If you are looking to boost your career and get a promotion, January is the best month of the year in many countries to get it.

An analysis of data on the professional networking site LinkedIn showed January, June and July are the top months for professionals to move up the corporate ladder within their companies in the US.

January is also a good month for promotions in India, along with April, July and October, and in France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Britain.

LinkedIn, which has 90 million members worldwide, speculated that one reason why January is so popular for career advancement is that is coincides with the financial year.

"We looked at 12 countries, including the US," said Krista Canfield, a spokeswoman for LinkedIn. "If you look at India's data we also see a spike in April and it turns out that April is when India's fiscal year is."

Another theory is that it is easier for companies to deal with promotions after the winter or summer holidays.

"September comes up as a really good time for people in France to go and try for a promotion, besides January, which is also a good month," she added.

Promotions were also more common in September in Spain.

LinkedIn analyzed nearly 3 million intra-company job promotions from data on its website from January 1990 to December 2010. Although January is still the most popular month, the company noticed that from about the year 2000 more promotions started occurring during other times of the year.

"It was becoming less likely that you would only get promoted in January and more likely you would get promoted during other months of the years," Canfield explained.

She attributes the shift to millennials, people born in the 1980s, who have entered the workforce.

"It could be that this newer generation is a bit more demanding," she explained, adding that if they don't get the desired promotion they simply leave the company.

"Just in terms of people's career paths, now you don't see those lifers ... who have a career at one company. You're seeing people switch jobs a lot more frequently."

(Read by Renee Haines. Renee Haines is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)