• Nolan Church is a former Google recruiter who says you could be holding yourself back from a promotion.
• Performance gaps, lack of roles, and budget constraints can also hinder career advancement.
• Advocating for oneself and seeking feedback are crucial for securing promotions.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nolan Church, a 35-year-old former recruiter for Google and Doordash and now the cofounder and CEO of FairComp from Salt Lake City. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Before becoming the CEO of FairComp, a company that helps employees understand if they're paid fairly, I was a recruiter for Google for three years and led recruiting at Doordash for another three years.

I often saw colleagues and friends get overlooked for promotions. There are several reasons for this — here are four of them.

1. Performance gap

The first one is a gap in performance. There could be a misalignment in how an employee thinks they're doing and how management thinks they're doing, most likely due to a lack of feedback.

Many people are bad at giving feedback. An employee could have poor communication skills, a negative attitude, or be a pessimist, but they may not know it. Or, when they do receive feedback, they argue about it instead of trying to remediate and improve. These things surface when it comes time for a promotion, but they're hard to fix when you're unaware it's a problem.

When looking for a promotion, make sure to ask for feedback on your current performance and actually listen. Then, document the feedback, improve, and ask your manager, "Can you help me understand the gap between where I'm at and the next level?" That way, you may get promoted in the next round of promotions.

In your one-on-one meetings after the initial conversation, you could say, "This is what we talked about in the past, and this is what I've been doing to improve. What's your feedback on how my performance has been progressing?"

This is also helpful if you aren't getting promoted due to a skill gap, like if you're trying to get promoted into a management role and you've never managed people before. Ask your manager what you need to work on to move on to the next level.

2. No job 'big enough'

You might be killing it at your job, but if the business doesn't have an open role or a scope big enough to justify your promotion, you typically won't get promoted.

For example, when Google employees reach level five, or terminal level, many will never get promoted again. Typically, there's no job big enough for them to go into next.

Once you reach the top, you might not see any additional compensation increases either. Some companies may make exceptions and offer more, but that's not the rule.

If this happens, you have a few options. You can stay put and try to keep learning within your role, search for other roles inside the company where there are opportunities to grow and ascend, or you might choose to leave the company.

3. Budget constraints or business challenges

If a business isn't doing well, promotions are most likely not happening or are occurring at a significantly decreased rate. If a business is experiencing some sort of struggle, it has no incentive to promote people, and your likelihood of getting promoted is significantly less than at a business that's doing well.

Typically, promotions come with a salary increase, but not all companies can always provide that. When this is the case, the solution for an employee seeking a promotion is situational.

If the economy is up but your company is not doing well, it might be time to look for another opportunity elsewhere. If the economy is down, you may consider staying put in your current role, as leaving in a bad economy can be risky.

Otherwise, if you leave and, six weeks later, your new company decides to run a layoff, you're more likely to be impacted because you lack tenure — "last in, first out," can still be true today.

4. You aren't advocating for a promotion

You must advocate for yourself to get a promotion, but people are often terrible at doing that — especially when working remotely. Instead of thinking, "I'm just going to do great work, and people are going to notice," you need to think, "I'm going to do great work, and I need to tell people about the work I'm doing."

I remember having a big mental shift in my career when I realized I needed to take responsibility and own it. I thought, "I can't expect my manager, who has a ton on their plate and a lot going on, to always be the one checking in on me. Instead, I need to advocate for myself."

Start by scheduling regular touchpoints with your manager so they understand the value you're providing to the organization — something harder to see when you work remotely.

If you work from home, you need to overcompensate to combat this. When in person, people can see that you're working and can ask you questions without friction. To ensure your manager doesn't think you're slacking off, send snippets on Fridays that include everything you did that week and your priorities for next week. Also, send no-update updates, which update stakeholders on where things stand without them asking you.

That way, they're always aware of what you've done and what's coming next. If they want to provide feedback, you've given them an opportunity.