The 3 simple steps that will take you from Junior to Senior

Many people join a company with the clear objective of escalating positions but don’t know how to achieve it.

When starting in an entry-level position, the focus is on growing as fast as possible. However, just doing our job is not enough. We should give the company a good reason to promote us and increase our salary.

We need to provide more value.

Becoming more valuable

The only way of getting a raise is by creating value for the company.

The confusion comes when you want to show compromise and effort, and end up working overtime. That’s not a good deal. You can’t handle it for long. And it affects your health and relationships.

You should focus on giving more by working the same amount of time. So, instead of increasing the working hours, you will need to:

• Improve the quality of your work
• Perform more expensive activities.

These are the basic steps I took to increase my contribution and get promoted from Trainee to Senior Analyst. The path in your organization may be different, but these principles are universal.

Gain independence

There’s a first stage in which you can’t produce anything independently.

Or even worse, if they let you alone, there are more chances to cause damage than any good for the company. That’s normal. Indeed, the problem comes the other way around - when companies hire fresh people and want them to solve their issues from day 1.

That’s a recipe for failure.

I hope that’s not your case and that you receive the required support at the beginning of your journey. So, what happens next?

You need to start flying alone. That’s why you were hired, and that’s the first step you should take:

When you receive an assignment, you can solve it. When small obstacles appear, you can dribble them and finish your work. You also know when to ask for help to avoid delaying your deliveries.

Once you achieve that, you have some autonomy and deserve your first promotion. Congratulations!! Let’s move to the next phase.

Provide possible solutions

You work well on your own. You meet the deadlines and don’t flood your colleagues with questions on how to proceed. But there are certain situations you can’t manage.

You find difficulties on your task or discover potential problems you can’t address but require escalation.

There is a detail that will postulate you for the next promotion: you don’t simply forward or endorse your problems. You first analyze them and propose solutions.

Consider these 2 situations:

Situation 1

Hey, Boss… I’m running the report I created, but the SELECT is not bringing any data from the sales tables. Would you mind to have a look at it so we can fix it?

Situation 2

Hey, Boss… My SELECT from the sales tables is not working. I see that the data types are different, and that’s causing the issue. Do you see any problem if I change the data type in the client table? May it have any impact in other reports?

I hope you agree that situation 2 is better for everyone: You learn and save your boss’s time. These are 2 ways of giving value to the company.

Now that you got your second promotion, there is a third step you can take.

Recommend and justify

Your progress will be gradual: Your independence keeps increasing, and your possible solutions become better and better.

Nothing can stop you.

Well… Almost… There are still many decisions you can’t make, knowledge you lack, and problems you can’t solve alone.

You go to your boss with less frequency and more complexity. In fact, they start to get nervous whenever they see you coming. If you are discussing something with them, it’s because it’s not easy.

However, there is something else. You are not only coming with your problem and a set of possible solutions. You are coming with your problems, recommended solutions, and why you think that solution is the best.

It will take some effort for your colleague to justify why there is a better alternative.

At this point, this is a 2-way discussion instead of someone asking (you) and someone answering (your colleague).

When this situation propagates, you come to the point at which you already know the best alternative, and your boss trusts you. So, you often only require their signoff: “I approve.”

Conclusion

There are many ways to increase the value you bring to your company. The path we saw here is a fundamental one.

• When you release your colleagues and free their time, that’s value.
• When you are so autonomous that you can learn independently, that’s value.
• When you find a way to enhance a process, that’s value.

Being more independent means assuming more responsibilities and letting your colleagues do the same.

Those are the kinds of results that companies want from their employees and justify the promotions.

Think about that.