Career path

A career path is a career option offered by an employer that should lead from one or more defined entry points (e.g. high school diploma, bachelor's degree , MBA ) to a predictable and stable career within a company or a non-commercial organization. Career paths can branch out as professional experience increases (e.g. after completing a trainee program that is initially uniform for everyone ) or they can be differentiated from the point of entry (e.g. in line manager and specialist careers). In the case of civil servants , predetermined career paths are referred to as career paths .

function

The range of career paths z. B. on the homepage of companies should create transparency and orientation functions, especially for young professionals, who are no longer fulfilled by traditional job titles , but also by university degrees because of their declining function and status assignment - especially under the conditions of lifelong learning . As a component of employer branding , the definition of career paths is intended to support recruitment and highlight the attractiveness of the employer. The offers of career paths should signal to the applicants that they are expected to be more flexible and able to control themselves when using the career offers and that advancement within the organization is tied to coping with certain requirements that must be met without this guaranteeing advancement. The stages of a career path are linked to criteria such as experience, formal qualifications, suitability (technical, methodical, personal), etc. Responsibility and remuneration are graded accordingly.

Companies rarely communicate the implicit limits of career opportunities and the possible exit points in the event that mutual expectations are not met. Up until now, the provision of career paths on the Internet has only rarely provided meaningful advice on applications.

With the end of the lifelong full-time position, linear career paths largely lose their importance, especially as a result of the thinning of middle management. Instead, horizontal careers, e.g. B. in project management or foreign assignments.

Public service careers are also becoming increasingly differentiated; they usually require a general preparatory service before branching out on a function-specific basis. There are also special career paths for career changers, e.g. B. for technical specialists. Higher careers in the public service or in the public service media are in fact often tied to membership in political parties.

Types

Many companies offer careers in general management as well as various specialist careers (consultant, IT specialist, international deployment). These are currently still relatively rare in project management . More and more companies are also offering careers for non-specialist career changers.

standardization

Since the company-specific career paths themselves vary greatly and thus lead to a new lack of transparency in terms of designations and requirements for applicants, various professional organizations are endeavoring to standardize and certify career paths with the aim of better international comparability of competencies up to and including the regulation of quasi-professional profiles by associations . An example is the Four-Level-Certification of the International Association for Project Management ( IPMA ) for project managers.

literature

• Gary W. Carter, Kevin W. Cook and David W. Dorsey (2011): Career Paths: Charting Courses to Success for Organizations and Their Employees , Wiley-Blackwell, Kindle E-Book

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Accessed November 25, 2012 
2. ↑ Parties as a career accelerator ( memento of the original from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Staufenbiel career magazine, accessed on January 10, 2016 
3. ↑ http://pm-blog.com/2008/09/15/berufsbild-projektmanagerin/ Accessed November 25, 2012
4. ↑ Website of the Austrian certification agency ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 27, 2012