Indonesia’s Mid-Level Talent Crisis: Where Your "Future VP" is Already a CEO
So, you’re a foreign company, fresh off the boat, ready to plant your flag in Indonesia’s booming economy. Bright-eyed and optimistic, you gather your HR team and utter the fateful words: “Let’s build a solid mid-management team.” A noble goal. A reasonable expectation. A plan destined for complete and utter failure.
Your team, diligently following the global playbook, drafts job descriptions that would make perfect sense anywhere else:
15–20 years of experience,
Solid leadership skills,
A track record of steady career progression,
A reasonable salary expectation.
And just like that, you’ve accidentally described a regional CEO.
That’s right. Your "mid-level hire" in Indonesia isn’t sitting in a cubicle waiting for your recruiter’s email. They’re on a panel at a leadership summit, they’ve got a personal assistant scheduling their golf meetings, and their LinkedIn profile reads “Chief Visionary Officer of Strategic Synergies.”
Meanwhile, your HR team is left in disarray, caught between two extremes: overpromoted "Directors" who aren’t actually sure how they got there and underqualified hopefuls who look good on paper but struggle to answer, “Tell me about a time you managed a team.”
Welcome to Indonesia, where career progression moves at lightning speed, where "Director" can mean everything and nothing at once, and where your recruitment strategy just became a full-blown existential crisis.
The Great Indonesian Talent Inflation: Why Everyone is a ‘Director’
In developed economies like Singapore, the US, or Germany, career progression is a long, noble struggle. You graduate, spend the next two decades proving yourself, sit through mind-numbing performance reviews, and finally you earn a senior management title. The system makes sense.
But in Indonesia? That system was set on fire a while ago.
Here, the corporate world has a high-speed elevator with no floor buttons. It only goes up, and it doesn’t care if you’re ready or not.
Here’s how it plays out in real time:
You’re five years into your career, still figuring out Excel shortcuts.
Your boss quits. Why? Because someone else just offered them double their salary and a fancier title.
Your company panics. They can’t afford a proper replacement, and hiring from outside is impossible because everyone else is also leaving for better pay.
So, YOU get promoted. "Congratulations, you’re a Senior Manager now!"
Give it three more years, and guess what? "Director" it is!
This isn’t necessarily because everyone is a prodigy (though, let’s give credit where it’s due). It’s because companies have no choice. The war for talent is ruthless, and in a country growing at breakneck speed, you either promote quickly, or you lose people even faster.
Foreign companies? They waltz in expecting to hire a mid-level manager with 15 years of experience, not realizing that anyone with that much experience is already a CEO, a regional VP, or semi-retired in Bali.
So instead, they’re left choosing between a 7-year-experience “Director” or a candidate asking for a salary higher than their own regional CEO.
The C-Suite Mirage: When Your Middle Manager Has No Business Being a ‘Chief’
Now, you might be thinking, “Okay, fine. If everyone’s a Director or C-Suite by 35, they must be incredibly, exceptionally good, right?”
Not always. In fact, sometimes not even close.
See, Indonesia’s talent market has created an entire generation of accidental executives. These are professionals who, in any other country, would still be trapped in mid-level purgatory, triple-checking their boss’s slides at 2 AM. But here? They’re "Chiefs" now.
Check LinkedIn and you’ll find hundreds of ‘visionary leaders’ who became a Director before figuring out how to delegate their own emails. These are people who might still be refining their own leadership skills, yet expect to manage 100+ people and have their own executive assistant.
It’s not their fault; it’s the system. Companies don’t have the luxury of time to let people “earn” their stripes. Promotions happen because they must, not because someone sat through a decade of grueling leadership development courses. This creates a strange hierarchy:
Some Directors are real leaders.
Some Directors are just senior employees with a fancier title.
And some Directors… well, they should still be in entry-level training sessions.
Now, imagine you’re a foreign company trying to hire a mid-level leader. You’re either:
Interviewing a "Director" with 7 years of experience who expects a C-level salary, or
Interviewing a "Director" who, under normal circumstances, would be an entry-level manager in a structured global organization.
See the problem? Your mid-level hiring strategy just imploded.
How Foreign Companies Keep Losing This Game
Foreign companies entering Indonesia arrive with big plans, big budgets, and absolutely no clue. They come armed with global hiring standards, expecting the market to comply, only to find themselves trapped in an endless cycle of confusion, sticker shock, and desperate compromises.
