How to get promoted (Part 1): Getting ready
Don't trust one-size-fits-all advice; you need to understand YOUR company's process
Everyone* wants to get promoted, but most people take a passive approach and wait for the promotion to happen.
Sometimes it’s because they put too much faith in their manager and expect them to notice and reward strong performance. Other times it’s because they are uncomfortable directly addressing the topic. That’s a mistake.
This post is intended to help you take ownership over your promotion process.
While there are no guarantees, being proactive will greatly increase your chances of being promoted.
I will cover this complex topic in a series of posts over the next few weeks.
[This post] Part 1: How to prepare. Understanding the promotion process and what you need to do.
Part 2: Taking ownership and standing out. How to maximize your odds of getting promoted.
Part 3: Seizing opportunities. Getting promoted even if your manager is not making it happen.
* Some people are happy in their current role, and that’s perfectly fine! Remember, promotions typically come with more responsibility, so a more senior role is not strictly better depending on your priorities.
Part 1: How to prepare for your promotion
This part might sound theoretical and boring, but don’t skip over it. Without doing the unsexy, but necessary work of researching the nuances of your situation and your company’s processes, your chances of being promoted will be much lower.
Step 1: Know what you want (and let your manager know)
Not everyone is interested in the same career path.
Do you want to move up into more senior Individual Contributor (IC) roles?
Do you want to become a manager as soon as possible?
Or are you flexible and just want to get promoted?
Different opportunities might come up along the way, and it’s good to know upfront what you want. Manager roles are not strictly better or more senior than IC roles and many companies offer parallel tracks.
In fact, it can happen that a promotion opportunity would move you back from a manager role into an IC role. Take my career path as an example:
Whatever you decide, make sure to let your manager know. You’ll need their active support and engagement throughout the process!
Step 2: Understand if you’re ready for promotion
It’s important to do an objective assessment of your readiness for promotion. Preparing a promo case is a lot of work, and you’ll want to wait until you’re ready.
If you push too early, you and your manager put a lot of work into the nomination, and it gets rejected because you clearly don’t meet the requirements, your manager will hesitate to put you up for promo again in the foreseeable future.
What does great performance look like, and where do you need to improve?
Career Ladders / Rubrics:
Unless you work in a small startup, chances are your company has a career ladder (sometimes called “rubric” or something else) for your organization or even your specific role. They are typically heavily referenced during calibrations and promo discussions.
Career ladders show what performance expectations are across a variety of skill areas (e.g. technical skills, leadership, communication etc.) and across levels.
Work with your manager to map out your gaps. Where are you performing at the next level, and where do you need to improve over the next few months? If the rubric is generic, work with your manager to understand what specific behaviors you need to display.
The difficult part is that no career ladder I have ever seen clearly shows you the “delta” between levels, e.g. how exactly the expectation for L5 differs from L4. You will have to do the work of putting the different levels side by side and figuring out how to grow from one level to the next.
Take this hypothetical career ladder for a Data Scientist as an example:
The left hand side (L4 and L5 requirements) you can get from the career ladder. The right hand side (what it takes to get to L5, and concrete steps you can take) you’ll need to derive with your manager.
Schedule regular check-ins with your manager to track progress against your development goals.
It’s up to you to request the feedback you need to grow to the next level; most managers will not do a good job at this proactively.
Quantitative impact:
Career ladders are often focused on behavioral inputs (i.e. “is this person doing the right things”). Promotions, however, are heavily based on impact. I’ve seen several promos fail because the IC and their manager were not sufficiently prepared to highlight quantitative achievements.
Make sure you know what outputs and outcomes you’ll be held accountable for. For example, is there an expectation for a certain number of Pull Requests? Are you measured against the goal attainment of the business unit you’re supporting?
You often have some degree of influence over the goals you take on. To maximize your odds of promotion, you need to understand your company’s culture. Do they reward underpromising and overdelivering, or do they appreciate and reward people who take on big, audacious goals, even if you fall short 10%?
Observe others at the next level:
People say a lot of things, but the actual promotions that are happening are the hard evidence of what’s being valued in your org.
What are those at the next level doing that you’re not?
Peer feedback:
Find 2 - 3 people outside of your reporting line that you respect and try to get informal feedback from them.
