion, so I was always wishing I was “in the room” for decisions I had a lot at stake in. Since the new organization is small, there doesn’t seem to be room for growth unless an executive leaves.

It’s definitely true that some types of positions, particularly management ones, can be vastly different from large organizations to smaller ones, even when they have the same title … and sometimes even when they have the same job description.

Some things things that can help you figure out whether to look at this as a lateral move or a step up:

• How many people would you be managing?
• How many levels of management would be above you? How many layers would be below you?
• What breadth of work would you be responsible for, compared to your current job? Even if you’re the person calling the shots on a whole area of work, that can look very different from organization to organization depending on the budget, scope, platform, high profile versus lower profile, etc.
• What sorts of things has the team you’d be joining achieved in, say, the last year? How does that align with the kind of impact you want to have, compared to what you have in your current job?

If being in the room when decisions are made is important to you, you’re much more likely to get that in small organizations than in large ones. You’re also more likely to be able to have a larger impact on a larger portion of the organization’s work.

The flip side of that is that the scale of smaller organization can mean that even with a title at the same level or higher, you can end up with less access to resources, training, and development, as well as less visibility in your field.

You also mentioned having less room for growth in the smaller org. Keep in mind that that’s really only about internal room to move up; if the new job gives you achievements that you can parlay into a new job somewhere else in a few years, that’s a form of moving up too.

Also, while all of the above is important, make sure you’re considering the day-to-day experience of working in a large organization versus a small one. If you’re used to working in large orgs, moving to a small one can be a culture shock. (That said, there’s small and then there’s small. Very tiny orgs can be especially tricky, partly because any problems that exist there will loom much larger than they would somewhere else. There’s nothing to dilute them, and far fewer checks and balances.)