* Study finds middle managers have just six years to prove they're senior management material
If you’re a middle manager seeking to advance, you’ve got about six years to prove your potential as a senior manager or your superiors will identify you as a career middle manager. That’s the finding of a study from Management Recruiters International, a search and recruitment firm.
The search and recruitment firm polled 200 HR directors and senior executives in the U.S. and another 200 in the U.K. I’ll focus on the U.S. results, though you might be interested to know that the U.K. middle managers have even less time to grow.
A U.S. middle manager remains in the same position for an average of 6.3 years before promoted to senior management. If that manager doesn’t make the jump to senior management within that timeframe, most surveyed leaders said these employees would be considered career middle managers. And after six years in middle management, the opportunities for advancement to the senior level are greatly reduced.
If you want to move up, that means you must carefully evaluate your career choice to figure out how to best meet your goals. For some, that might include the possibility of moving on to a new company.
“Middle managers who have aspirations to become part of senior management within their own organization can now be cognizant of how much time they have to reach that goal,” says William Olson, president of Management Recruiters International. “It is critical that these middle managers accelerate their career progression by investigating the avaiable opportunities at their company and positioning themselves as potential senior managers more aggressively.”
