Workers Say They Must Quit to Climb the Career Ladder

Most workers say they "Must Quit to Climb," even though they would rather stay where they are. A new survey of more than two thousand employed adults in the United States and Britain finds that a clear majority expect to need a new employer to reach the next rung of their career, not because they lack ambition, but because their current workplace cannot see what they can already do.

According to the survey's publisher, a talent assessment firm, the gap is one of visibility rather than willingness. Workers say they are ready to retrain, to be tested and to move sideways into new roles, yet many believe the path upward inside their own company is blocked or simply invisible.

The numbers behind the frustration

The headline result is stark: two in three respondents believe leaving is the price of progress. At the same time, more than four in five say they would retrain for a senior post, and a similar share would retrain for a different kind of role altogether. Almost nine in ten say they would sit through a formal skills assessment to prove what they can do.

That willingness makes the next finding harder to explain away. Only about two in five workers say their manager fully understands their skills beyond their current job title. When the person who controls promotions sees only the present role, the worker's broader capability stays hidden, and the promotion case never gets made.

Workers also point to a second barrier: managers may hesitate to lose a strong team member to another department. Add a hiring habit that favours outside candidates, reported by a majority of American respondents, and the internal ladder starts to look like a dead end even for people doing good work.

Why employers should care

The cost of this blind spot lands on employers first, and the Must Quit to Climb pattern is the bill coming due. Replacing a departing employee means recruitment fees, onboarding time and lost institutional knowledge, while the skills the company needed may have been sitting on its own payroll all along. In a labour market where hiring has slowed and skilled roles are hard to fill, losing trained people to a rival is an expensive way to learn that lesson.

There is also a fairness angle. When advancement depends on being noticed by one manager, opportunity follows visibility rather than ability. Workers without a champion, or those in roles far from head office, can do everything right and still watch external hires leapfrog them.

The survey's sponsor argues the fix is practical, not sentimental. Companies can map the skills they already employ, show workers the internal roles that match those skills, and treat internal candidates with the same seriousness as outside applicants. A short assessment, the firm says, beats a long and costly external search.

What workers can do now

For individual workers, the findings suggest a blunt strategy: make skills visible in writing. Keep a running record of projects, tools learned and problems solved, and share it beyond a direct manager through internal profiles, presentations or cross-team work. Waiting to be noticed is, on this evidence, a weak plan.

The survey suggests workers who feel they Must Quit to Climb should test that belief before resigning, by checking whether an internal opening or a skills review exists that they have not yet been shown. It also pays to ask directly. Requesting a conversation about internal openings, and asking what skills a target role actually requires, turns a vague hope of promotion into a checkable plan. If the answer is silence, or a pattern of outside hires for roles the worker could fill, that is useful information about where the career will actually grow.

The broader context cuts both ways. Employers are, according to industry coverage, turning to internal mobility as hiring cools, which should help. But until workers see that shift in their own promotion prospects, the rational move for many will remain the one the survey captures: stay loyal in spirit, and leave in practice when the ladder at home will not move.

Related reading: entry-level roles are changing shape rather than disappearing and recent graduates face a tough hiring market. The full findings are set out by the survey publisher and covered by industry reporting on the results.