Ideally pick people who are 1 - 2 levels above you; they will have a better idea of what performance at the next level looks like (and their word will carry more weight if peer feedback is part of your official promo packet)
Step 3: Keep track of your accomplishments
Promotions are typically based on performance over a longer time period. When preparing your “promo packet” (see below), you (and/or your manager) will need to highlight your accomplishments. The more concrete examples you can provide, the better.
The problem is, as time goes on, we forget a lot of the stuff we did; especially short, but high-impact fire drills are often forgotten. And even if we remember, we often can’t recall all the details (How many users did your launch impact? How much did we lift activation rate again?)
I highly recommend keeping a “brag document” to keep track of your accomplishments. Don’t over-engineer it; simply track what you did and the impact it had.
👉 >>> Click here for a brag document template <<< 👈
Step 4: Understand if there’s room for you to be promoted
The classic way to get promoted is to move up within your team. There are two key requirements for this:
You perform at the next level, typically for at least 6 months
There is a business need and capacity for you to be promoted
Some companies allow nested hierarchies where ICs have the same level as their manager; some companies do not.
If your manager is one level above you, and you cannot have the same level, this means your manager has to be promoted before you. You should do the math and understand what that means for your promotion timeline, and decide whether you’re willing to wait for that.
If not, you’ll have to look outside of your team.
Step 5: Understand the promotion process
The larger the company you work for, the more standardized and complex the promotion process will be.
At a startup, it might be possible for your manager to simply decide they want to promote you and make it happen immediately.
At larger companies, promotions typically happen as part of a formal performance review cycle.
When do promotions happen?
Some companies only do promotions once a year, some companies also do them during mid-year performance cycles. Find out what the standard policy at your company is.
Preparing your promotion will take several months; if you know when promotion decisions are made, you can work backwards from that date and develop a plan.
What are the steps in the process and how do they work?
Not all promotion processes work the same way. To maximize your odds, you need to understand how it works at your company.
Here are a few specific things you should check for:
1. How do nominations work?
Will your manager need to nominate you, or can you nominate yourself? Does somebody higher up the chain (e.g. the VP in your org) have to approve the nomination before it officially enters the process?
For example, at Meta your manager nominates you while at Google you can nominate yourself (or at least that used to be the case).
This will tell you who you need to get on board ahead of time to support your promo.
2. Are there formal requirements for nominations?
For example:
Do you need to have had a certain rating in past review cycles to be eligible?
Is there a minimum tenure requirement?
How often has the company made exceptions to this in the past?
Knowing your company’s requirements will help you have realistic expectations and allow you to push for promotion at the right point in time.
3. Do promotions happen via calibrations or separate promo committees?
You’ll want to know where you promotion decision is made and who will be in the room.
This will allow you to 1) prepare your promo materials tailored to that audience, and 2) know who you need to win over as champions.
It massively increases your chances of a successful promotion if your manager is not the only person in the room advocating for you.
For example: At Meta, promotions are discussed during the regular calibration meetings as part of the performance review cycle. At Google and many other companies, on the other hand, promotions are a parallel process and the nominations are reviewed by an independent committee.
Some more detailed questions to consider:
Who will you be calibrated against? For example, let’s say you’re a Marketing Data Scientist: Are you being calibrated with everyone in Marketing, or with all Data Scientists across the company? This affects what type of achievements you should highlight in your promo case to 1) stand out compared to others in the group and 2) convince the managers that are present (e.g. Marketing managers might not understand a highly technical example of a DBT fix, but will understand business impact)
Who will be in the room? Will your manager, or your skip level, be in the relevant calibration or promo committee meeting? Or will the decision be made “offline” by reviewing the promotion documents?
👉 This will tell you who you need to “prep” to defend your case. Many promotion attempts fail because the person presenting the nomination is not sufficiently equipped to make the case.
What materials will you or your manager need to prepare for promotion?
In many companies, managers that put an employee up for promotion (or employees that nominate themselves) need to prepare a “promo packet”; this is essentially a comprehensive set of documents demonstrating that the employee performs at the next level.
Make sure you find out exactly what goes into the promo packet as early as possible; the materials will take weeks (or even months) to pull together and you might need input from others.
Don’t rely on your manager to put together a great packet for you; they are nowhere near as invested in your promo as you are (and they typically have little time).
What’s next
Now that you understand where you stand and how promotions work at your company, it’s time to take ownership of the process.
In the next part of this series, I will cover how to maximize your odds by demonstrating your performance at the next level and building up champions that support your promotion.