Getting Promoted - Can You Do the Job?

Promotion works a little differently from a pay rise. Both are just rewards for an increase in your value to the organization, but promotion relies on a post being available for you to move up into. There are times when you can create a new, more senior job for yourself. But straight promotion usually requires more advance planning than a pay rise does.

Of course, when there is an opportunity for promotion you can double this up with your request for a pay rise. A promotion should carry an increase in salary with it, and this should be negotiable. But you've got to get the job first.

Can you do the job?

You must inevitably have a fairly clear idea of what your promotion opportunities are. Maybe there's only one person whose job you could move up into (if they moved on), or perhaps there are two or three more senior posts in your department that you feel you could handle. Whichever is the case, you need to assess your ability to do any job you would like to be promoted into.

So watch the person doing the job at present, and see how much of what they do you could take over easily. Remember to consider not only quantifiable skills but also less tangible ones, for example:

• Do they often have to take tricky decisions? If so, how do they take them? Do they rely on experience you wouldn't have, or could you make the right decisions as often as (or more often than) they do?
• Do they need to be good at handling start? What qualities does this call on: assertiveness? Diplomacy? Tough negotiating?
• Do they spend time with customers? Would you be able to handle complaints as well as they do? What about making customers feel special? Or knowing when and how to bend the rules to keep customers satisfied?

You need to consider these skills on top of the more obvious ones such as operating specific computer programs or writing reports. If the person whose job you feel you'd like is not actually particularly good at their job, obviously the question is: can you do all these things substantially better than they do? If they are very good at their job, however, you can compare your own abilities with theirs directly.

Helping Hand

Often the job you would be most likely to get is occupied by a colleague and friend of yours. Such people will often actively help polish you up to step into their shoes - so long as you wait until they are ready to move on or up themselves. You'll know when they're thinking of leaving, or angling for promotion. In this case get all the help you can from them to learn the skills you will need to get their job when it falls vacant.

Now you need to be brutally honest with yourself about any shortcomings you may have identified. Maybe the person doing the job at the moment is great at motivating people - you can see it's an important part of the job, and it's not something you're particularly cut out for. Or perhaps their computer skills are way ahead of yours. Or maybe they have to give a lot of sales presentations and you have very little such experience.

You have to be honest or you've no chance of training yourself up for the job ready for when it comes vacant. But the good news is that almost all these kind of skills are perfectly learnable - even motivating people. Your style might not be the same as someone else's, but it can still be as effective.

So draw up a list of skills you need to learn to be ready for the new challenge when it arrives, and work your way through it learning and practicing everything you can. Some skills are easy to read up about, enroll on courses for, or acquire by staying late and practicing. But others, of course, will be more difficult. That's where the next stage comes in: talk to your boss.

Talk to the Boss

What, discuss promotion when there aren't any jobs going? Certainly. Now is the perfect time. You need to let your boss know in plenty of time that you have your eye on promotion in due course. There are two reasons for this:

• If you don't, there's always the danger that when the job finally comes up, your boss will appoint someone from outside without considering you at all. Why? Because they had no idea you were interested in the job. The only way to be sure this doesn't happen is to tell them clearly that you are interested before it happens.
• Your boss can tell you better than anyone what skills you would need to acquire to stand a decent chance of getting the job. And they can help you acquire them. They can send you on courses, give you extra experience and increase your responsibilities.

Look at it from their point of view. Internal promotions are always easier, cheaper and less disruptive. Next time a suitable job comes up, they'll want to promote from within if they can. So they want to know that when it happens, there's someone in the department who can step into the job. The alternative is finding that not only do they have the upheaval of losing one of their team, but they don't even have anyone else able to fill the gap.

So talk to your boss. This is something you can do at your appraisal, when you discuss your future. Ask them, 'I would like to see myself moving up the career ladder next time an opportunity comes up. What additional skills and experience will I need to be a good candidate for promotion?' Make a note of everything they advise, and ask for their help in acquiring any of these skills that you can't manage on your own. After all, you're adding to your value even before you're promoted so it's in their interests.

Caught on the Hop

If you get wind of the fact that someone may be leaving before you've had a chance to discuss promotion at your appraisal, ask for a meeting with your boss. Assuming they know that the position may be coming vacant, simply tell them that you would be interested in applying and ask what skills or experience you would need to stand a good chance of success. If they don't know that one of your colleagues is thinking of leaving, and you don't want to break a confidence by telling them, simply say you want to discuss your future with the organization and have the conversation you would have had at your appraisal.

So your first step is to assess your ability to do the job, identify any weaknesses, and remedy them. Just as when you are asking for a pay rise you will need to demonstrate:

• a good personal profile
• effective working methods
• good people skills
• creative thinking

... as well as your other more tangible skills, in order to impress your boss and senior managers when you apply for promotion.