We've spent some time encouraging you guys to go into the business field, and even some time outlining the main fields of business that people go into (check out our resource on marketing, finance, hospitality, and management for more info). But, we haven't really talked about what exactly your role can be within a business if you decide that's what you want to do. The thing about businesses is that they exist in pretty much every size and capacity imaginable -- there are one-man small business operations as well as corporations that have hundreds of thousands of employees.
Businesses follow an organizational structure, which according to the Society for Human Resource Management, "aligns and relates parts of an organization, so it can achieve its maximum performance." In other words, organizational structure is the chain of command in a business. Depending on the number of people and amount of resources available to a business, those in charge will continuously try to optimize the organizational structure so that the business is operating as efficiently as possible. Essentially, there will always be someone to answer to, and this ensures security and productivity for both the employee and the employer.
I'm using a very large corporation as my example scenario, just so you can get an idea of as many positions as possible. The roles I'm going to describe below are a general selection, and not every business will see the need to have someone in every single role. There are some that you'll see that you've probably heard of a lot, and maybe some that you have never heard of, so this blog post could help you figure out what direction you want to go in yourself one day!
Let's start from the top:
Board of Directors: The board is the highest on the chain of command. They have the ultimate say on anything regarding the business, and they have to sign their approval on major decisions like strategy or major financial decisions because the business's future is at stake.
C-Suite: The C-Suite refers to the group of executives known as Chief __ Officers. The one that runs the company and is seen as the face of it is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who reports directly to the Board of Directors. Within the C-Suite, but still under the CEO, there are more specialized roles such as:
Chief Operating Officer (COO) - second in chain of executive command after CEO, oversees operations and daily administrative functions of the business
Chief Information Officer (CIO) - oversees information technology functions
Chief Financial Officer (CFO) - oversees financial decisions (tracking cash flow, analyzing financial strengths and weaknesses, etc)
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) - oversees all marketing functions (overseeing strategy based on consumer trends, digital and traditional marketing)
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) - oversees Research & Development within a company and other technology functions
President: The President of a company is also second-in-command to the CEO. For this reason, President and COO are typically interchangeable and companies won't have both because they oversee a lot of the same day-to-day functions and general administrative operations tasks.
Vice Presidents: This one is a bit tricky because there are a multitude of large companies with MANY Vice Presidents. They include Executive Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, and Vice Presidents of certain divisions in a company. It's definitely confusing, but Vice Presidents are typically chosen because they have an expertise in an area such as marketing. There are many companies that don't have a President, in which case Vice Presidents have the authority to report directly to C-Suite executives. So in a really big company, a Chief Marketing Officer might oversee all marketing functions for the entire company as a whole, while there might also be a Vice President of Marketing at each branch of the company that reports directly to the CMO.
Directors: As I go down this list, you'll see that in the giant company scenario, the organizational structure is simply a matter of designating multiple levels of management in each function of the company. Directors typically report to Vice Presidents, so continuing the example from above, the Director of Marketing and Director of Advertising might discuss strategy with the Vice President of Marketing.
Managers: Managers are a common position that most businesses have because they typically oversee an immediate group of employees within a department, or the department itself. They report to Directors.
Supervisors: Supervisors are not so common, and might just be an unofficial role that someone assumes in a business. For instance, a supervisor might just be in charge of a project team for a specific project, but there are official job positions of supervisors as well that would oversee a smaller group of people within the department of the manager.
General Employees: These are the positions that are considered "entry-level" and where you typically start when you are working your way up in a company. They are lowest on the chain of command and perform the actual daily tasks and functions of the company.
Hopefully this post gave you some clarity on the wide range of positions you can work in for a company!