My (previous) colleague feels as though she has been passed up for multiple promotions. Her junior colleagues are being promoted, but she is not.
What advice or guidance can I offer her?
First thing I want to point out is that this has nothing to do with salary, just the title, hence I don't believe this is a repeat.
Second thing is that this is actually about an ex colleague of mine, from the company I used to work for and left.
The company I used to work for is small (60 people) and I left as I didn't feel like I was valued; that I was being micro managed; and that I should have been promoted to a management position as I was doing that job already. I'd like to point out at this point that the salary was generous and I may have stayed if it was something I loved doing. It was an account management job, but I always wanted to be a techy so felt a change was needed.
A colleague of mine, who joined around a year after me, and who I trained up is now in a similar position. She does, however, enjoy the job a lot more than I did and it is in her desired field and a good career step for her.
Now that I have left, a lot of people who joined after are now being promoted to account managers (from account executives) on different client accounts. My friend feels like she also deserves to be promoted. Each person works on one client account only (for the most part) but there can be multiple people on each account.
One example of this issues is that someone, who joined the company after my friend on a different account, was moved onto our account when I resigned, so that I could train her. She has now been promoted to account manager, although the company says that it's due to her work on the previous account, it does make her more senior than my friend, who knows more about the account and systems on the account.
My friend is concerned that this other person has been promoted because of her close friendly relationship outside of work with the senior account manager (the account director is currently on mat leave).
I have said she should mention it to the senior account director (who oversees all the accounts) and maybe bring it up in an email so that there is a paper trail of her comments and concerns, but she isn't sure how to approach it. She feels like she is being pushed out of the account and I have suggested she asks to move accounts because of it, but now she is worried that if she kicks up a fuss that they will be less likely to help out with her visa sponsorship.
It's really getting her down and I'm a bit stuck on what to suggest now. (I did suggest she posted on here but she is a bit less outgoing so I thought I would help out). Leaving isn't really an option because her visa is going to run out soon and it would be tricky for her to get a job which will sponsor her for a new one.