Craft My Career
The Brief
Thousands of careers. No map to any of them
Diageo is a global business of many functions, markets and brands. Inside it, careers were hard to see. People knew their own lane, but not the skills other functions valued or the roles open to them. Career conversations drifted into generalities. And people who can’t see a future inside a company go looking for one outside it.
The Solution
Show people the whole business. Then let them find their place in it
#CraftMyCareer: a career development hub built around the real stages of a Diageo career, paired with a Career Matchmaker that shows people the skills and experiences each part of the business needs. Clear development plans. Honest self-assessment. And conversations with managers grounded in evidence, not hope.
In a business this size, the careers you can’t see are the ones that leave
Diageo makes and sells its brands across the world. Marketing, supply, finance, sales, HR: each function with its own skills, language and routes to the top. Moving between them is possible. Seeing how is not.
That gap has a cost. When people can’t see what’s valued elsewhere, they stay put or move on. Every exit takes knowledge with it. Every external hire costs more than a move from within. The business needed its people to grow across it, not out of it.
Diageo’s career management team wanted a continuous learning mindset: people assessing themselves, reflecting and developing again and again, not once a year when the appraisal form arrived.
So they wanted to target the key stages of the career lifecycle. Defining those stages, and building for them, became the job.
The Hub
Our Approach
A career isn’t a ladder. It’s a loop
We ran guided workshops with Diageo’s career management stakeholders to define the key stages of a career. The breakthrough was realising the model isn’t linear. People join at different points, move sideways, step up, start again. So we designed the lifecycle as a loop: enter anywhere, return often.
Craft My Career became the hub for that loop, giving people the right tools at whichever stage they’d reached: understanding their motivations, building a focused development plan, preparing for a conversation.
Then we built the Career Matchmaker. A diagnostic that shows an employee the skills and experiences each area of Diageo looks for, and how their own stack up. A move into another function stopped being a rumour and became a route.
Everything launched under #CraftMyCareer, a campaign that made growth something people talk about, not a form they complete.
Career Matchmaker
Key Project Assets
Career Lifecycle Model
A cyclical model of a Diageo career, defined with the client’s career management stakeholders, that people can enter at any stage and return to throughout their working life.
Craft My Career Hub
A career development hub giving employees practical tools and resources matched to each stage of the lifecycle, from self-assessment and motivation to building a focused development plan.
Career Matchmaker
A diagnostic tool that maps the skills and experiences required across Diageo’s functions against an employee’s own, turning cross-functional moves from guesswork into something people can plan.
#CraftMyCareer Campaign
A career-driven campaign that launched the hub across Diageo’s global workforce and gave people a shared language for talking about growth with their managers, wherever they sit.
Impact
The hub reached Diageo’s workforce around the world, and people trusted what it told them. For a diagnostic, that trust is everything. Its sponsor called it the highlight of her time at Diageo.
Project Insights
From one lane to the whole map
Career tools fail when they only describe the job someone already has. Craft My Career worked because it showed people the rest of the business: what other functions value, what a move would take, and where their own skills already fit. Visibility changes ambition.
It also changed the conversation. When an employee arrives with a clear plan and evidence of where they want to go, the manager’s job shifts from gatekeeper to guide. The company keeps the talent. The talent keeps growing.
Thank you for all your hard work, creativity, patience and personal time invested to achieve this milestone. Though we were the face of the final product, it was all of us who collaboratively designed, built and executed this vision. This project has been the highlight of my time at Diageo.
Elizabeth Murphy, Learning Manager, North America — Diageo
