Young professionals are ravenous for career growth. Advancement opportunities join pay and work-life balance atop millennials’ career priority lists, according to studies such as the 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey and a 2017 U.S. News & World Report questionnaire.
This ambition has earned millennials a bad rap among some employers. But their hunger may stem from reasonable desires, such as better wages and more challenging work. And millennials’ habit of job-hopping for promotions pays off when they’re stuck at companies with advancement bottlenecks or corporations without financial incentives, like pensions, to remain rooted.
Still, some young professionals may lack the perspective needed to set reasonable expectations about how fast they should ascend to the C-suite. Promotion policies differ by industry, company and department. Learning how those decisions are made and identifying organizations that offer the kind of opportunities millennials want can help them achieve their career goals.
Clear Timelines
Some industries and companies are transparent about who gets promoted, when and how. The federal government, for example, posts promotion information in its job advertisements. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management has published the requirements for certain kinds of promotions, which include performing “at an acceptable level of competence.”
Large professional services firms have defined promotion pathways. At EY, formerly Ernst & Young, that’s partially due to the high demand for development opportunities among its employees, 75 percent of whom are millennials, says Carolyn Slaski, EY Americas vice chair of talent.
EY annually hires thousands of workers right out of college. They get continuous feedback about their performances and meet with assigned counselors — senior colleagues — every 90 days to discuss progress and goals. Employees know their work is measured on six qualities: client leadership, business leadership, personal leadership, team leadership, quality and risk measures and contribution to engagement/project metrics.
This system “really has no surprises in it,” Slaski says. “They should know all along whether they’re progressing at what we think would make sense for them to move on to the next level.”
And most people do climb to the next rung on the ladder. Entry-level employees can expect to be promoted into supervisor roles after about two years, and then up again into a higher-ranking position after another two or three years with the company.
“The possibility of you moving and being promoted is extremely high,” Slaski says. “If you are performing as expected, you will continue to move up.”
[See: What 9 Passive-Aggressive Office Comments Really Mean.]
Competitive Systems
Other organizations offer fewer opportunities for promotion. Accordingly, co-workers may have to compete with each other to move up the hierarchy.
“Your average public company, they only have so many spots, and unless someone leaves, a spot doesn’t open up,” Slaski says.
In these situations, the person or party who makes promotion decisions varies depending on company size, but the human resources department is usually involved in creating an overall advancement and salary strategy. No matter the particulars of the process, the recommendations direct supervisors make matter a lot.
“Your manager is a very powerful person,” says Ashley Inman, who works in human resources for the multinational company Ferrovial Services. One key to getting promoted, then, “is to become valuable to your manager.”
Promotions also hinge on behaving in ways that the company culture values. Because these norms may be unspoken and unwritten, discerning them requires “situational self-awareness,” says Inman. That means identifying successful colleagues and modeling their actions.
Observe when your manager gets to the office, when she leaves and who she talks with during the day. Figure out what relationships you need to build to get where you want to go. Deduce whether your company rewards workers who take outside classes to build their skills or who learn what they need to know while on the job. And determine whether people who move up tend to be quietly industrious or boldly outgoing.
Personality and culture fit can do a lot to influence promotion decisions. Sometimes, “you get fired or promoted based on who you are, unfortunately,” Inman says.
Forward-thinking companies also take workers’ goals into account when picking people for promotions. At these organizations, managers and HR staffers will ask employees to describe their career aspirations and figure out how those intersect with company needs.
[See: 7 Secret Opportunities You’re Missing at Work.]
Choosing to Stay Put
Promotions often bring perks. Moving up in the ranks may come with a more prestigious title. It may lead to more interesting work assignments or increased pay.
“When someone moves up a level, they’ll get a raise for a promotion but also increased responsibilities,” Slaski says of the EY system. “The value of that job is worth more, so they’ll get more compensation for that.”
But promotions can have drawbacks, too. Some promotions don’t come with raises but still demand extra work. Scaling the food chain may require working longer hours and often leads to supervising other employees, which may be exactly how you want to spend your time — or not.
“Some high performers prefer the work of specialization versus the work of leadership,” Inman says. “Not everyone has the same drive or motivation to seek upward mobility or manage people.”
So don’t automatically assume that a promotion will help you achieve your career goals or improve your work life. Since most companies need experienced workers at every level of their operations, you may be able to dig deeper into a current job rather than move on to one that’s higher ranked but a worse personal fit.
“For certain roles we have, if you’re not interested in moving to a manager level, you can stay, and that’s perfectly fine,” Slaski says.
[See: 9 Common First-Job Mistakes.]
Looking for Opportunity
If promotion opportunities are important to you, it makes sense to look for a job with a company that prioritizes development and has transparent advancement policies.
But they’re not always easy to find. So Inman recommends looking for clues on company websites and in other promotional materials. A business that uses the phrase “development culture” will likely offer promotions. A company that touts its “stability” or “100-year history” may move slowly and not regularly provide advancement opportunities.
Startups that describe themselves as “disrupters” often have “volatile, ambitious environments” that provide workers who are willing to take risks with “opportunities to learn fast, get promotions and grow,” Inman says.
Another way to determine whether promotions are available at a company is to check out the LinkedIn profiles of current or former employees whose career paths you’d like to emulate.
“Think about the role you want to have three to five years from now, look that person up on LinkedIn, and look at the steps that person took to get that role,” Inman says.
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How Do Promotions Work? originally appeared on usnews.com
