<div class='bc_element' id='bc_element1' style='width:auto;padding:5px;max-height:100%;'><span>Early in a career, progress is usually easy to recognize. You learn the job, take on more responsibility and move into a better-paid position. After several years, the signals become less clear. Your workload grows, colleagues rely on you and your performance reviews remain positive, but the next step keeps moving further away. Another year of experience does not necessarily bring a different kind of opportunity. Research featured in <a href="https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/most-careers-stall-at-mid-level-no-matter-how-long-people-work?utm_source=https://tote.work">Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge</a> puts that experience into perspective. Drawing on a database of more than 150 million resumes, researchers found that careers commonly plateau within 15 to 20 years. The finding challenges the assumption that staying in the workforce longer will eventually carry most people into senior leadership. It describes a broad pattern, rather than a deadline for an individual’s career. For professionals, the useful question is whether their experience is still expanding their options. For employers, it is whether capable employees have a credible path to greater responsibility. Both questions require a closer look at the work behind someone’s title. <b>Years of Experience Do Not Tell the Whole Story </b> The underlying working paper, <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w34292?utm_source=https://tote.work">Assessing Career Attainment via a Non-Wage Measure</a>, proposes a way to compare career progression beyond earnings. Its measure of seniority reflects how many years the median worker takes to reach a particular title within the same industry and company-size category. This is different from counting how long someone has worked or how long they have stayed with one employer. The researchers find that the measure is positively associated with wages and educational attainment, and helps assess moves between sectors with different pay structures. That distinction matters when evaluating your own progress. A higher salary may make your current position worthwhile without changing its responsibilities. A move to a smaller organization may offer broader authority even if the title sounds less impressive. A specialist may deepen expertise and earn more without pursuing a management role. Each deserves to be assessed against what the person wants from their career. Review what has changed in your work over the past two years. Consider the decisions you make, the problems you handle and the consequences of your recommendations. A marketing professional who now chooses campaign priorities and manages a budget has expanded their responsibility. Someone producing more campaigns under the same direction has increased their workload. Both contributions have value, but they provide different evidence when seeking a promotion. The same review applies to learning. Completing a course establishes that you have undertaken training. Applying it to a difficult assignment demonstrates something further. If you learned a new analytics method, identify the question it helped you answer. If you adopted an AI tool, explain how you checked the output and what improved. This makes development easier to assess than a growing list of software names. A period of stability also deserves an honest interpretation. You may prefer work that offers predictable hours, strong compensation or room for responsibilities outside the workplace. The problem arises when you want advancement but have no clear understanding of what would make it possible. <b>Find Out What the Next Step Actually Requires </b> Begin with a specific destination. “I want to grow” leaves too much open to interpretation. Leading a team, becoming a senior specialist, owning a larger client account and moving into another function each require different experience. Choose the responsibilities you want in your next role, then examine what skills and experience an employer would want before entrusting it to you. Bring that question to your manager. Ask what distinguishes someone performing well in your current role from someone ready for the next level. Request examples of decisions, assignments and results that demonstrate readiness. If the answer is “more leadership,” clarify what that means in practice: coordinating a project, developing a colleague, resolving stakeholder disagreements or taking responsibility for a budget. Agree on an assignment and a review date. For example, an analyst seeking greater responsibility might lead a reporting redesign, coordinate requirements with two departments and present recommendations to the decision-maker. Establish the authority, support and recognition attached to that work before beginning. Additional duties need a clear purpose, especially when they are being presented as preparation for advancement. Separate readiness from availability. A manager may believe you are prepared while having no approved position or budget to offer. Ask directly whether the next step exists, who approves it and what would trigger the decision. That information helps you decide whether to pursue an internal opening, explore another employer or remain in the role for reasons you value. Evaluate external opportunities with the same care. Ask what you will own, which decisions require approval and how success will be assessed. A more impressive title does little for your development if the actual assignment repeats work you have already mastered. Equally, a lateral move may be worthwhile when it provides experience you need and a clearer route toward your chosen role. Employers should make these distinctions explicit. Employees need to know whether a development conversation concerns a possible promotion, preparation for a future vacancy or growth within their existing position. Clear expectations allow people to make informed choices and prevent repeated promises from substituting for a decision. <b>WorkTote Takeaway </b> A career is more than a list of titles and employment dates. It’s a record of how your responsibilities, skills and contributions have evolved. At WorkTote, we bring your experience, projects, skills and tools together in your Career Profile to help you show employers how you’ve grown and what you’re prepared to take on next. Use your Profile to make that progress visible. Show how you’ve moved from executing assigned tasks to coordinating projects, shaping recommendations or owning outcomes. Highlight relevant training and explain how you’ve applied what you learned. Even when your title hasn’t changed, these examples can reveal meaningful growth that a traditional resume might miss. Our Career Trajectory feature provides personalized career recommendations to help you consider your next step. Use them alongside your own goals and conversations with managers or mentors to identify the experience you need to build. If you want to lead a team, for example, look for opportunities to develop colleagues and coordinate delivery, then document what you learned and contributed. For employers, this fuller picture provides a stronger starting point for discussing the responsibilities a candidate has handled and the decisions they are ready to make. For you, maintaining that record offers a practical way to assess your progress: What new skills have you developed? What responsibilities have you taken on? What evidence demonstrates that you’re ready for more? There is no guaranteed formula for earning a promotion. You can, however, make a deliberate decision about what comes next. Define the work you want to do, understand what it requires and establish whether your current organization offers a realistic path toward it. Review that path at an agreed point rather than allowing another year to pass on the same assumptions. <i><b>Sources </b> <b>Harvard Business School, Working Knowledge</b>: <a href="https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/most-careers-stall-at-mid-level-no-matter-how-long-people-work?utm_source=https://tote.work">Most Careers Stall at Mid-Level, No Matter How Long People Work</a>, by Ana Elena Azpúrua, September 3, 2026. <b>National Bureau of Economic Research:</b> <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w34292?utm_source=https://tote.work">Assessing Career Attainment via a Non-Wage Measure</a>, Working Paper No. 34292, September 2025, by Natee Amornsiripanitch, Paul Gompers, George Hu, Will Levinson, Vladimir Mukharlyamov and Sachin Srivastava</i><span></div>