What Is A Career Progression Framework
To provide your employees with thoughtful and strategic career and professional development, you first need to build a great career progression framework.
Simply put, a career progression framework supports their long-term development in a structured way. It acts as an occupational roadmap for the employee, with each new title bringing them a step closer to their ideal position.
How To Map Out Your Career Path With Examples
- A career path is essentially a roadmap for your personal and professional development.
- Career paths dont always follow a straight line.
- Your career path is not set in stone. You can change it at any point based on your needs and experiences.
It always comes out of nowhere. Youre doing something innocent like getting coffee or walking the dog and the unwanted thought suddenly pops into your head: Where the duck is my career going?
Totally weird that your brain has autocorrect
Odd brain quirks aside, this particular thought isnt an uncommon one to have, especially if youre newly graduated or youve been working the same dead-end job for the last few years. When your career seems to come to a complete standstill, it can be difficult to know what your next step should be.
Does this sound depressingly familiar? If so, its time to seriously consider mapping out your career path.
What Is A Career Path Defining The Basics
A career path is essentially a series of titles an employee will aim to hold at a specific organization, or within a specific industry, to reach their highest professional potential. In a career development study published by Robert L. Laud and Matthew Johnson, one thing is clear: true fulfillment in ones career can vary widely from one person to the next.
They assert that you may see individuals who are quite content in their roles but have had little to no career progression, which is the traditional marker of success. Conversely, it is possible to find high-level executives who have held multiple roles and achieved objective success in their career development but are deeply unsatisfied in their roles for one reason or another.
Career pathing is looking at the individual passions, motivators, and ideal job conditions to craft a one-of-a-kind path for them. For example, someone might be a top performer in their current role but wouldnt be happy moving into a management position because they do not enjoy the tasks managers take on.
Objective success in ones career path points to a need for upward mobility, but for some, having a fulfilling career path may mean moving laterally or cross-departmentally as opposed to moving straight upward into management.
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How To Create A Realistic And Enjoyable Career Path For Your Team Members
As a leader, you want to support your team members career growth.
Some team members will have a clear picture of their career trajectory, but others will be less sure. And for those employees, its important for you, as a manager, to help them determine where they want to go in their careerand how to get there.
Career Path: What Is It And How To Find Yours

If you want to move up on the career ladder either within your current workplace or through changing careers completely and taking a different route, it can be hard to get things moving. Especially, when you are not even sure how an ideal career path looks for you.
Lets rectify that. In this post, youll learn how to figure out a solid career progression plan for yourself, and more importantly start acting on it!
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What Are Your Career Aspirations
Career aspirations refer to those long-term career goals, plans, and/or dreams that are far away in the future rather than the short-term ones in the present.
Employers often ask about your future career aspirations to get to know you and understand your career goals and occupational aspirations.
Your occupational aspirations get to define your short-term career choices. In the process of your career development, your education and career choices should ideally reflect what you want your career to become in the longer term.
Network To Gain Visibility
Never stop networking! Its seriously one of the single-best things you can do for your career. Not only can networking broaden your job opportunities outside of your company, it can help you make a powerful lateral move to a different department. By networking with people outside of your department, you can learn about different positions within the company and get first-hand knowledge of what those positions entail. And if you make a good impression, you could give yourself a big advantage if/when you decide to apply for the position.
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What Is A Career Definition Paths And Examples
Choosing a career can help you select the right education and skills you need to obtain to support that career. Making careful and well-thought-out decisions regarding your career can increase your chance of success. Choosing the right career can take time and research. In this article, we explore in-depth what a career is, share different kinds of career paths, plus offer some tips to help you find the right career.
Hr Careers Within The Solution Provider Profile
These include roles within the Global Centers of Excellence or the Learning & Development teams. Positions that you can take on can be L& D specialist, Employee Relation Specialist, Data Administrator, or Facilitator.
A professional in a Solution Provider role is responsible for designing HR practices that address the needs of the business in a sound, well-considered, and practical way. They should be able to enable others to drive HR solutions across the business at scale. To succeed in a Solution Providers role, you need to have:
- Place relevant HR trends in the business context
- Optimize technology design and build a digital culture
- Apply knowledge to HR in a meaningful way to drive business impact .
