Aim for Promotion in your Place of Work

Getting promoted is the aim of many employees but there are often far fewer vacancies than people who'd like to fill them.

So rather than wait to be given the new job and new responsibilities, start looking for ways to become more valuable and effective in your organisation while performing your current role. In so doing you will almost inevitably create a promotion for yourself - in a job that you love, because you'll have defined it for yourself.

This means of course that you need to invest some time and effort. Most people don't do this because they don't want their employer to get something for nothing, but think about it - it's an investment you'll be making mainly for yourself, for the increased experience and value you'll derive, which will make you more valuable to your employer (and any other employer as well).

Create a New Job for Yourself

Don't wait for a vacancy to fall in your lap. Carve out your own niche - irrespective of having formal responsibility or position to do so. Develop your activities and level of operation into higher, bigger, more strategic and more productive areas.

Anyone can do this, and you don't need a promotion or new job title first. Of course, let your employer know what you are doing - especially if you need permission or approval for new project ideas - and be open to advice, guidance and support, because most managers love to help their employees develop.

Be a Good Manager and Organizer

Be mindful that most job promotions entail managing people. So ensure you start working on and demonstrating great capabilities in that area: develop a reputation as someone who helps others - in whatever ways you can. Coach, encourage, thank, recognise, praise, give credit, listen to, and always be good to others. Essential responsibilities of good management are coaching and developing others and helping them to do a better job. You can start doing that tomorrow if you are not doing it already. By doing this, you will have already begun to promote yourself.

If you are in selling or account management, or buying, or any other role that directly relates to increasing revenues or saving costs - grow your activities and effectiveness (and results) to the point that you need assistance and then it's easy to make a case for bringing a trainee in to work under your wing. Now you are managing and training someone else - and you've created your own promotion where no opportunity 'apparently' existed, because the scale of what you are managing has increased beyond your original job responsibility. To organize your work and data this Excel vlookup example could be very helpful in boosting your career.

Be Proactive

Invest your own time, energy, commitment, and enthusiasm in building your reputation as someone who is proactive, self-reliant, mature, tolerant, productive and self-motivating. Be the promoted person you want to become, and the formal recognition and reward will soon follow.

Think about how you can help the organisation to be better, in ways that you enjoy and are good at.

Identify activities which produce a high yield or great results from your effort - you are an expensive resource within your organisation - use yourself wisely.

Demonstrate that you have good strategic judgment by the way you manage your own time and priorities - if you demonstrate this it follows that you will be able to manage a larger scale of activities, and you will be seen by others as capable of doing so.

Act like the promoted person you want to be - start doing the things and behaving in the way, that (good) higher-level people already do.

'Always be positive and constructive - become valuable to the team - coach and help others - lead by example'

Expose yourself to greater responsibility, new learning and higher levels of experience, because these will help to develop you for life and not just for your current employer.

If, after all this effort, your employer does not recognise and reward you for your increasing contribution and potential to manage a wider scale, then always remember that some other employer out there undoubtedly will. So it could be time to move on.

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Read more articles for job seekers and those already in a job