How to write a promotion case

This is my attempt to summarise how I would write a promotion case document; it’s based on my own experiences writing/reviewing such document over the years and a good bit of googling other approaches.

It should be read in conjunction with this guide to sitting the promotion panel / interview stage.

A promotion case is a lot like a sales pitch. It’s got to be a well thought through story, with a clear structure (start/middle/end), overarching message, and evidence backing up every claim. It has to be short and to the point, easily understood by all parties, with a super-obvious key message running throughout. It absolutely must not be an unordered, bulleted list of every good thing a candidate has ever done.

Success!

I would go with this kind of structure:

• Context: what are the challenges and opportunities facing the business in the next several years, and what will need to succeed: what kind of people, with what traits and skills, and why will those traits/skills allow us to succeed?
• Backward look: how has the candidate embodied those skills over the last couple of years, and what were the positive outcomes?
• Forward look: what will promoting the candidate now allow them to do differently, how will they do even more with those traits and skills?
• Supporters: what other (experienced, senior people) agree promoting the candidate now will lead to bigger and better things.

A single cohesive message must flow throughout the case and be easy to pick out: “We need people who can do <things>; Fred has done <those exact things > which led to <good things>; promoting Fred now means Fred will <do more of X leading to more good things>”

Looking at those elements in more detail…

Context

This section explains WHY we need people to be promoted, and WHAT KIND of people we should promote — what traits must they embody. It may referencing company values / leadership principles or other factors, like technical skills, or experience delivering certain kinds of project.

Start by describing the challenges and opportunities the company will face in the next couple of years, then introduce at least 2 and no more than 5 attributes, explaining their importance to the company and its clients.

These attributes will form the cornerstone of your case so make sure you embody them, because in the next section, you will be saying “remember those things I said were critical to our success in the context section? Well they describe me perfectly, let me explain…”

Tips:

• Less is more! Max 1 page for this section (at minimum 10 point text and normal margins), and absolute max 5 attributes
• Make sure it is super obvious to the case evaluators what these attributes are
• Provide evidence for why these are the most important challenges/opportunities, and why these attributes are key to the company’s success — for example referencing Gartner research.

Backward look

This section explains why YOU embody the 3..5 key attributes you said the company needs more of. It provides the evidence of HOW you have embodies those attributes, and explains how big a positive impact those attributes have allowed you to make.

Cover each of the 3..5 attributes from your context section, using the STAR format — briefly describe the Situation (i.e. the context), the Task you had to achieve, the Actions you took, and quantify the Results it achieved — e.g. £ revenue earned, #hours downtime prevented.

Use short statements from supporters as evidence. Ideally these statements should back-up all aspects of your claim i.e. that X trait is important, that you embody X, and that doing X allowed you to deliver £Y positive thing

Tips:

• Less is more! Make every single statement count; ruthlessly cut out unnecessary content, and content the evaluators wont understand — max 3 pages for this section.
• Remember this is about building a strong, easily consumable argument that you embody the attributes you said were important, not bullet-point listing everything you have ever done. It is far more effective to land 3 easily remembered points, than to touch on 200 points
• Use quotes from feedback that you have received, but only include the critical parts of the feedback, and make sure it explicitly refers to you, and not just a group you were part of
• Use limited bold and highlighting to call out key phrases, and to make it easier for the reviewers to pull out key messages / navigate the document. Think bold = visual index cues. This is especially useful for highlighting your 2..5 key attributes that run throughout your case.
• This section is there to evidence your claim you embody 2..5 traits of skills. You can weave in other themes like company values or the leadership principles, but hang the case off YOUR 3..5 key attributes, and don’t try to force your content to fit leadership principles you haven’t yet worked against. For example, junior engineering roles, probably haven’t had chance to manage a major live incident. So instead of making weak statements the evaluators could pull apart, focus on things you have done.
• There may be a temptation to use technical jargon, or overly complex flowery phrases to make everything sound more impressive. Resist this temptation! Use simple, concise language that focuses on the outcomes. So rather than “Fred inverted the main deflector array to emit a level 3 pulse of graviton particles which crashed the Borg’s forward shield emitters allowing a quantum torpedo burst to defeat the cube”, go for something like “Fred applied his technical problem solving skills [which Fred had of course previously flagged as being important in the context section] to defeat the Borg, writing up the approach in knowledge article 123, where it has been used on 4 other occasions protecting 12 starships”
• Don’t replay your working history or previous end of year ratings — this is not relevant for your case and you wouldn’t be creating a promotion case if you weren’t exceeding expectations. Focus on the last couple of years, not what you were doing 20 years ago
• For content: blend what you did, how you did it, and the impact on the team, client and end user. Cover how you have worked across the lifecycle (sales, delivery, operations) and have contributed to the company more broadly than your pure day job: e.g. organised meet-ups, written technical papers, presented at conferences or educational events.
• Showcase the results of your leadership, and demonstrate you make things happen: never use words like attended, suggested, identified, or participated. You must be emphasising leadership, ownership and that you make things happen. You want words like created, delivered, organised, and led. You also want quantified results — end paragraphs with a so-what — what did you save, what did you win. Example: “Fred suggests lots of ideas for process improvement” is a weak statement with no so-what. “Fred has implemented 3 improvements which have saved X hours work / £Y” is much better.

