Career Paths on a Company Web Site
Why doesn't don't all companies above a minimum size post formal career paths for each of their job types on their web site?
Do you know where you want to be in 3, 5, 10 years time? From your question, like a lot of people, you don't know. Is it really a stretch to see that a company may not know that, either?
But more important, a formal, published career path makes far more sense in the old world of life time employment with a particular company, where advancement was based as much on age and experience as on capability and merit. In the modern, high tech, information worker space of today, none of those things hold true any longer:
All that being said, many companies do have ladders based on the industry standard surveys and leveling criteria formalized by consultancies like Radford. But publishing these on a web site is going to be as misleading as they are helpful.
How quickly will any given employee progress? Some will progress quickly, others not so much. Seeing a career path listed won't tell you much about your fate. Your performance over time, and fitness for more impactful roles, will be the determining factor -- assuming all else is equal.
But when is "all else equal"? Very seldom. Company fortunes often dictate career opportunities within the company more than anything else. Is the company in a rapid growth curve, expanding by 50% per year? Or is the company stagnant or even in decline in terms of size and success? You can de darn sure that a company going through the downward spiral of many former successful companies will have far fewer opportunities than a company that is growing quickly. And those opportunities or lack thereof will be more impactful than whether they have formal career paths, or publish them on their web site.
There is also the reluctance to publish paths because they can be interpreted as contractual. That is, it can appear like a guarantee that if one meets certain criteria one will advance. In addition to extraneous factors like company successful, which can trump everything else, there are so many leveling criteria that cannot be captured in a career path document, nor in a job description, that binding one's hands with a detailed career path can make decision making more difficult, set up false expectations, and provide a unrealistic view of what it's like to grow in a particular company.
So what to do? If you know what you want to grow into 5 or ten years, make this part of the interviewing/recruiting process. Ask the questions, but more importantly, put out there where you want to get to, and ask pointed questions about how the position you are looking at fit with your long range goals. The answers to such questions will tell you a lot about the reality of how the company grows and develops talent over time -- more than any web page ever will.
Do you know where you want to be in 3, 5, 10 years time? From your question, like a lot of people, you don't know. Is it really a stretch to see that a company may not know that, either?
But more important, a formal, published career path makes far more sense in the old world of life time employment with a particular company, where advancement was based as much on age and experience as on capability and merit. In the modern, high tech, information worker space of today, none of those things hold true any longer:
- Companies nor employees expect that the lifetime employment is still in place.
- Merit, rather than tenure, tends to be the driving force in career advancement.
- Increasingly, organizations are far flatter than they used to be. That means "advancement" is no longer about a particular ladder, but a lattice of opportunities that are lateral rather than vertical.
All that being said, many companies do have ladders based on the industry standard surveys and leveling criteria formalized by consultancies like Radford. But publishing these on a web site is going to be as misleading as they are helpful.
How quickly will any given employee progress? Some will progress quickly, others not so much. Seeing a career path listed won't tell you much about your fate. Your performance over time, and fitness for more impactful roles, will be the determining factor -- assuming all else is equal.
But when is "all else equal"? Very seldom. Company fortunes often dictate career opportunities within the company more than anything else. Is the company in a rapid growth curve, expanding by 50% per year? Or is the company stagnant or even in decline in terms of size and success? You can de darn sure that a company going through the downward spiral of many former successful companies will have far fewer opportunities than a company that is growing quickly. And those opportunities or lack thereof will be more impactful than whether they have formal career paths, or publish them on their web site.
There is also the reluctance to publish paths because they can be interpreted as contractual. That is, it can appear like a guarantee that if one meets certain criteria one will advance. In addition to extraneous factors like company successful, which can trump everything else, there are so many leveling criteria that cannot be captured in a career path document, nor in a job description, that binding one's hands with a detailed career path can make decision making more difficult, set up false expectations, and provide a unrealistic view of what it's like to grow in a particular company.
So what to do? If you know what you want to grow into 5 or ten years, make this part of the interviewing/recruiting process. Ask the questions, but more importantly, put out there where you want to get to, and ask pointed questions about how the position you are looking at fit with your long range goals. The answers to such questions will tell you a lot about the reality of how the company grows and develops talent over time -- more than any web page ever will.