HRBP |
Organizational Development Specialist
As an Organizational Development specialist, you can develop to become an OD Manager and eventually an OD Head. The OD specialist ensures continuous organizational improvements for all departments. Their key responsibilities include:
- Developing and implementing OD programs to align the workforce with key business strategies and goals
- Optimizing organizational effectiveness through timely and appropriate interventions
- Coaching and consulting teams and individuals on solving organizational challenges.
Organizational Development Manager
Key responsibilities of the OD Manager are:
HR Manager
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What Is The Interviewer Really Asking
Interviewers will often ask about your career aspirations for the following reasons.
- To determine your suitability for the job and how feasible your goals align with theirs.
- To resolve if youre a good fit, your interviewer could also ask why you desire to work at the organization or why you picked interest in the job.
- They want to detect how long you plan on working with their company as well as how devoted you can be to your job.
- They further want to determine if the post you are applying for matches or relates to your long term career strategy.
The interviewer doesnt demand that you engage for a lifetime in the organization and eventually get into a leadership position they just dont want you to exhaust resources on your training path to success if you leave after a short while.
Examples Of Opportunistic Career Paths
An opportunistic career path is one that isnt what you set out to do but fell into accidentally and found it was more to your liking. Say you have always felt you wanted to be a nurse. You go through all the training and become a RN. On weekends, you volunteer at a local hospice, spending time not as a nurse, but talking with patients and family members. You find you have the ability to calm fears and help people accept difficult situations. You start thinking that becoming a counselor is something that will be more fulfilling so you go back to school and take classes in counseling and enter that field.
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It Will Boost Employee Retention
In a recent survey by CV-Library and Robert Walters, soft benefits like a clear progression plan and development/training courses were ranked highly as key ways to persuade employees to remain in their current roles.While the goal of a career progression framework is to help employees advance, offering a progression plan and development opportunities can help them stay within the company, too.
Additional Considerations To Make When Drafting Your Career Path

- You define and decide on your career goals. Your manager may be tempted to push you in a certain direction, especially if they are only comfortable with the specifics of one career path. However, you can and should locate the resources you need to do what you want with your career development.
- Take ownership of your career path. You can seek out mentorship, training, job shadowing opportunities, and more but its you alone who can make the difference in your career path. If you arent actively finding new ways to learn skills and improve, no one will do it for you. You cant expect your manager to oversee your career development these are actions you must take accountability for implementing.
- Its never too late. Those who have been in their roles for a longer period may often feel as though its too late, for a more radical shift like a cross-departmental shift or trying a new industry. Its never too late to chase the goals you want to chase. These mental barriers can feel very real, but they are just that they are self-limiting beliefs that only you have the power to destroy.
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Fill In Position Profiles
After youve mapped out the job positions you need to reach your dream job, fill out the necessary skills, experience, training, and certifications youll need to achieve each step in your career. If youre in a competitive field, you may want to consider listing a few additional skills that may increase your chances of advancing quickly.
For example, lets say that youre filling in a position profile for an assistant director of human resources. This is what it might look like:
Assistant Director of Human Resources
Minimum Qualifications:
- Masters degree in Human Resources
- Experience with human resource information system
- SHRM certification
Creating Your Career Path
After youve explored your desires, current performance, opportunities within your company, and more with your manager, youll want to make a tangible map of where you plan to go next. Your manager may want to help, or you can do this on your own.
Essentially, pick a job role youd like to move into next. Then, use your companys internal resources and managers advice as to what steps, training, or development you need to be considered for that role. Create a loose but still realistic timeline of when and how you will take the next steps toward your next title. You can share this with your manager so they know your goals and can help you take the necessary steps forward as needed.
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Determine A Starting Point
The first step in the process of creating a career map is determining an initial entry position. This is often the role most new hires take when joining a company and has few requirements. The starting point acts as the basis for the whole map. From it branches various possibilities available to those on a given career progression route.
Ask The Right Questions
Sometimes, understanding the different career paths available to them can help your team members gain clarity on the direction theyd like to head. But sometimes, all the options can feel overwhelmingand they may have no idea where theyd like to go in their career.
In that situation, asking the right questions can help your employee get to the root of what they want from their careerand what path they need to take to get there.
Starting with open-ended questions about how employees see themselves, their strengths, goals, and how a job integrates with their personal goals such as family, hobbies, and volunteering is a good start, says Diane Gayeski, PhD, Professor of Strategic Communications at Ithaca College and principal of consulting firm Gayeski Analytics.
