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  • Services
    • HR & Compensation Consulting
    • Career & Pay Negotiation Coaching
    • Workshop & Speaking Topics
  • About
  • Community
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Resources
    • Blog
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    • Career Resources
    • Connect on Social Media
    • Free Pay Data
    • In The Media
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Career Levels: A Definition & Use Cases

May 22, 2024 Denise Liebetrau

Career Levels categorize jobs based on internal equity factors like scope, knowledge, problem solving, accountability, complexity, discretion, interaction, supervision, and experience.

Common categories are executive, management, professional, administrative, and craft. But I have also used supervisory and individual contributor as the only two categories for small organizations. Categories depend upon the employer’s size and industry.

The number of Career Levels varies by employer. Under the management category you may have five levels: senior director, director, senior manager, manager, and supervisor. Or you can have three levels: director, manager, and supervisor.

Career Levels are not the same as pay grades. Pay grades are based on competitive market data and deliver the base salary range that the employees performing the job should be paid within. Jobs with the same Career Level can have different grades.

Use Cases:

1.     Career Levels support career development conversations and career paths.

2.     They also provide categories that bonus targets and long-term incentive targets can be assigned to. 

3.     During a pay equity audit, Career Levels will help you develop comparator groups for the analysis.

Career Levels are assigned to jobs based on a Career Level Guide which is a document that describes the difference between the levels. The Guide provides a standard description, so the use of the levels is consistent across job families. The job description is compared to the Career Level Guide to determine which Career Level should be assigned to a job.

Let’s talk of you want to define Career Levels as part of your job architecture project.

#jobarchitecture #compensation #payequity #paytransparency #rewards #hr #humanresources #careerlevels

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