think I'm the lackey of my department

LegacyUser

I completed my degree, did a postgraduate qualification and had five years experience before I joined my current job. Kinda insurance administration.

If there was a job to be done I got stuck in. Boxes to be archived, post collected from mailroom, new hires to be trained, queues to be processed I just dived in while others clock watched and stood back. Just the sort of person I am. I can learn very quickly and get thrown into situations and always succeed. I learned a new role in 3 days, ran it on my own and 10 months after I left I people asked me questions.

For sure my appraisals said I worked hard and were OK but when it can time for promotions I never ever got chosen. Supervisors and managers always want me to join their teams but it's always in support roles like admin work and while I ask for more responsibility it doesn't always happen. They know I'm organised and don't make errors so I think it's easy for them to leave me there.

In 2015 I wanted to change so got involved in projects, a risk discussion group and gave multiple presentations and deputised for my team leader. I applied for my team leaders job when he left and they brought in an external hire I applied for another role and a girl I trained got it. And they continued to use me for support jobs and said how valuable and flexible I was bla bla

Three weeks ago I got moved again as a girl went on maternity leave. I'm the newest administrator on the team. My old manager is dealing with a lot of staff leaving and plans to promote others, I asked to be considered by email, got no reply but was asked about archiving the post!

I completed coaching sessions with my supervisor on soft skills and had discussions with my manager to see what the story was and she commented on lack of confidence. Yeah that's true but I'm very competent.

Once I was doing a task and my teammate said "this was donkey work for interns and students". I thought this was ridiculous and I want everything I do to be perfect and I'll get recognised. Now I think he was right and I'm the lackey in this place Did I bring this on myself?

Diziet

If you want a different job you have to act more like the job you want rather then the job you now do. And your colleague is right, taking on the donkey work gives you a reputation for a hard flexible worker but no chance of promotion.
So in addition to the training, you have to ease off doing boring repetitive tasks and shift your attention to projects and more senior level tasks. It may actually be best to try and move to another company, where you take with you your knowledge and experience but leave behind the baggage.

Confidence can be learned. At the very least pretend you are confident. One day you will find you really are!

Stheno

Diziet wrote: »

If you want a different job you have to act more like the job you want rather then the job you now do. And your colleague is right, taking on the donkey work gives you a reputation for a hard flexible worker but no chance of promotion.
So in addition to the training, you have to ease off doing boring repetitive tasks and shift your attention to projects and more senior level tasks. It may actually be best to try and move to another company, where you take with you your knowledge and experience but leave behind the baggage.

Confidence can be learned. At the very least pretend you are confident. One day you will find you really are!

Agreed, it's one thing to be competent at doing rote tasks but confidence, and more importantly leadership may be areas the op needs to work on.

Irish_Elect_Eng

Being the person that always does the straightforward work, even if perfectly can be seen negatively when it comes to promotion. It can be seen that you do not have the confidence or competence to take on more complex tasks.

Also there is the case, if you make yourself invaluable even as the lackey, managers tend not to promote invaluable people as they are a headache to replace.

groovyg

Op sometimes being overly helpful gets you nowhere. You mentioned that a girl you trained up has now been promoted.
I've seen it where I work a colleague started calling himself the office dogsbody as everybody was coming to him him about every damn problem none of which were directly related to his job. He became extremely frustrated and for the last year he just says refuses to help anybody. He was just being helpful but it didn't help him in the long run and now when he says no to tasks that are not related to his job people think he is a grumpy prick.
I think you might need to find a new job as chances of promotion are slim in your current role. Stop doing work thats not related to your job.

Phantasos

If you make yourself indispensable in your current role, people will not look to move you away from that position. You continue to work hard, and it's clear (after the promotion of your trainee) that they feel you will lie over and accept your lot in your current position indefinitely.

If you want to be promoted, I would advise applying for roles in external companies. It's clear that your current employer has no intention of promoting you, and will leave you as a dogsbody for as long as you accept it.

Speedwell

That was me. Things changed when I started saying, "I'll take care of that for you as soon as I am done with my regular work" and prioritising my regular work. If someone came to me asking why their thing didn't get done, I would say, "oh, I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to yet; I've been doing [work in my actual job description]. Maybe [someone whose job description included the outside task] could help you out with that." I looked like a hero for getting my real job done for once, and still got points for appearing to be willing to take on other tasks... even if I hardly ever "got time" to do them. If the disappointed person went to my supervisor, I'd simply ask my supervisor to back me up on my real job duties.