Forward Look

This section explains how far you can go, and explains what this promotion enables and why.

The differences might be things you will do differently, different things you will have access to (peer groups, grade-linked training courses), and things the company gets in return.

Align to your key attributes and justification — there must be the consistent flow through the document “this is important, you exemplify this, promoting you enable you to do this more”

Tips:

• Less is as always more — max 1 page for this content
• Don’t fall into the trap of giving the panel an automatic question of “and why haven’t you done that already”
• Let the ambition come through “Gain X certification/position within 18 months of promotion” not “Think about X certification/position within the next 5 years”

Supporters

This section contains quotes from other people that essentially say “I support this promotion”

It is not content you write, but you might be able to influence it a bit. E.g. you might need to provide them pointers on what points you need them to talk about, or walk them through the rest of your case.

Tips:

• Less is still more. 1/3 of a page max, per support statement
• Make sure they reference your key messages/attributes — “Fred really does exemplify <key attribute from your context section”.
• For more senior grades, make sure you have a mix of technical and delivery/service support, it’s important to show that your supporters are not just within your immediate area.
• Your review / line manager probably should not be listed a supporter, it’s a waste of a “vote”, they will support you on the big day anyway & if they weren’t a supporter you wouldn’t be writing a case; they are a given!
• Keep your supporters to a maximum of 5 too many wont get read by the evaluators

Anything else, any pit falls?

The biggest pitfall I’ve seen, is “the wall of text”. The promotion case that contains 200 bullet points, or paragraph after paragraph of dense, jargon heavy text and acronyms I have to google. This makes it next to impossible for an evaluator to pull out key messages, and decide if the case passes muster. Remember that evaluator is going to be reviewing a lot of cases. Make it easy for them to understand your case is strong enough, and in a matter of minutes pull out the key message of the 2..5 attributes you believe are necessary for success, the evidence that you embody those attributes, and what difference this promotion will make. 6 pages max, 10 point text minimum, normal margins, normal font, and no bullets

The second big pitfall is levelling: presenting a case for why you are excellent in your current grade, rather than why you will excel in the next grade. This is especially common at the point people move from “doer” roles to “management”, because the skills and behaviours that got you to this point, will stop you reaching the next level. At the doer side the key behaviours tend to be about doing things yourself: you took ownership of task X, and delivered it to outstanding quality / time / cost. These are great behaviours! but they cannot scale — they are still dependent on one person: you. To break into leadership roles your behaviour has to switch from you doing those things yourself, to enabling/ensuring others do them. Whether that’s creating the right environment for them to do it themselves through documentation, budget allocation and plan management; or coaching, training, advising and harassing them to do it themselves.

If there is a third big pitfall, it’s the case not written, or the case abandoned. Which is somewhat common, because building a case takes a long time, and will likely need feedback from a wide range of people to make it as good as possible. That is going to need a lot of mental energy to do it right, and few people enjoy spending that kind of effort talking themselves up — its just not natural! Unfortunately, it’s often a necessary evil for getting to the next grade, so get help: get your line manager and network to help keep you motivated, to ensure the case is well written, spell and grammar checked, easy to consume, and saying something worth listening to. Get the promo cases from your colleagues for inspiration, and when your colleagues are going through this process offer them your support, energy & encouragement!

Summary

This post looked at how to structure a promotion case, suggesting a single message spanning 4 elements:

• Context: what are the challenges and opportunities facing the business in the next several years, and what will need to succeed: what kind of people, with what traits and skills, and why will those traits/skills allow us to succeed?
• Backward look: how has the candidate embodied those skills over the last couple of years, and what were the outcomes?
• Forward look: what will promoting the candidate now allow them to do differently, how will they do even more with those traits and skills?
• Supporters: what other (experienced, senior people) agree promoting the candidate now will lead to bigger and better things.

It closed by highlighting 3 pitfalls: the wall of text, levelling and the risk of the case not written & the plea to help the folks going though this process & hopefully this blog helps someone, or inspires others to offer alternatives

This post should be read in conjunction with this guide to sitting the promotion panel / interview stage.