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The promotion process is different in every organization but is especially peculiar at tech companies. We live and breathe the role guidelines. They are used to making hiring decisions, review performance, and evaluate promotions. This is the first place to start on your process to promo. During my journey, I observed three key steps that helped me to move towards the next level.

Convince Thy Self

The first step in the process to promo is having self-awareness and being honest with yourself about your performance. Convince Thy Self that are you ready to be promoted by reflecting on data and identifying areas that need to be developed.

When I started in my role as an Infrastructure TPM, I created a quip entitled “Career Management” to keep track of my projects and accomplishments. My goal was to keep a running list of highlights so I could easily update my resume at the end of the year and have stories prewritten in the STAR interview format. That document evolved into a list of bullet points that I could share with my manager during the mid-year and end of year review periods. As I reflected on the impact that I had on my projects, team, and organization, I realized that I should include promotion to Sr. TPM in my near-term goals. I revisited the role guidelines to understand the criteria for promotion and expectations for the next level. Specifically, I looked at the requirements for the next level and made a table (see table 1) to assess my performance to requirements.

Out of the seven requirements (only one is shown Table 1), I quickly noticed that I had deficiencies in some areas and didn’t have enough solid examples to convince myself that I was ready for a promotion. This exercise was enlightening, as I realized that I was performing a large amount of tactical work (i.e., standard tasks with low complexity and impact) but not much strategic work (i.e., high complexity and impact work). Although performing standard work keep the business moving, in most cases standard work is not significant enough to make the promo doc. It is easy to get caught up running multiple projects, but always keep in mind the impact you’re making and how it raises the bar (reference Table 2).

I started brainstorming how I could find more high impact projects that would align with the requirements for moving to the next level. The key is to find holes in our process/product that impacts (i.e., poses a risk) across regions and organizations. What worked for me was working backwards from the result and then figuring out how to make it happen. For example, I wrote “Identified gaps in Design change request process and authored one pager to drive clearer ownership” and then developed small steps to achieve this goal. This started with deep diving the design lifecycle, having discussions with subject matter expects, and value stream mapping the current design process to identify gaps and add steps to bridge them.

Improving my performance to meet and exceed the requirements to move to the next level helped me to convince myself that I was ready to be promoted. This gave me the confidence to have a conversation with my manager about promotion.

Convince Thy Manager

The performance vs. requirements table is a good way to provide your manager with a visual of how you consistently meet and exceed requirements to move to the next level. The goal is to make it completely obvious that you should be considered for a promotion. Have a discussion with your manager during your 1:1 to align on your performance and identify growth ideas if some examples don’t meet the bar. Another way to convince your manager of your readiness is providing a list of potential supporters of your promotion.

Convince Others

There are a few steps after you’ve convinced your manager that you are ready for promotion. Depending on if you’re technical or non-technical, a technical assessment might be required. Regardless of the type of individual contributor promotion, you’ll likely need feedback providers to write reasons to support and reasons not to support your promotion. It is helpful to give your manager a potential list of feedback providers so they can reach out to them on your behalf.

The feedback provider is responsible for writing balanced and robust feedback that references specific situations and leadership principles. This is a nontrivial task that is time consuming and requires thought. Writing meaningful feedback becomes increasingly challenging if the feedback provider doesn’t recall recent examples. There are situations where the feedback provide hasn’t worked with the candidate in months or even a year. To reduce the load on the feedback provider and make them more likely to agree to provide feedback, it is a best practice to provide your manager with a few bullet points with examples of your bar raising interactions with the feedback provider (see Table 3).

Get Promo’d

Every promotion is different but these three key steps will get you moving in the right direction. Self-awareness will guide you in determining when you are ready for promotion. The key here is to be intentional about your efforts and document your progress as you move towards the next level.