“7 Authentic Signs You’re Ready To Be Promoted You Didn’t Expect

You want to get promoted at work and make more money. But are you ready for it? There are seven signs that you are ready to get promoted that you should be watching for because your boss is. 

You’ve Become Seriously Bored With Your Job

The first sign is, You’ve Become Bored With Your Job. It’s likely that you’ve been doing your job for a while and you have gotten really good at it by constantly working on certain factors like employee engagement and productivity. The day-to-day of your job is stuff that at this point, you could pretty much do in your sleep. There’s not a lot of growth for professional growth or getting promoted. This isn’t to say that you hate your job, and it’s so boring, or something similar. 

When you initially got to this level, you would have probably enjoyed it. It’s refreshing to not be overwhelmed and stressed out and not feel like you don’t know what you are doing. But it’s been a while since you have really felt like you had a handle on things and you are starting to get restless. Because you really want to grow and expand in different areas and stay challenged professionally speaking. 

You Are A Proactive Employee

This brings us to the second sign, that you are ready to get promoted at work. That is you are proactive. And this isn’t a couple of different regards. You are proactive in the work that you do. If you notice a problem, if notice something that is inefficient, that would be an easy tweak, you’re making adjustments along the way. You’re finding ways to improve processes for your team, and maybe expanding operations and revenue. You’re definitely not sitting back and waiting for your boss to hand you work. 

Because of the level, you’re operating in your current role, you’ve become proficient in identifying things that really need to happen to keep the team moving forward and you are not asking permission to do those things. You’re just gonna go ahead and do them. 

This is going to become an asset in you actually getting promoted, but we’ll come back to that in just a moment. 

The other way that you’re proactive is, you’re proactive in your professional development. For example, you are one of my career besties and you hang with me here on a day-to-day basis. On a day-to-day basis, you’re finding ways to grow yourself personally and professionally. Whether that’s by watching YouTube videos, reading books, or taking online classes. 

You’re also leveraging proactive projects that you’re identifying and taking on as skill builders. As you become proactive in the work that you do and gain new knowledge, you’ll probably also find yourself checking off the next sign that you’re ready to get promoted. 

You’ve Begun Mentoring/Training Others

And that’s that You’re Mentoring and Training Others. You are the go-to person on the team with any questions. If someone doesn’t know what to do, whether it’s using software, fixing a customer issue, or how to proceed with a project. They’re coming to you. This might be the reputation that you have established on the team because everyone knows you’re so awesome at what you do and that you’ve naturally stepped into this leadership role on the team. 

This also might be a formal thing. Your boss might have acknowledged all of what you are bringing to the table. Perhaps, they’ve asked you to mentor new team members or to train your co-workers on that process improvement you proactively implemented. See how all these things fit together. 

More so than these two things though, you found that you’ve really enjoyed stepping into the mentorship role that you love supporting and guiding junior members of the team and helping them succeed in their roles. And that’s a big part of people management and getting to the next level of your career.
 

In addition to providing training and mentoring on your team, there is probably another shift that you’ve noticed when you’re ready to get promoted. 

You’ve Become A Big Picture Thinker

This brings us to the fourth sign that you are ready to get promoted. You’ve Become a Big Picture Thinker. In the early careers of many professionals, the mentors explain different levels of perspectives that you need across your career. 

So when you are in the early stages of your career and when you’re an individual contributor, that means you don’t have anyone reporting to you, you are operating in the details. The 30-foot to 300-foot range. But when you step into management, you’re going to level up and you’re starting to take the perspective of 3000 feet up. Whereas the CEO is flying at like, 30000 feet. 

You’ve increasingly found yourself upscaling that perspective. For example, when you take on a new project, you’re not just thinking about the project in the context of the project. But, you’re thinking about the project in the context of the success of the organization. What it means going forward. You’re not just thinking about what I need to do this week, you started thinking about what should I be doing next quarter, and the quarter after that. 

Your Visibility And Influence Has Been Increased

Because of the shift, you’ll probably also find that you meet the fifth sign that you’re ready to get promoted at work. 

That is, You’ve increased your visibility and your influence at your company. People at the senior and executive leadership levels have started to take notice. Your boss and even their superiors are also aware of your work. In addition to coworkers on your team coming to you asking for help, you’ve probably also found that you’ve become a go-to resource for other people in the organization or, you’ve established cross-functional relationships within your company that has made you more impactful in the work that you do. 

This isn’t just made me more known within the organization. It’s also made you a connector. You’ve become someone who can make things happen. At this stage, the scale and level of the work that you are doing have a strategic high impact. Even if your boss isn’t bragging about you to his superiors, your work has become unignorable. So even if your boss isn’t supporting you in getting promoted, it’s going to happen anyway. 

The next sign that you are ready to get promoted is actually a prerequisite in an increasing number of companies. Especially, if you work in the tech industry. However, a lot of people are giving a lot of bad career advice on the internet telling you not to do it. For, when you do this, not only are you ready to get promoted, it probably means that you’re going to get promoted.  

Enthusiastically Operating At The Next Level

You’re Already Operating At The Next Level. There has been an increasing trend that requires people to operate at a level higher than which they are before they actually got the new job title, a new paper rocket. 

According to one tech company employee, the common thing that every employee at the same level is told at some point is “Congratulations!! You have the job title that matches your job now!!”. And then six months later, they would be ready for the next promotion. 

The motivation for doing so isn’t to exploit employees, but to combat Peter’s principle. Peter’s principle simply refers to the phenomenon when people rise to the level of incompetence in the organization. 

Have you ever worked with a leader that was really in a position that they really weren’t qualified for? And they particularly weren’t competent at? If so, you have witnessed Peter’s principle in practice. 

When we look at the leveling and the calibration processes at companies like Meta, Google, and the like, they are not assessing how good you are at your actual job as the criteria to get to the next level. They are assessing if you’re actually operating at that next level before you are at that next level. Because they don’t want to promote people that aren’t going to be successful in the role. And if you’re not successful in that promotion-level role, you’re not going to get demoted, instead, you’re going to get managed out of the company. Not ideal. 

What does my boss do and how much of my job can look like that? Or how much of my job already looks like that? And if you’re already operating at that level, whether it’s a jump into a senior-level role or into a management role. The more established you are in that, the more likely you are to actually get the promotion.

Your Boss Is More Concerned For Your Growth Than You

And this brings us to the seventh sign that you are ready to get promoted. That is, Your Boss is Grooming You for a Promotion.  When this happens, it is basically in the bag because your boss might even create that specific opportunity for you to step right into, it without ever having to apply. 

This is the best way to get promoted because you are not dealing with competition, you’re not dealing with promotion interviews, you’re not dealing with the stress of “Am I going to get it?” Because it’s literally been created for you. One caveat with this sign is that it does depend on your boss really choosing you and you even being their favorite  

Keynote

Employees must always keep working on their knowledge and skills at their work in order to get noticed by their respective bosses or superiors and consider them suitable to be promoted. Such pieces of knowledge and skills may also help an employee to build a robust resume for future circumstances. At the same time, being cautious regarding following irrelevant career advice and not building a bad image through irregularity, disengagement, clumsy, etc in the minds of superiors can help employees achieve their goals faster, which includes getting promoted and eventually climbing the corporate ladder.