The right questions will depend on the employee and where they are in the career, but some questions that could help your employee get a broader understanding of what theyd like their career to look like in the long-term include:
These kinds of questions will give you and your team valuable insights on what their ideal careers looks likeinsights you can use to help them define a career trajectory that feels true to them.
Or maybe your team member shares that having time to pursue their passions outside of work is more important to them than climbing the corporate ladderwhich would help you eliminate more demanding roles from their ideal career path.
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Assess Your Current Skill Set
Make a list of your current skills, certifications and areas of expertise. You can also ask coworkers and colleagues for feedback about your technical, interpersonal and people management skills. This evaluation can help you find careers that match your experience.
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How Do I Use My Portfolio To Land The Roles I Want
Its key to be clear about how your portfolio enables you to be proactive, to learn, and to contribute in ways that a traditional career path would not. I call this your portfolio narrative.
Employers are hungry to hire talent with non-traditional backgrounds, but they often need help. Your portfolio narrative is the link it is the story you tell to make connections between the skills people are hiring for and the skills you have developed through the breadth of your experience.
For example, when I was a hiking and biking guide, some people said my career looked frivolous . What they didnt see was that as a guide, not only was I usually working 18-hour days first up and last to bed but also every day I was learning how to project manage, accommodate differences, balance budgets, build teams, ensure safety, forge lifetime friendships, and spark joy. I didnt have a fancy title or earn very much, but I got a practical mini-MBA on the trail and perspective that would shape the rest of my life.
Often, I had to fill in these gaps for others. Doing this, and being able to explain why my experience was valuable in this way, didnt just shape my portfolio. It helped me stand out from other candidates when I applied for jobs.
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Get Mentorship Help From Experts Who Have Your Dream Career
The path to career success is undoubtedly a rough one. Yet picture how much easier it would be if you had an expert management leader accessible anytime to offer professional advice and guidance to fill up your competency gaps.
- With a direct one-on-one link to your career mentor, youll be free to discuss your progress and career ambitions, ask questions, or kick the wheels on a fresh idea.
- Do you have an upcoming interview you want to nail? By simply dropping a message to your mentor, you secure better chances of performing exceptionally at the interview.
- Limitless messaging to your career mentor means you can ask them anything, and theyll answer as soon as they can.
- Your mentor can fix challenges and goals to keep you inspired throughout the week and fulfill your long-term career ambitions. And by steadily building the bar with each task, your mentor will help you advance personally and professionally.
Whether youre a fresh college graduate or in upper management, at whatever career stages, mentorship helps you have clarity on what to do next.
Get A Professional Degree

For professions such as engineering and teaching, you can get a professional degree to certify you in your field. This goal ensures that you work toward developing your skills and expanding your knowledge after graduating. People with professional degrees often receive job security and higher salaries.
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Compare Job Requirements To Your Education
Many jobs have specific education requirements for applicants and new hires, such as obtaining a high school diploma, completing a bachelors degree program or having a masters degree. Some positions also require applicants to have their degrees in a specific field related to the position.
Review the education requirements for jobs you are interested in and apply for jobs that accept your current level of education, or research additional degrees or certifications you may need.
Employees Will Feel Valued
How do you make your employees feel valued and supported? While providing flexible working, amongst other fringe benefits, and even free meals is advantageous, investing in your employees future cant be beat.
A career progression framework shows employees youre invested in their happiness, growth, and success for years to come.
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You Need To Decide On Your Career Goals And Desired Jobs
- While coaching and mentoring may help you arrive at several possible career options, complete career exploration is your own task outside of work. You can contact career professionals at your college career services offices, local community colleges, or research online where career information and career tests and quizzes abound.
What Is You Ideal Career Essay
My Ideal Career Essay. Free Essay: We dont know where our way of life will require us about this journey known as existence. The majority of us wish to have effective careers or simply be at liberty in existence. How
We dont know where our way of life will require us about this journey known as existence. The majority of us wish to have effective careers or simply be at liberty in existence. Wouldso would anybody what their lives to become a ten-year timespan? Lengthy term goals are complicated, but with the proper motivation toward the items we would like, we are able to accomplish anything we put the brain to. Whenever we take a look at careers, we all know that training, greater education, and certifications is going to be needed to be able to possess a effective career. I can tell myself from now and 10 years, Ill have my associates degree running a business Management. I expect to getting a helper manager job. I even expect to possibly as being a manager if Im in a position to progress in front of schedule with the proper training.
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