I’m 50, married and live in the southwest. 

I’m currently working as a consultant in the sports industry.

I recently left a software company I had worked at for more than 15 years to become a self-employed consultant. My prior employer was about $2B in annual revenue and employed ~ 8,200 people. 

I’ve worked in operational roles for more than 25 years.

The specific promotion story I’m sharing today is one that happened several years ago. I was promoted from a client consulting role to a management role, moving from individual contributor to team manager. 

I was looking primarily for increased responsibility and to lead a team. I always enjoyed coaching others and was interested in moving into a managerial role. The increase in pay certainly played a factor in my motivation to get promoted as well.

It took me about 5 years, which was much longer than I anticipated. 

Yes, I received a 12-15% bump in my annual salary.

Unfortunately at my prior company, promotions weren’t given just to deserving candidates. They depended on available financial resources as well as timing of open positions. Most promotional opportunities would have meant a move to a new location/state, but I was not in a stage of my life where I desired to change locations.

I was promoted because my boss moved to another role. I had to interview for the role, along with a few of my peers, and I was ultimately selected for the new role. 

Unfortunately career path at the company was discussed durig the review process, and that was about it. It was mostly on me to figure out what I needed to do advance. I never really had a mentor or sponsor. 

The interview process included 3 separate interviews in which I highlighted my leadership skills and client relationships.

My performance and reputation for having strong technical skills played a role. And my internal/external relationships (with management, with my peers, and with my clients) was the most important reason I was selected for the position.

It turned out that my relationships with key clients played a big role helping me to advance into management (and eventually go out on my own as a consultant). My clients were very vocal to upper management about the value I provided and how essential I was to their operations — and this helped get me on the radar with the execs who made promotion decisions. It also helped me get invited to important meetings between my company and my client where executives were present. This visiblity definitely helped in my path to a promotion. 

I don’t believe I changed any behaviors, but in hindsight I do believe I could have self-promoted much better over the years. 

In that situation, I believe the corporate structure was the biggest impediment to promotion. The company didn’t do a great job with career pathing, and many factors had to take place in order to get promoted — like needing to have the budget for pay increase, have an opening (due to someone leaving or changing jobs, or an organization reorg, which happened frequently).

This was important — rate it a 5. 

I would rate this as a 4 — having support from internal and external stakeholders was an important factor in my promotion.

Fortunately at this stage of my life I’m in a position that I can work because I want to and not because I have to. My goals are really to enjoy the work I’m doing with less of the corporate structure while making enough money to continue enjoying my lifestyle away from work. 

Hard work, exceptional performance and high skill are not enough to get promoted. It is important to set career goals, discuss those goals with leadership and find advocates to mentor and guide that process. If I had an opportunity to do it over, I would have been more assertive or would have left for another opportunity at new company. 

No book recommendations, as I’m really not much of a reader. But the resources I would recommend are right here on Finally Promoted.