From insurance broker to CEO. It’s certainly possible, but what are your chances of becoming a head honcho one day? And how much could you earn when you get there?
According to a recently released survey by The CEO Institute and RMIT, you’re most likely to take the top job if you’re in the 45-54-year-old age bracket. 40% of CEOs were within this age range, followed by 55-64 (31%), 35-44 (21%), 25-34 (4%) and 65-80 (4%).
If you’re a woman, however, then it looks like your chances of sitting in the CEO seat are slim – only 17% of those CEOs surveyed were women, with men accounting for 83% of company heads.
When it came to tenure, 61% of respondents had been in the CEO position for less than 10 years – leading the report’s authors to suggest that it takes somewhere in the order of 20-30 years to reach CEO.
If you're working your way up the career ladder, the report found that average tenure in each of your jobs prior to reaching CEO will be 4.4 years.
Education seems to play a role in reaching the top job, with 47% of respondents having completed a bachelors degree, and 34% a masters or higher qualification.
So how much can you expect to earn if you reach the top job? The study found that the total annual salary packages reported, including wages, superannuation, bonuses and benefits, broke down as follows:
Only 1% received more than $1m, 1% received between $750,000 and $1 million and 4% earned less than $100,000.
“We often see sensational reports about Australia’s high-flying CEOs and their multi-million dollar packages and lavish share options,” said Institute chairman and founder Ken Gunn, “but the big corporations concerned account for a tiny 0.1% of Australian businesses.”
52% of CEO respondents indicated that their remuneration was linked to company performance, commonly involving a combination of measures including EBITDA, sales growth and profit margin.
The prevalence of performance incentive packages varied directly with the level of salary – from 7% for those receiving less than $100,000 to 42% in the $100,001-$200,000 bracket, and an average of 86% across the three higher brackets between $500,000-$1m-plus. Public companies were much more likely to structure packages this way than privately held businesses.
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