LinkedIn Study Finds IT Pros Promoted at Beginning of Quarter

Social-networking Website LinkedIn, which focuses primarily
on business connections, has leveraged data from its 90 million users to reveal
some things of interest to pretty much every employee: promotions.

More specifically, LinkedIn’s data reveals that the most
popular month for a promotion continues to be January — although that’s changing.
During the 1990s, some 22 percent of promotions occurred that month. In the
past decade, however, that number has fallen to 16 percent — and more promotions
are apparently taking place throughout the balance of the year.

"The data confirms that January is indeed the most popular
month for promotions," Monica Rogati, LinkedIn’s senior data scientist, wrote in a Jan. 26 posting on the network’s
official blog. "However, we do see a surprising phenomenon: promotions are
starting to spread more throughout the year."

Rogati goes on to suggest that Millennials — i.e.,
professionals born in the 1980s and 1990s — could be responsible for a lot of
this evening-out of promotions throughout the calendar year. There are several
potential factors at work, including Millennials’ potential
"overrepresentation" in industries with fast promotion tracks, and quicker
cycling among more junior positions.

For more, read the eWeek article: IT Pros’ Big Promotions on Quarterly Pattern: LinkedIn.