"healthcare," "customer service," and "oversight" aren't the only skills we found directors list on their resumes. In fact, there's a whole list of director responsibilities that we found, including:
See the full list of director skills.
After discovering the most helpful skills, we moved onto what kind of education might be helpful in becoming a director. We found that 63.8% of directors have graduated with a bachelor's degree and 17.8% of people in this position have earned their master's degrees. While most directors have a college degree, you may find it's also true that generally it's possible to be successful in this career with only a high school degree. In fact, our research shows that one out of every eight directors were not college graduates.
Those directors who do attend college, typically earn either business degrees or psychology degrees. Less commonly earned degrees for directors include communication degrees or accounting degrees.
Once you're ready to become a director, you should explore the companies that typically hire directors. According to director resumes that we searched through, directors are hired the most by Pwc, KPMG, and Anthem. Currently, Pwc has 472 director job openings, while there are 287 at KPMG and 101 at Anthem.
But if you're interested in companies where you might earn a high salary, directors tend to earn the biggest salaries at Mayo Clinic, ICE Mortgage Technology, and Apple. Take Mayo Clinic for example. The median director salary is $235,290. At ICE Mortgage Technology, directors earn an average of $225,540, while the average at Apple is $220,883. You should take into consideration how difficult it might be to secure a job with one of these companies.
View more details on director salaries across the United States.
Some other companies you might be interested in as a director include Bank of America, Citi, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. These three companies were found to hire the most directors from the top 100 U.S. educational institutions.
The industries that directors fulfill the most roles in are the professional and finance industries. But the highest director annual salary is in the finance industry, averaging $155,819. In the professional industry they make $134,650 and average about $129,923 in the manufacturing industry. In conclusion, directors who work in the finance industry earn a 15.5% higher salary than directors in the government industry.