Chief of Staff

Career Area: Business Management and Operations

Occupation Group: General Managers

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Chief of Staff earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $93,817

*The salaries depicted here are representative of the range of salaries posted in job listings over the past year. Living wage in North Carolina is $30,000.

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $100,730

*The salaries depicted here are representative of the range of salaries posted in job listings over the past year. Living wage in North Carolina is $30,000.

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Plans and directs all administrative, financial, and operational activities for the organization's President, CEO or other executive. Organizes and prioritizes critical issues and required information for the executive to facilitate efficient decision making. Acts as a point of contact or gatekeeper between top management and other stakeholders. Provides oversight and guidance to projects of high importance. May act as an advisor to the chief executive, or responsible for the management of executive support staff. Develops major goals to support broad functional objectives. Approves policies developed within various sub-functions and departments.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

LocationGrowth
North Carolina77+9%
Nationwide2922+6.9%

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Chief of Staff is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

  • Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
  • Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
  • Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
  • Organizational Skills: Experience with a systematic process of structuring, integrating, co-ordinating task goals, and activities to resources in order to attain objectives.
  • Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

  • Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
  • Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.
  • Staff Management: Working experience with the management of subordinates in an organization.
  • Strategic Planning: Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy.
  • Scheduling: Working experience making schedules, which are basic time-management tools, consisting of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place withing an organization.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Chief of Staff that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

  • Employee Engagement: Employee engagement is a property of the relationship between an organization and its employees.
  • Fundraising: Fundraising or fund raising (also known as development) is the process of gathering voluntary contributions of money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies (see also crowd funding).
  • Note Taking: Note-taking (sometimes written as notetaking or note taking) is the practice of recording information captured from another source.
  • Executive Presence: Ability to demonstrate leadership in a room through demeanor, body language, tone of voice, and emotional resilience.

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:

  • Strategic Communications: Strategic communication can mean either communicating a concept, a process, or data that satisfies a long term strategic goal of an organization by allowing facilitation of advanced planning, or communicating over long distances usually using international telecommunications or dedicated global network assets to coordinate actions and activities of operationally significant commercial, non-commercial and military business or combat and logistic subunits.
  • Investor Relations: Investor Relations (IR) is a strategic management responsibility that is capable of integrating finance, communication, marketing and securities law compliance to enable the most effective two-way communication between a company, the financial community, and other constituencies, which ultimately contributes to a company's securities achieving fair valuation.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Experience Required%
0 to 2 years11%
3 to 5 years38%
6 to 8 years25%

Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.

Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

  • Chief Of Staff
  • Strategy Advancement Advisor - Chief Of Staff
  • Area Chief Of Staff
  • Chief Of Staff - Microsoft Cloud Data Science
  • Chief Of Staff To This

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