I'm a former senior leader at Amazon. There's a secret reason you're not getting promoted and it has to do with 'calibration meetings' happening behind closed doors.

• Brandon Southern is the former head of analytics at eBay, Amazon, and GameStop.
• He says that getting promoted is not necessarily about hard work.
• In order to stand out, people should focus on building their personal brand.

I've worked in tech for 20 years and served as the former head of analytics at companies like eBay, Amazon, and GameStop. I've had the pleasure of working with a lot of talented people. But most of them don't understand the real reasons they're not getting promoted.

While team members performed very well and delivered results, many were frustrated and confused as to why their hard work didn't result in a promotion. It seems that almost everyone that I worked with felt that hard work and results is what should get you promoted, because that's what annual performance reviews tend to focus on.

This matters, but more is required, and it starts with understanding the secret conversations that happen behind closed doors during the promotion process.

For some people, the promotion never comes

Most employees come to work on time, put in a full day of work, and many frequently go above and beyond the "standard" work requirements. They remain tethered to their electronic devices, putting in extra effort and displaying their commitment and dedication, mostly in hopes of one day getting a promotion.

But for many people, that promotion never comes, which leaves the employee feeling rejected, unappreciated, undervalued, misled, and even lied to.

But it's not the employee's fault. Few employees have been exposed to the secret conversations that lead to getting promoted.

Your manager is talking about you in 'calibration meetings'

In most large organizations, your manager is having a conversation about you behind closed doors during the annual review process in what's commonly known as a calibration meeting.

In these meetings, your manager is talking about you to other peers and people above your manager's pay grade. They're discussing your personality, performance, results, potential, and more. And during these conversations, all the attending members are providing feedback about you and are comparing you to other employees.

Understanding what is happening in these meetings is crucial

First, to get promoted, your manager must be willing to put you up for a promotion, which means vouching for you in front of others.

Sadly, I've seen plenty of cases where a manager has told an employee directly that the employee is doing great work, which leads the employee to believe they are up for a promotion. But the manager never actually puts the employee up for promotion.

Now, assuming that your manager is being direct, honest, and transparent, and they do put you up for promotion, the final decision isn't necessarily up to them.

Second, many companies have various ratios of high-value employees, which is basically stack-ranking you against others. even if you're doing very well and meeting your goals, you might be being beat out by other employees in the promotion process. And those employees aren't necessarily part of your team — they could be part of the boarder organization or the company.

When the company has their final list of who is up for promotion, the list will likely get thinned down due to limits on the number of people that can be promoted within the cycle. These limits make the process even more challenging because managers are trying to promote their own people.

With limited spots, it's usually a fair assumption that a manager is going to try to promote their own team members over team members from other teams. What this means is that your promotion isn't only about hard work, dedication, and results. It's about your personal brand and being noticed and valued by other leaders above your pay grade.

You need to craft a personal brand to get noticed

To get noticed and to build your personal brand with others, you'll need create a plan and spend months building your brand if you want to increase your odds of being promoted.

1. Identify the voters: This plan starts with understanding who your manager's peers are and your manager's managers are. These individuals will likely be the people that are voting on your promotion.
   
   After generating this list with your manager, you'll need to have a discussion with your manager to determine who you should align with, much like a corporate version of Survivor! This is because not all individuals in the calibration meetings have the same level of influence, and there are sometimes individuals that you don't want to be aligned with.
2. Make a networking plan: After building your list of people to network with, you'll need to create a plan of how to partner, communicate, and show value to those individuals. The more value that you can provide to those managers and their teams, the better off you'll likely be.
3. Show how your work duties have increased: Last, you'll need to demonstrate an increase in scope of work. This is because your next level of work has more requirements and duties, not simply the same duties as you're performing today.
   
   Many employees frequently overlook this, feeling that exceptional results at their current level are justification for being given the scope and responsibilities of a higher level.

When employees focus on putting in the effort up-front to craft a promotion plan to build their personal brand while simultaneously working hard and delivering results, they'll increase their chances of success during the promotion process.

They'll build the relationships and partnerships that are necessary to have others singing their praises and advocating for them during the promotion process.

Without this focus on building these partnerships, employees will be leaving their promotion to chance.

Brandon Southern is the former head of analytics at eBay, Amazon, and GameStop and TikTok creator where he makes videos about data analytics and career development.