If you’re evaluating talent – or even your own career – based solely on title and compensation, you’re measuring the wrong things.
In an era when workers move across companies, industries, and functions, not to mention between government, industry, and nonprofit sectors, it can be hard to assess if someone is moving up in their career, or just moving around. Some new research from HBS’ Paul Gompers and his colleagues provides a more interesting way of assessing career progression, looking at “seniority levels” in various fields, and how long it takes a typical person to reach each level. It’s pretty simple: In a given industry, if someone’s role has a seniority level of 10, the median time to achieve that role is 10 years after college graduation.
Once you have that model, you can better assess if someone’s career is progressing faster than expected, or if they’re lagging behind their peers. For most workers with strong career aspirations, this analysis comes with some bad news: On average, for workers with 10 years of experience, 56% had a seniority level of 10 or higher. At 20 years, that drops to 19%. For the majority of workers, their careers top out far earlier, and far lower, than they probably hoped.
There are a lot of reasons why this is, including one big one that I’ve seen throughout my career: companies invest heavily in the development of their junior workers (to give them a foundation upon which to perform their job) and very senior executives (to strengthen their firm’s leadership), but largely neglect the middle ranks that comprise the backbone of their organization.
This is an unnecessary, and easily avoided, own goal. Investing in talent has a strong return at every level. Developing middle management not only strengthens the firm in a way that contributes to improved performance, it also increases employee loyalty and reduces turnover. Who doesn’t want all that?