Job Promotion, with Miriam Aguirre

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Miriam Aguirre, Senior Vice President at Skillz gives advice on getting a promotion.

Miriam came to the United States when she was very young and spoke very little English. She went on to study Computer Science at MIT and work at various companies.

Transcript:

ES: This is 5 Minute Mentor, a podcast where you’ll get advice from prominent engineers, authors, artists, and more in 5 minutes or less.

MA: Hey I’m Miriam Aguirre, Senior Vice President at Skillz. I wanted to talk to you briefly about leveling up your career. It’s great that you want a promotion. I think in order to ensure you get that promotion, there are a few things I would advise you to do.

1. The organization needs to be bought in that the role that you want to be promoted into needs to exist.
2. You and your manager have outlined all of the targets that you need to hit in order for you to reach that milestone. Ideally this is not just a conversation. It should definitely start out as a conversation, but coming out there should be some sort of artifact that you can both track and agree upon when you’ve hit all of the goals on that sheet so that you can initiate the process of getting a promotion.

MA: I think that it’s a little too easy to assume that you’re both aligned, but unless there’s a clear document that says you both are aligned, and you are actually tracking against all of the items on that list I would not assume that you’re going to get promoted. It always helps to make sure that everyone involved has signed off and that you are actually running in the right direction.