Operations Manager

Career Area: Business Management and Operations

Occupation Group: Operations 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 Operations Manager earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $70,465

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $73,058

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Manages daily operations and activities for a company or organization. Supervises staff, oversee projects and daily work activities. May have responsibility for managing supplies and materials, budgets or customer relations; may serve as liaison to senior management.

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:

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 Operations Manager 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.
• Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
• Microsoft Excel: Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Operations Management: Operations management is an area of management concerned with designing and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services.
• Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.
• 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.
• 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.
• Staff Management: Working experience with the management of subordinates in an organization.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Operations Manager that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Customer Contact: Experience working with business processes and technologies that are designed to engage customers and facilitate communication by a variety of channels.
• Performance Management: Performance management (PM) includes activities which ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner.
• Employee Relations: Industrial relations is a multidisciplinary field that studies the employment relationship.
• Employee Training: Employee Training is to improve current or future employee performance by increasing an employee's ability to perform through learning, usually by changing the employee's attitude or increasing his or her skills and knowledge.
• Employee Engagement: Employee engagement is a property of the relationship between an organization and its employees.

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.

Common Job Titles

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

• Operations Manager
• Operations Manager - Station
• Assistant Operations Manager
• Regional Operations Manager
• Business Operations Manager

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Director of Operations
• General Manager
• Vice President (General)