Hired as a marketing manager. Job was incorrectly coded in a lower salary band (by half). At the end of Feb my boss and I got moved into a different organization. For the March promotion cycle my boss put me up to her manager for promotion and correct coding. Out (new) manager (who was also a new hire) didn’t know how to put the promotion case forward so it didn’t go. 1 week after the promotion cycle ended, our manager quit.
2 weeks later my boss quit. All of her work was intentionally, completely, and permanently transferred seamlessly to me. She trained me well and we evenly split the all aspects of the workload, so my skill set didn’t not need to increase, but my workload did increase.
On May 1, 3 weeks after my boss quit I called HR to ask about the procedure to be promoted, since the 4 manager/leaders between myself and the global VP had left. I heard back on May. 3, and she said she didn’t know what the process was, that she was new. 6 days later she called to tell me there was no one between me and the Sr VP. I said I know, that’s why I was calling.
So she said I could talk to the VP of Strategy (who I’ve never seen or spoken to in 10 months) and maybe he could help. When I spoke to him (for the first time—he is also new), he asked what I do. I showed a slide deck and emailed him the job description and also told him I’d like to be promoted as I’ve been given global accountability and all others in my role throughout the company have senior titles and senior compensation. He said he didn’t think he could do anything because he isn’t my direct manager, but he’d find out.
By now it’s been a month since my first contact with HR. And suddenly the “not my manager” sales VP is my manager after all. So I call HR to ask what is happening with my being shuffled I’m around the organization, and what is the status of my promotion case. No reply. I email the sales Vp (My new manager) and he let me knew (only after I chased him down) that’s he had an Hr call that upcoming Monday day and will update me.
No update.
I emailed and messaged my HR contact daily for 10 days without a response.
No update.
I took it to the director of HR. After relaying all the details (including the now 3rd job I’m taking responsibility for now that she’s left too)…and she commits to getting back to me with a status update.
Within 5 minutes I have a call invite for next week with Hr and my manager.
Meanwhile there is another position IDENTICAL to mine in another business unit. I plan to call the recruiter and ask for the salary range, and bring that to the meeting we have on Wednesday. There is already another senior marketing manager (the promotion I want) on another product (I handle 2 products), so there is no argument for “we just don’t need anyone to do your prior boss’s work—that leaves all of EMEA APAC without marketing. That’s not even close to typical. And they have a budget—we have 7 roles that have not been backfilled this year alone, and my salary would be the LOWEST of all of them.
And the most recent departure was 20 years younger than me with the identical education and background except for me having 20 years additional experience running 3 successful businesses. She had NO experience in marketing and was paid nearly triple my salary.
Other than find another job (working on it), how do I handle this meeting? The woman who handles the budget my salary comes from said we have almost $2M left for the year and nothing planned to spend it on.
What should I say in my meeting?