This video is an excerpt from a live training session with Chrissy Scivicque, Career Coach & Corporate Trainer. The full video (“Get that Promotion! Strategies for Career Advancement”) is available in the Career Success Library.

The article below summarizes the video content.

Pigeonholed generally means that people have assigned you to a specific category. And that assignment is very rigid in their minds; they kind of have a mental block of seeing you as anything different than this “peg” that you currently are. You are currently a peg in this hole, and they have a hard time imagining you in any other type of category.

This happens a lot for administrative professionals. I know not everyone here is an administrative professional, but this is extremely common in the support field. People see you in this particular role and they can’t even imagine you in a different space–even though you may have all the skills, all the qualifications, you may be a perfect fit for that other role, but they simply can’t imagine it!

If you find that you have already been pigeonholed, that you’re in that place where people can’t imagine you in any other role and you’re so indispensable where you currently are that you’re limited by that, then you might want to consider looking at your external promotion opportunities. This means, going for a new role outside of your current organization– a role that is more advanced than your current role where you currently are. You can do that externally within a competitive organization, one that’s still in your same industry or same general field, or you can do that within a completely different organization.

It is definitely possible to get a promotion and to move your career forward, get that higher level, more advanced title outside of your organization. And that might be the way to go if you’ve been pigeonholed.