Long before she left the corporate world to advise others on career advancement, Tabatha Jones didn’t get a promotion in a way she says felt “completely unexpected.”
She was, after all, the person at the major telecom company her colleagues would consider the natural successor to her then-boss, who was getting ready to vacate the director-level role.
“I was her next person on the bench. I was sitting in the room when it was announced it was someone else. And it was very hard to contain my emotions,” Jones recalls. After the meeting, Jones “just looked at her and said, ‘I’m not feeling very well. I’m going home.’” And when she came back the next day, she “had a very honest conversation with her about how hard I had worked, my accomplishments, and why I felt I deserved that job.”
Difficult as it was, Jones is glad that she handled it the way she did. As she would later learn, her boss hadn’t really snubbed her at all.
In this piece, premium subscribers will learn:
- What you can learn from the viral response to Duolingo’s social impresario and her move to DoorDash
- How to manage ‘your story’ and avoid a victim mentality
- Why you need to take this moment to engage with your boss, not withdraw
“What I didn’t know at the time was that the role was temporary,” Jones says. She explains that just a few months later, the company underwent a major reorganization that eliminated the position. “Had she put me in that role, I very likely would have become unemployed, or gone through a demotion. Which would have been even harder.”
Instead, Jones landed a senior manager role at the company, and negotiated a generous pay increase. Ten months later, the organization underwent yet another reorganization. Jones was finally hired for a director-level role—which she might not have gotten if she overreacted to getting passed over previously. Only this time, the opportunity wasn’t temporary.
“You don’t want to be too salty,” says Jones. (She has since written a book about her experience called Promotion Ready in 3 Months.) “Be very careful, because people talk. You want to make sure your brand is intact, so when the next promotion comes up, you’re thought of in the right way.”
Taking the high road is easier said than done in the emotional aftermath of a devastating snub. Sometimes, throwing a little shade may feel warranted, and could even earn public praise. Take Zaria Parvez, who recently wrote a now-viral LinkedIn post that took a jab at Duolingo, heavily intimating that she had been overlooked for a position as its director of social.
The company’s former social media manager was responsible for killing the Duolingo owl in what became one of the year’s most successful viral campaigns. In her LinkedIn post, she even posted an original illustration of herself sitting atop the dead mascot, reading a notification from her new employer, DoorDash: “Your career upgrade has arrived!”
It clearly struck a chord, receiving over 17,000 reactions and 700 comments. At the same time, career experts say that for most in that situation, your saltiness could come back to bite you—and that the best approach is keeping a level head. (At least for those not in the business of going viral.)
Taking the high road
When someone else gets the nod for a promotion, it’s common to feel resentful, jealous, sad, angry, undervalued and underappreciated, says Monster career expert Vicki Salemi.
“People may feel like, ‘I’m just going to do the bare minimum, because they don’t care. They don’t appreciate all my hard work,” she says. “Some may just start looking for a new job immediately. They may be thinking, ‘Why am I going to work hard if it doesn’t matter anyway?”’
Tempting as it may be to withdraw out of spite, Salemi says it won’t do you any favors in the long run, especially if you plan to stick around at that company.
“If you act like you don’t care, and you don’t have a conversation about it, then next time there is a promotion, your boss may say, ‘Well, I thought you were content where you were. We haven’t really developed your skills, so you’re not ready,’” she says.
Though it never hurts to have an up-to-date résumé on hand and an eye on the job market, Salemi advises against burning bridges with existing or former employers, especially on social media. In a high-profile case like Parvez’s, in which the former employee publicly insinuates they left after not being considered for a more senior title, “it’s all up to the person and what they feel they’re most comfortable with,” says Salemi. “They may be upset and they want to show they landed on their feet and they’re doing really well.” But there may also be a reason to tread carefully when throwing some shade at your former bosses.
“It’s a small world,” she says. “You never know when your paths will cross again.”
Manage your emotions— even if you’re on the way out
That doesn’t mean you have to hide your disappointment, says Justin Hale, an author and course designer at Crucial Learning, a leadership and development training provider.
“Speak up in a way that shows your disappointment and shows that you’re mature, you’re accountable, you’re responsible. Those are the kinds of qualities that a leader is going to look for,” he says.
And then, rather than using it as an excuse to do less, Hale says to use the snub as motivation to accomplish more. Even if it’s for someone else.
“Manage what we call ‘your story’,” he says. In this case: “‘The story I’m telling myself is that, ‘I was qualified, and for some reason, they passed me up.’”
After identifying why being snubbed bothered you, you can “then backtrack one more step and say, ‘what are the facts? What did I actually see or hear that led me to that story?’” Separating fact from story, Hale explains, helps people overcome a victim mentality that can cloud their decision-making, and lead to reactions you could end up regretting later.
And if nothing else—you can transfer the energy you’re putting into being salty into finding your next gig.
“Maybe your organization is being unfair to you, and the solution is to go find something else,” he says. He adds that even if you decide to leave, there’s value in having an honest and open dialogue with your boss.
“Even if your manager shares some things with you that make you think, ‘okay, this place isn’t a fit for me’—isn’t it valuable to get their perspective before you head out?”
