how to get promoted | internal mobility | career progression | performance review | job grading | succession planning
What You Will Learn:
- See how job levels are actually set, and what separates your grade from the one above
- Find the pay band for your role and know where you sit inside it
- Read a performance review form the way the person filling it in reads it
- Get onto the talent list, and understand what that list actually does
- Work out whether you are on a succession shortlist, and how the 9-box grid places you
- Audit your competencies against the role you want and build a development plan
- Ask for a level change with evidence instead of a feeling
- Work through impostor syndrome, which stops more promotions than skill gaps do
- Learn alongside Mike’s 1.6 million students from 185 countries
- Get the author’s experience from Preply, Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank
Overview: Cracking the Corporate Black Box
Look, we’ve all been there. You’re hitting your KPIs, crushing your sprints, and you’re basically the load-bearing pillar of your team. Yet, during the annual performance review, you get a “meets expectations” and a cost-of-living adjustment while someone else slides into that Senior or Lead role. After fifteen years in the tech industry, I can tell you that the “meritocracy” we’re promised is often a myth. Promotions aren’t just handed out for hard work; they are engineered.
Mike’s course, Promotion and Internal Mobility: Get Promoted at Work, is essentially a survival guide for the corporate jungle. What I loved most about this isn’t the “hustle culture” nonsense you find on LinkedIn; it’s the cold, hard breakdown of how HR tech and executive leadership actually function. Mike draws from his experience at high-growth companies like Preply and Wargaming to show you that a promotion is a business transaction, not a reward for good behavior.
The course shifts your mindset from a “worker bee” to a “strategic asset.” It treats your career like a real-world project where you are the product owner. Instead of guessing what your boss wants, you learn to decode the job grading architecture that dictates your salary and title. If you’ve ever felt like your career has plateaued despite your technical prowess, this course provides the certification prep for the “unwritten exam” of corporate politics.
Prerequisites
You don’t need an MBA or a specialized degree to get value here, but this isn’t exactly for the “day one” intern either. To really get the most out of these job-ready skills, you should:
- Have at least 1-2 years of experience in a structured corporate or startup environment.
- Possess a basic understanding of your company’s organizational chart.
- Be ready to look objectively at your own performance data—leave the ego at the door.
- Have access to your current job description or competency framework (if your company has one).
Skills & Tools Covered
This isn’t a coding bootcamp, but the “tools” are just as technical in their own way. You’ll dive into:
- 9-Box Grid Analysis: Mastering the industry-standard tool used by HR to identify “high potential” vs. “core players.”
- Gap Analysis & Auditing: Mapping your current soft skills and technical output against the requirements of the next pay grade.
- Evidence-Based Negotiation: Building a “brag document” that uses data-driven metrics to make a level change undeniable.
- Succession Planning Frameworks: Understanding how leadership views the “bench” and how to get your name on the shortlist.
- Pay Band Navigation: Learning to locate and leverage compensation data to ensure you aren’t being underpaid relative to the market.
Career Benefits & Job Roles
The ROI on this course is potentially massive. We’re talking about moving the needle on your Total Compensation (TC) by 20% to 50% just by jumping a grade.
- Software Engineers: Move from Mid-level to Senior/Staff by proving architectural impact rather than just ticket volume.
- Project & Product Managers: Learn to align your professional development with the company’s corporate strategy to become “unfireable.”
- Aspiring Managers: Bridge the gap between individual contributor (IC) and leadership by mastering succession planning.
- Marketing & Sales Pros: Use performance management logic to justify higher commissions or title bumps.
Pros
- The “HR Perspective”: Mike doesn’t guess; he tells you exactly how the person on the other side of the desk is graded. Understanding the performance review form from the manager’s perspective is a total game-changer.
- Combatting Imposter Syndrome: One of the best sections addresses the psychological barriers. It’s hands-on labs for your brain, teaching you how to speak about your achievements without feeling like a fraud.
- Global Authority: With Mike’s massive student base and history at Alfa-Bank and iDeals, the advice is battle-tested across different cultures and company sizes.
- Tactical Evidence: It moves past “work harder” and gives you a template for career growth based on evidence, which is the only language executive leadership speaks.
Cons
If I have to be honest, the “corporate” nature of the content might feel a bit jarring for those working in very small, “flat” startups (30 people or fewer). In those environments, job grading and 9-box grids often don’t exist yet because the infrastructure is too lean. However, even then, the core principles of internal mobility remain relevant for when that company eventually scales.