How can company strategy support or restrict your growth?

Typically, your career path progresses through four main levels. You begin by offering hard work in exchange for low wages and valuable experience. Eventually, you leverage your accumulated experience to gain higher wages and benefits. However, even while giving your best, you may encounter career stagnation. One significant reason for this can be the limitations imposed by your workplace's strategy due to its current life cycle phase. Therefore, to ensure a smooth career trajectory, you need to transition to the right workplace at the right time. This requires understanding the four levels of career development and the four phases of a business life cycle, along with how their overlap can either accelerate or decelerate your progress.

When you’re in the thick of building your career and figuring out what you want to do with your life, you’re always moving through the following four levels of career development according to your experience.
1. Entry-level (2-3 years)
You will obtain this role right after getting graduation, or you might get it if you’re building a new career in a different industry, in this stage you should earn technical skills and acquire job experience.

2. Intermediate (up to 6 years)
After gaining a few years of experience, your manager will be less likely to supervise you closely, and you will find more opportunities to work independently, and may lead others, in this stage you should earn managerial skills, start to build a professional network with people relative to your career field within and outside your workplace, and get a suitable wage.

3. Mid-level (up to 10 years)
Mid-level employees usually hold managerial roles, ensure the day-to-day operations are running smoothly, and oversee the goals and achievements of departments, in this stage you should get a good wage, be familiar with the strategies of your industry.

4. Senior or executive-level
In this type of position, you’ll set overall goals for your organization, set policies and procedures and communicate with stakeholders. You should have significant networking and proven skills in your industry.

The business life cycle is the progression of a business in phases over time; its most commonly divided into four stages.

The most risky phase, where the company begins its operations, sales are low and slowly increasing, number of employees is low, career levels are limited, no sharp limits between departments, systems and procedures are weak and able to be changed many times, business focus on marketing.

In this phase sales increase rapidly, business passes the break-even point and starts to get profit, work load increases hugely, boundaries appear between departments, all profits are allocated to reinvestment and increasing assets (production lines, distribution centers,… ).

Sales volume is high, but not increasing due to market saturation, profit is high, and business has a chance to care about human resources and focus on invention and using new technologies to reposition itself in the market and extend its life cycle, in this phase business often generate new opportunities for new and current employees.

Due to global market changes, competitors strength, product substitution, or any other reasons; business loss its competitive advantages, sales decrease rapidly, profits decline, and finally business accept the failure and exit market.

For the Entry-Level:
Join a company in its early maturity phase: Due to the high volume of work, variety of products, and stable systems, you'll focus on details, gain valuable process experience, and find promotion opportunities to the Intermediate-Level. Launch-phase companies offer little technical experience, and Growth-phase opportunities, despite the intense workload, are scarce.

For the Intermediate-Level:
Stick with your mature company for three years: Build solid financial security and managerial skills. In the fourth year, consider a jump to a Launch-phase company at the Mid or Senior Level. Your combined technical and managerial experience is perfect for this dynamic phase. You'll gain invaluable proximity to leaders and learn directly from them, contributing to the company's growth, an opportunity rarely available in mature companies.

For the Senior Level:
Leverage your expertise: With your combined technical, managerial, strong leadership skills, and solid network, consider starting your own business.