As A New Employee How Do I Position Myself To Be Promoted? Part One

As a career counselor, career guidance professional, and HR professional who has hired or placed 1,340+ professionals, the job market is getting some traction in several areas. Technology, Finance and Management from my perspective have all seen a more upward trend.

Like everyone new in the job market, what can you do to position yourself for a promotion? Based on successfully establishing and running a “High Performing Employee” group for a $35Billion firm, there were criteria to select individuals for this group. From this group, promotions were made.

Selection Criteria

The individual had to be selected from university. The main criterion was a GPA in the top 10% of a university graduating class. Some exceptions were made: If a student had a substantial GPA for the last two of the four years, an exception could be made. If a student had a substantial GPA in the major, an exception could be made. But the GPA was critical in getting the best-of-the-best for consideration.

On-Site Interview

Every selected candidate was brought to the headquarters, interviewed by recently hired (and identified as fast-track employees), maybe taken to lunch in the company cafeteria and given a written test to determine how well they could think. The test was a pass/fail given without prompts and lasted ten or fifteen minutes.

Training and Monitoring

If and when hired, every new employee was put through an orientation and training class. Orientation to learn the company; Training to provide knowledge of what was expected. Then the new hire was assigned to a group.

Monitoring began at this point. Who was able to excel at assignments? Who took on extra assignments? Was this individual a go-to person? Did the individual continue learning? What was the quality of work? Was the person respected? Did the individual show exceptional attention-to-detail? Did the new employee receive top ratings in the performance management system? Did the department director know this person? Could the director state the quality of work was exceptional? The department and HR took notes on these individuals.

The Bottom Line

An assessment was attempted before anyone could be presented to the Vice President for entrance into the “Hi-Perform Employee” group. Was it 100% fail proof? I tried and felt I had good success.

As A New Employee How Do I Position Myself To Be Promoted? Part One