How soon can I expect to get a promotion or raise?

How soon can I expect to get a promotion or raise?

Hi, I’m Janet Granger, answering the question: “How soon can I expect to get a promotion or a raise?” 

The answer to this question is: it depends on the type of organization that you’re working for. 

If it’s an established business or organization, not a startup for example, promotions and raises typically come once a year. That’s because the budget for your salary is set, and there’s an annual budgeting for staffing. That is, a certain number of people, and what roles they are, and what the salary is for each level (or person). 

For you to get a promotion or a raise, they have to budget for that (the money has to come from somewhere.) That’s what’s going on behind the scenes when you get a promotion or a raise. 

If you’re with a startup and it’s funded, and they have money to grow and expand, you could be promoted at three, four, or six months, and keep growing – if your organization’s doing really really well and they’re in fast growth mode. 

With startups, they don’t (typically) pay as well upfront because they give you shares in the organization. That way, you feel that you have “skin in the game” and that all of your work is towards making sure the organization is successful. 

The only other time, if you’re working in an established organization, that you can get a promotion or a raise is if (this is a direction you want to go in) you get an offer from another company. 

If it’s of interest to you – to stay where you are, even though you’ve interviewed and you’ve gotten an offer from another company – what some people do is, they’ll get an offer that’s a promotion or a raise, and then they come back to their current organization and say:

“I’ve gotten this offer at this other company and I’m inclined to go. But if I could get that here, I’m here now, and I know how things work, and I really like this team. I would love to stay if you can match it. If you can’t, I’m going to move on.”

Your current company will scramble and find the money, if they really want to keep you. But they may not. So you have to be willing to leave, if you play that particular card.  

That’s often how people get promotions in between that yearly (review), because they’ll move on after 18 months or two years. They want to get bumped up more quickly. 

This can come back and bite you, however. If you have a track record of doing this a lot, and a hiring manager looks at your resume (or your Linkedin profile) and sees that every 18 months or two years you leave, there will be some managers who will be turned off by that. 

They don’t want to put all that time and effort into teaching you, hoping you’ll grow with the company, if they know that they’re investing their money and their efforts into someone who’s just going to leave in two years. 

That’s the typical cadence. Of course, there are sometimes exceptions to the rules. But that’s what you can expect, in terms of raises and promotions, depending on what kind of company you work. 

I’m Janet Granger, answering the question: “When can I expect to get a promotion or a raise?”