Even the move that looks riskiest produced pay gains for 61.2%

One of the most intimidating career moves is changing both industry and function at the same time. People often assume their accumulated experience will reset and that they will be evaluated almost like entry-level candidates.

But doda analyzed people who actually changed jobs through its agent service between October 2025 and March 2026 and found that 61.2% of cross-industry, cross-function movers increased annual pay. The figure for same-industry, same-function movers was 66.0%.

The numbers are not identical. But the 4.8 percentage-point gap between the most familiar-looking move and the largest career change challenges a simple rule that market value can only be preserved through close career matching.

Looking at all four move types makes portability easier to see

Pay-increase shares were 66.1% for new-industry/same-function moves, 66.0% for same-industry/same-function, 64.7% for same-industry/new-function, and 61.2% for new-industry/new-function. The highest figure came from people who changed industry while keeping their function.

This does not mean industry experience is unimportant. Regulation, product knowledge, process knowledge and customer relationships can be highly industry-specific. But in this sample, staying in the same industry was not an overwhelming protection against pay risk.

doda advises job changers seeking higher pay to make the case for why an employer should hire them by clearly presenting portable skills, professional skills, experience and values in their work history and self-presentation. Banseog applies that advice to career transitions by separating the problem-solving experience that can be reproduced in another environment from the industry label itself.

Employers may buy what you can reproduce, not only where you worked

If someone with ten years of B2B sales experience in manufacturing is described only as “ten years in manufacturing,” moving to another industry can look like a loss of value.

But if the actual work involved enterprise account development, technical selling, long sales-cycle management, aligning customer requirements with engineers, price negotiation and international coordination, much of the capability remains after the industry label is removed.

Companies may therefore be buying not only time spent in a familiar sector, but the probability that a candidate can solve a similar problem again in a new environment. Career value can be repriced around reproducibility rather than surface similarity.

Career value has two axes: Similarity and Portability

Candidates from the same industry, product, customer base and function usually require less validation. This kind of Similarity remains valuable in experienced hiring.

But there is another axis: Portability — how well a capability continues to work in another environment. Semiconductor facilities and data centers are different industries, yet experience in power, cooling, preventive maintenance, incident response, commissioning and vendor coordination can overlap.

Automotive production engineering and Physical AI can also share automation, cycle time, quality, equipment integration and field troubleshooting. Titles can change while the underlying problem structure remains familiar.

Career change may be an exercise in translation, not erasure

People entering a new industry often begin with “I do not have experience in this industry.” It is necessary to acknowledge missing domain knowledge, but that is different from treating the entire prior career as zero.

Temporarily remove company names, industry labels and titles and ask: what problems have I repeatedly solved over the past five years? “Seven years in automotive production engineering” may travel less clearly than “launched automated equipment, commissioned lines, stabilized defects and coordinated suppliers.”

The task in career transition is not to abandon the past. It is to prove which parts of the value created in the past can be reproduced in the next market.

Employers can shrink their talent market by overusing “same-industry experience”

When regulation, certification, proprietary process knowledge or specific customer relationships are essential, a same-industry requirement can be rational. But not every role has that boundary.

If the real work is project management, production stabilization, B2B solution sales, supplier management, data analysis or transformation, a rigid industry filter can exclude people who are capable of solving the actual problem.

The hiring question should therefore move beyond “how many years in our industry?” to “which problems this person solved elsewhere can be reproduced here?” That is one way to expand the real candidate market.

BANSEOG VIEW

Career value can be repriced around what you can carry, not only where you came from

In doda’s sample, 66.0% of same-industry/same-function movers increased pay versus 61.2% of new-industry/new-function movers. This is not a universal success probability for career changers: the sample contains people who used doda and actually completed a job move.

Still, the 4.8-point gap suggests career value is difficult to explain through surface industry and function match alone. Banseog sees Career Similarity and Capability Portability as separate dimensions in experienced hiring.

For individuals, a useful question is: “What remains if I remove the company name and industry name from my career?” For employers, defining transferable problem-solving experience rather than only same-industry tenure can widen the candidate market.

SOURCES

Primary sources and references

doda’s data is not a random sample of Japan’s entire labor market. It covers people who used doda Agent Service and actually changed jobs between October 2025 and March 2026. The ¥1,094,383 average increase is calculated only among people whose pay rose, not across all movers. “Career Similarity / Capability Portability” is Banseog’s analytical frame for interpreting the public data.