How to prepare an internal promotion interview with your employer?
In this article, you will discover how to prepare an internal promotion interview with your employer.
Preparing for this type of interview requires identifying and following a strategy that allows you to reach an agreement that is as beneficial for you as it is for your employer.
By following these tips, you will maximize your chances of getting an internal promotion that meets your needs, abilities, and values.
If you are looking for effective advice for a successful internal promotion interview, discover now the key points that we will cover in this article.
Here are the different parts of this article:
- Prepare for negotiation
- Understand the needs of your business
- Check if a negotiation is possible and which points are negotiable
- Define your goals and what you are willing to negotiate
- Answer the objections of your employer to convince him
- Offer win-win solutions to meet your business needs
- Prepare to refuse an unsatisfactory internal promotion
- Take advantage of your experience in terms of negotiating an internal promotion
Do not waste time and discover our tips now!
Prepare for negotiation
Preparing for the negotiation involves opening your imagination to the different options that may come your way before getting an internal promotion. In this first phase, it is important to visualize how to organize internal promotion interviews.
The success of these interviews depends on the quality of your preparation. Each interview should help you get closer to your goals while staying focused on what is important to your business.
You must show that you understand their needs and that you are ready to help them without accepting immediately what they want and without pretending that your employer immediately meets your needs.
Summarizing, show that you are willing to find a mutually satisfactory agreement.
At the end of each interview, ask yourself questions to understand if the exchange has been productive and if it has allowed both parties to move towards a fair solution.
If communication with your company is not productive, try to understand what you need to change to move in the direction of your goals while considering the needs of your firm.
After each interview, prepare a summary of the meeting and send it to your contact indicating the current state of the negotiation, your proposals to overcome any discrepancies and the next points you would like to address.
Doing this will allow you to formalize the exchanges and confirm your commitment to find a suitable agreement.
Understand the needs of your company
Your goal is to show that you are an open-minded person and that you are completely motivated to understand the needs of your company.
If you doubt your ability to listen, you can rely on active listening or emphatic listening as defined by the great American psychologist Carl Rogers.
Listening actively requires being extremely present during the communication with your interlocutor.
The first objective of active listening is to understand an individual’s point of view without allowing your mind to influence the perception of what you have understood.
To understand a person, therefore, requires putting aside your own vision of the world to enter his world.
This consists of temporarily giving up what is important for you to understand what is important for the other person.
Practicing active listening effectively is not easy and requires great practice.
However, if you want to become better communicators, active listening is a communication tool you cannot give up.
Listening actively allows you to communicate at a very powerful level of communication.
By listening to the person in front of you and rephrasing, you will create a deep connection with her.
When the other person sees that you are listening to him and you understand him, he feels immediately closer to you and all the mental barriers that can influence your exchange suddenly disappear.
You are no longer opponents and you become partners!
For this reason, to understand the needs of your business, you can use active listening.
Another benefit of active listening is that it allows you to ask better quality questions, in other words, questions that your employer has not asked yet.
In addition, if you are able to answer these questions effectively before him, you are likely to get an acceptable internal promotion.
Check if a negotiation is possible and the points that are negotiable
Identifying the needs of your organization will allow you to ask questions to understand if a negotiation is possible and to see what you can really negotiate.
A common mistake at this point is to think that your boss is already ready to negotiate.
Your employer may expose you to a number of needs and you may think that these needs are so important that he is probably ready to start a negotiation.
However, it is quite possible that your company keeps for itself it is most important needs or that it does not perceive its main needs.
In this sense, organizing an internal promotion interview requires preparing in advance a series of questions that will allow your organization to become aware of its own needs.
To get there, you need to interact with everyone you will need to collaborate in the future.
Do not settle for their answers and focus on their nonverbal communication because it will allow you to highlight real needs against which you can bounce back during the other interviews.
Collecting all this information will give you a better understanding of the real needs of your company and the challenges of your future position.
This is when you will be able to ask good questions to test your assumptions and make proposals to your employer.
Define your goals and what you are ready to negotiate
You now have a more specific understanding of your business needs, your future job challenges and about what is negotiable.
You now need to define the goals that you absolutely want to achieve at the end of this negotiation for internal mobility.
Ask yourself questions to understand if this new position will allow you to meet your professional and personal needs.
How does this promotion make sense to me?
What are the main constraints of this position?
What new skills will I need to develop to succeed in this position?
How will this position change affect my privacy?
What salary am I willing to accept for this type of job?
What will be the price to pay if I accept this job?
Is this position in line with my most important values or not?
Is it worthwhile to accept this position or is it better to reject this proposal?
Answering these questions will help you understand what is negotiable for this post is what is not.
If this position respects your values and meets your needs, then this promotion is precisely what you need, otherwise, you would better refuse it.
Respond to the objections in order to convince your employer
During the negotiation, you will eventually be open to objections.
There are several ways to handle objections.
What is certain is that if you do not manage it better, you will not get what you want.
Here is just one example of how to handle an objection about the salary you would like to receive.
Your employer is interested in your skills but is not ready to give you the salary you ask for.
Even then, you need to listen more and ask questions that identify the motivations of your employer.
It is possible that your conversation partner is unable to assess the value you are able to bring to your company.
You can show him how you will contribute to the success of your organization by providing concrete examples from your understanding of your company’s needs.
If you are unsure, make assumptions or show what you understand about the needs of your organisation.
Here is a short example:
my conversation with Mister … help me to understand that you have this type of need, if my understanding is good, I think that I will be able to allow you to solve this problem in such a way and that will allow you to save … dollars in the three next years. This small example allows you to use a contrast effect.
You show that the benefits you are able to bring to your company go well beyond a salary whose amount becomes almost insignificant.
Offer win-win solutions to meet the needs of your company
If your company understands your value then you are well on your way to getting a quality internal promotion.
As a first step, listen to your employer’s proposals and invite them to take the first step.
Do not accept just a verbal agreement and ask for a written proposal. If you can get it, do not accept it and prepare a better proposal for both you and your employer.
This is to propose win-win solutions.
If you manage to come up with a mutually beneficial deal, you will have every chance of getting an internal promotion to match your value.
To propose win-win solutions use your imagination by positioning yourself in three positions:
- Your own position
- That of the person you are speaking to
- That of a neutral observer
Doing this will help reduce your subjectivity and find better solutions for your company and for yourself.
Prepare to refuse an unsatisfactory internal promotion
If despite all your efforts, you cannot find a mutually satisfactory agreement, it is better to refuse the offer of your employer.
Stay on good terms but do not accept this promotion.
If you are one of those people who have a hard time saying no, you probably need to build your self-esteem to assert yourself more.
If you are afraid of your employer’s reaction, focus on the consequences of accepting an unfair deal for your health, family, career, etc.
No matter what situation you are in.
Do not accept an agreement that is not good for you.
Take advantage of your experience in terms of negotiating an internal promotion
In the end, what matters most in this negotiation is your learning.
What did you learn about your company?
What did you learn about yourself?
What do you need to change to become a better negotiator?
You have just discovered how to prepare an internal promotion interview with your employer.
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