I never expected to be in this situation, but I have a dilemma at work. Last year I was pushing my manager Angela to promote me to a new position that she was trying to create. I wasn’t competing with anyone for the job. It’s the job I was doing already. I was running our company’s eCommerce site and our online store, our catalogs and our eCommerce customer communication.

I did that work for a year and a half while my job title was Marketing Coordinator and I was getting paid just a little more than a new graduate gets paid. It was ridiculous. Finally in December I gave up on trying to get my boss to finalize the new role and put me into it with a pay raise and a title change.

I just gave up because it was taking so long and I was too frustrated. After the new year I started job-hunting, off and on.

Now I’m job-hunting seriously and I’m getting interviews, but all of a sudden last week Angela told me, “I can finally make that promotion official on July first. I just need you to sign a form that says you accept the promotion and the new pay rate.”

Since I don’t have any job opportunities that are very far along in my job search so far, I will probably still be working here on July first. Should I accept the promotion even though I’m planning to leave?

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Hats off to you! You are running your own career. By all means, accept the promotion. You earned it!

Taking the promotion you deserve will get you a new job title on your Human-Voiced Resume, a new business card, and a much easier way to tell your eCommerce story as your job search continues. Maybe you’ll be in the new job for a month before you leave, but what difference does that make?

You’ve been doing the job for ages already so you may as well be recognized and compensated for it on your way out the door.

If you refused the promotion now after campaigning for it last year, how would that look? What reason could you possibly give your boss as to why you no longer want the recognition you fought for?

Take the promotion. Your manager got many months or a year of unpaid eCommerce consulting out of you already. If you give notice one or two months into the new assignment, c’est la vie. You owe Angela nothing more than you’ve given her already.