And yet, despite repeated failures, they fall into the same traps over and over again.
Trap #1: Expecting Mid-Level Employees to Exist
You want a mid-level manager with 15–20 years of experience? Great! You have two options: hire a unicorn or summon one from the spirit world. Because in Indonesia, if someone has lasted 15+ years in their career and isn’t in the C-suite yet, they’ve probably quit corporate life to start a fried chicken franchise.
Mid-level talent? Vaporized by fast promotions and relentless poaching. If they’re even halfway competent, they’ve already been accelerated into senior management.
Trap #2: Misaligned Salary Expectations
Your regional HQ, sitting comfortably in Singapore, has a brilliant strategy: “Since Indonesia has a lower cost of living, we’ll pay 30% less for the same role!”
Meanwhile, the "Director" you’re trying to hire in Jakarta wants $150,000 USD+ because that’s the market rate… and also because their cousin’s startup just raised $5 million and is hiring at double that.
Trap #3: Assuming Titles Equal Competency
"Oh, they’re a Director? Must be highly experienced!"
Sure, just like how everyone on Instagram is a ‘Thought Leader’ and ‘Serial Entrepreneur.’
In reality, some Directors here have never led a team, never managed a crisis, and have only held the title for six months before jumping to a new company for a pay bump. But they have ‘Chief’ in their email signature at least, so what could go wrong?
So, What Should Foreign Companies Do Instead?
If you’re a foreign company entering Indonesia, step one is accepting that your usual hiring playbook is now as useful as a waterproof teabag. The companies that actually win here are the ones that realize Indonesia plays by its own rules and adjust accordingly.
Here’s how you avoid wasting six months and an eye-watering recruitment budget on a hiring strategy that was doomed from the start.
1. Rethink What “Mid-Level” Actually Means Here
Still searching for that perfect mid-level candidate with 15+ years of experience? That person is already VP of a regional conglomerate, managing a P&L bigger than your company’s entire SEA operations.
If you need a “mid-level” leader, lower your expectations and develop talent instead. That means hiring someone with 8-10 years of experience and actually investing in them rather than waiting for an imaginary battle-hardened, yet affordable, mid-level executive to show up.
2. Calibrate Salary Expectations Properly
Global HQ logic: “We’ll pay an Indonesian mid-manager 30% less than in Singapore.”
Indonesian reality: “This ‘mid-manager’ is technically a ‘Director’ now and wants 50% more than your Singapore budget.”
Solution? Deep local salary benchmarking. Just because someone was a Director in Jakarta doesn’t mean they should be paid like one in London.
3. Stop Falling for Title Inflation
Your candidate’s CV says "Director." That could mean seasoned executive or just an ambitious person with five years of experience who lucked out in the promotion lottery.
Test for actual competency, don’t just hire based on titles.
4. Build Instead of Buy
Indonesia’s talent pipeline is still catching up with demand. Instead of endlessly searching for unicorns, invest in leadership development and mentorship programs.
5. Use a Hybrid Leadership Model
Want to bridge the skills gap? Pair promising local talent with experienced regional mentors. Some companies bring in expats, not to take over, but to help shape future leaders who will actually stay and grow within the company.
Poaching a ‘Director’ from another company is really just buying a short-term solution with an expiration date of 18 months.
If Indonesia’s hiring market feels like a corporate version of musical chairs, that’s because it is. The pace is breakneck, the promotions are rapid, and just when you think you’ve figured it out, the talent pool reshuffles itself again.
The biggest takeaway? There is no "normal" hiring strategy here.
You can’t just apply the Singaporean, European, or American playbook and expect it to work. What takes 20 years elsewhere happens in 10 here, and if you insist on waiting for that perfect mid-level hire, you’ll be left with two choices:
A “Director” with 7 years of experience who thinks they should be making regional-CEO money.
An actually competent mid-level manager… who just accepted a C-suite role at a competitor.
So, reset your expectations, embrace the chaos, and start thinking long-term. Companies that adapt will thrive, and those that don’t will be left wondering why their entire leadership team just got poached by an e-commerce startup.
And next time you think you’ve finally found your ideal mid-level hire, remember: they’re probably already a CEO somewhere.