🌟 Welcome to the 5-Day Career Growth Challenge! 🌟 Are you ready to start your career growth journey? 🚀 This week, we're diving into a mini-bootcamp to kickstart your career advancement. Each day, you'll engage in activities designed to help you grow or determine if your current company supports your growth. 📈 Key Points to Keep in Mind: 1. Intentional Growth: Career growth doesn't just happen; it’s intentional. Promotions and raises should be part of your plan and supported by your company’s culture. 🎯 2. Employee and Supervisor Perspectives: Understand career growth from both the employee’s (YOU) and the supervisor’s viewpoints. Managers want promotable employees who perform well. 🏆 3. Company Culture: Recognize if your company values great work and is willing to promote or just aims to get the most from employees without recognizing their contributions. 🏢 Sometimes growth occurs just because you showed up. These are typical pay raises without a promotion, and generally have to do with inflation and cost of living. Don't confuse this raise (generally 3%) with what you can see during a promotion. Our goal is to have raises above and beyond these cost of living increases through the company paying you for the value you deliver. This also leads to a greater future for you. Example: Here is some quick info on raises: Reasons for Automatic Raises that don't involve promotions: - End of Probation: After 6-12 months. - First Review: After initial evaluations. - Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA): Annual raises to match living costs (typically 3-5%). - Parity Adjustments: Ensuring pay equity among employees in similar roles. 💼 Union-Based Promotions: - Note: Union-based promotions are generally based on contracts and are not the focus here. 🤝 Reasons for "Earned" raises: Now, let's talk about actually intentionally getting a raise/promotion. Reasons for Earned Raises: - Exceptional Performance: Consistently exceeding performance expectations and achieving outstanding results. - Taking on Additional Responsibilities: Voluntarily assuming extra duties or larger projects beyond your job description. - Skill Development and Certifications: Acquiring new skills, earning certifications, or completing advanced training relevant to your role. - Contribution to Company Goals: Directly contributing to the achievement of key company goals or metrics, such as increasing revenue or reducing costs. - Innovation and Problem-Solving: Proposing and implementing innovative solutions that improve processes, products, or services. - Leadership and Team Contribution: Demonstrating strong leadership skills, mentoring colleagues, and contributing positively to team dynamics. - Positive Feedback and Recognition: Receiving consistent positive feedback from supervisors, peers, and clients or customers. - Successfully Leading Projects: Leading successful projects that have a significant impact on the company. - Achieving Personal Performance Goals: Meeting or exceeding personal performance targets set during performance reviews. - Advocacy and Representation: Effectively representing the company at industry events, conferences, or in client meetings.