Apart from those already high up the career ladder with nowhere else to go, the rest of us have to work very hard for a promotion. The terms for promoting an employee across organizations are not always clear or uniform. In some cases, promotions are done through a combination of performance evaluation and promotion examination. For others, it may be a combination of different factors. The key is to identify what factors your organization considers in deciding whether an employee should be promoted or not and work on getting yourself noticed.