After five years, you are finally being pitched to be promoted. A promotion is not just an increase in your pay grade or a move up your career ladder. A promotion is the culmination of your many years of working hard to achieve your targets and making sure you hit the mark with your KPIs.
But how do you gear yourself for a promotion? A promotion not only means that your efforts and skills recognized, but it also means that you are trusted now with more responsibilities. More often than not, these responsibilities have higher stakes.
From preparing yourself for your interview to visiting your orthodontist, here are some things that you can do to mentally and physically prepare yourself for the challenges up ahead.
1. Prepare for your promotion interview.
Of course, before you can proceed with your promotion, you must complete and ace your interview. Talk with your supervisor. If he or she is the one who recommended you for the promotion, do not forget to thank him or her. You can ask for advice about what you need to expect in your new role. You can also research the new position so that you can prepare for your new role. Talk to HR about your job roles and responsibilities and how the organizational structure works. Brush up on your interview skills and review common promotion interview questions.
2. Assess your skills and qualifications.
Make a list of your skills and qualifications that make you perfect for the role. The more aware you are of your skills, you will also be mindful of your shortcomings. Being aware of your weaknesses is the first step in improving them. Attend on-the-job training or enroll in free online classes to make up for them. Your new role will most likely require new skills, so you need to work on that too.
If you are currently a technical project lead and have been promoted to a project manager, you have to understand other aspects of your project. If you only focused on the project’s technical implementation before, now you will have to oversee the entire process, from business ideation, planning, implementation, user acceptance, and audits.
3. List your achievements.
You will probably be asked to do this as part of your promotion requirements. But listing your accomplishments can help you boost your confidence. How many products did you launch in the previous years? What were your contributions to improving your team’s processes in terms of shortening lead times? How many projects did you lead into completion, on time and within budget? How many positive customer feedback did you get in the past year?
Do not be humble and shy when doing this. If you cannot even recognize your hard work and accomplishments, no one else will.
4. Step up your game.
Stepping up your game does not only mean focusing on your skills. It also involves working on your attitude. If you are to be promoted to the managerial level, then act like a manager. You cannot be a manager with the mindest of a supervisor. You have to upgrade the way you think and the way you perceive things. Ditch away procrastination. Be a man or woman of action. Be more productive and efficient with your time. Logging in more hours does not mean that you are hardworking. Work smart and do more without logging in more time than what is necessary.
5. Look for a mentor.
You might be overwhelmed with the new roles and responsibilities that will be given to you, especially in the first few months. Most successful professionals owe their success to the guidance of a mentor. A mentor can provide you with career coaching, which is very important to sustain a successful and fruitful career. A mentor can help you see where you are lacking. You can talk with your mentor freely as you do to a friend. Think of your mentor as a wise friend who is there to guide you in your professional journey. A mentor can also provide you with opportunities to learn something new and can give you thoughtful and unique insights into your problems.
6. Look like a boss.
How you look can affect how you feel about yourself. If you feel poorly about yourself, people will see that, too. Take care of how you dress up. It is better to show up overdressed than underdressed, they say. Wear power suits that will make you feel like the boss that you are. Keep your hair tamed. Visit an orthodontist to fix your smile. When you feel confident about yourself, people will look at you with deference and respect.
Preparing yourself for a promotion is not easy, but so is everything that you have done to reach this point. There might be other strategies to prepare yourself for your promotion. The most important thing is that you have worked for it and earned it.
