This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

The decision about your promotion is made in a room you have never been in, using a form you have never seen, against criteria nobody showed you.

Why working harder stops helping

I have sat in those rooms. What decides the outcome is rarely the thing people expect. Someone's name is already on a succession list from eight months ago. Someone else sits at the top of their pay band, so a raise requires a level change, so the level change requires a case, and nobody wrote one. Meanwhile the person who deserved it most is having their fourth conversation that ends in "next cycle" — because the conversation is happening in the wrong language, in the wrong quarter, with the wrong evidence.

What this course actually covers

Five blocks, following the decision backwards. First, grading: how job levels are set, what factors separate one grade from the next, how pay ranges are built, and why there is a ceiling above you that no amount of good work moves. Second, performance review: the machinery that generates the decision — what you are evaluated on, how competencies are assessed, what happens inside the meeting, and what the results are actually used for, including promotion. Third, talent management: how a company decides who counts as talent, what happens in a talent review meeting, and what being on that list changes. Fourth, succession planning: the 9-box grid, how a shortlist for the role above you is built, and how candidates are told or not told. Fifth, ten lessons of personal work — talents, impostor syndrome, a competency audit against the target level, development planning and the financial ground underneath a move.

A note on where this material comes from

Twenty-six of the thirty-six lessons were recorded for the people who build these systems, not for the people inside them. That is deliberate. If you want a promotion, the most useful thing you can look at is the salary review matrix, the review form and the criteria for the talent pool. If you are the person building those systems, the course works for you directly and without translation.

Who is teaching this

I am Mike Pritula. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn, and I have worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank. More than 1.6 million students have enrolled in my courses across 185 countries, and over 150,000 specialists have gone through my programmes. I hold PHRi and SHRM-CP certifications and represent HRCI in more than ten countries. I have run grading projects and sat on the calibration side of promotion decisions.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all 36 lessons

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Working material: job evaluation factors, pay range construction, the salary review matrix, the 9-box grid, the competency audit

• Practical tools for your development plan and your promotion case

Where to start

Find out two things this week: which grade your role sits in, and where inside its range your salary falls. If you cannot find out, that itself is the first thing this course fixes. Enrol now and start the first lesson today.