I did this about a year ago and was instructed to do an analysis of the work I am doing for my role and the next level up. It showed I was doing most of the responsibilities and behaviors for both roles, so it seems I would qualify for moving up to the next level (individual contributor). I got a high rating on my annual performance review and glowing feedback from colleages, and my manager had indicated I was approching the top end of my pay tier. Sounds like I would be a good candidate for a promotion, yeah?
Well, here it is a year later and nothing has changed. Yet, the organization has been hiring people like me for similar roles, but at the next level up from me. Brand new people with no company experience come in at the higher level. What gives?
Anyway, I agree with working hard and doing the right things to stand out, like training, doing extra above and beyond your role, forging strong partnerships and relationships, and adding value by consistenly delivering results. And yeah, you have to be assertive sometimes to be part of the conversation - it’s not a gender thing, but requires tact and sometimes humor to get in a word or two.
It’s off topic to the O.P. but in your case, I’d strongly suspect the new hires are coming in at a cheaper rate than what they’d hafta pay you to promote you from within.
YMMV, but where I work, getting promoted has absolutely nothing to do with how well you do your job. It only depends on how well you’re liked by management. Becoming drinking buddies with them, playing golf with them, etc. is the fast-track to getting promotions. I have seen it over, and over, and over. It’s the norm here. Engineers who are technically skilled are rarely promoted.
When I started my career, I assumed the route to success was by doing a lot of high quality work. It quickly became apparent that a limited number of people advanced quicker and higher. While the superiority of these people was not obvious to me and others who were left behind, they had obviously figured out some way to impress those who were making the promotion decisions.
I’ve never had any interest in office politics, so I was limited in how high I advanced. Which was OK with me. I doubt I would have been any good at currying favor even if I HAD made that my goal.
I agree with whoever said that if you are working in sales, the only answer is to sell more. Of course, if you aren’t getting those premium leads…
I worked in a gossipy office, where a couple of people would try to curry favor with the boss by putting others down.
One time, as I was leaving the boss’s office, I said “Oh, by the way, I hope I don’t have to participate in office gossip. I’d rather just keep my head down and get my work done.”
He threw up his hands and bellowed “At LAST! Someone who wants to WORK! … of course, ignore all their pettiness… I do.”
.
I did end up as a supervisor, long before any of the gossip girls (a couple ended up fired) … but I didn’t like it. I much preferred being on the front lines, having more customer contact.
That’s a good question: Are you sure you WANT to be management?
I’m not sure what magical event you think happens at 50 where you don’t have to change jobs anymore.
I suppose the question I have is what does “success” at your job look like to you? You said “construction sales”. But what do you actually “do” day to day? Like are you out there managing accounts and closing deals? Do you have sales targets or other metrics you need to hit?
In my experience, the “getting taken seriously” comes first before any promotions or increased responsibilities. Particularly in sales. So why do you think people aren’t taking you seriously?
Almost. It should be increase your value to your boss. That may or may not involve helping the company.
In my experience discussing promotions the person who is doing the job already gets the promotion. There are people who are obviously leaders, and people who are not, and those who lead the team even if they are not officially managers get tapped.
Do you just hit them or exceed them? How do you stack up against your peers? Why would a manager promote someone in the middle of the pack when they could promote someone on the top.
If I’m interpreting what you’ve written correctly, you have a terrible experience in meetings. The future manager speaks up and offers suggestions, and has enough cred to have suggestions listened to. Those who sit in the back and never speak up don’t get promoted.
How would you feel if you became a manager and your reports treated you like your peers do? Second level managers treat their first level managers than most managers treat individual contributors. Leadership and respect don’t come with the title, the title comes when someone displays leadership and gets respected.
So when I think of an “entry level” position in sales, I think of something like a kid right of school who has to cold-call potential customers, qualify leads, and other grunt work to pave the way for the actual salespeople. Generally speaking, sales organizations tend to be relatively flat with “seniority” largely being a function of the volume of sales you close. The more and bigger deals you close, the more the company tends to support you with resources such as jr people, better regions, or the “good leads”.
I’ve often seen that sales organizations often have the maturity of a bunch of 12 year olds.
Getting into “management” is a different matter. I don’t know the specifics of your company, but typically management in a sales organization involves stuff like defining overall strategy and marketing, setting sales targets, mentoring and managing salespeople, stuff like that. Hard to do most of that until you command respect first.
It sounds like this is a reoccurring issue at different places you’ve worked, so I don’t think changing jobs will help until you figure out the root cause of the problem.
Overall I totally support the views of the last few managers & serious executives who’ve responded. As to this one snip I’ll offer a caveat:
If this is company run on nepotism and the OP is not from the right family or college or fraternity, or if the OP pulled a major oh-shit a year or two ago and management is still not forgiving or forgetting then …
I’d consider carefully changing employers to break those logjams. While also vowing to myself to approach ever minute of every day at the new place differently than I have been.
But absent those special situations, I wholeheartedly support @msmith537’s advice to stay put and change whatever is needed to win in this environment. Otherwise moving now would just create another company at which you’re flailing / failing. There probably aren’t that many to choose from in your local area; you can’t afford to waste any of them on doomed missions.
But I’m wondering if there’s a mismatch in background and culture between you and your peers.
Have you ever worked in construction trades? Have your peers and bosses? Do you have more formal education than they do? Do they swear more than you? The way you communicate here is different from the blunt, agressive way I’ve seen in construction tradespeople. Your mention of being bullied makes me think of this.
I’ve encountered this form of ‘reverse elitism’ a few times in my career. Just my two cents.
This is such a subjective thing, though, isn’t it? Do you feel like every place you’ve been, you’ve been spoken to like a twelve year old?
If so, is it possibly an issue of your perception rather than the way you are actually being treated? Or is it possible that people really are treating you this way, but that your bitterness about it is being picked up by your employers? Is the bitterness itself the real problem?
I don’t like condescension either, so I can see why you would bristle at that. But what constitutes being condescended to is 100% subjective.