Career path: how (and why) to create one in your company

In recent years, career paths have become one of the most important strategic levers for those involved in HR and People Development. 

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For a long time, talking about career paths was mostly associated with issues of "benefits" or branding. Today, however, these aspects directly affect retention, productivity, and organizational sustainability.

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The data confirms this: according to the Work Institute's2025 Retention Report, the leading cause of voluntary resignations in the United States is "Career," or lack of development, advancement opportunities, and clear growth paths. According to the report, this category accounts for 18.9% of total turnover, more than compensation, work-life balance, or managerial motivation.

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The picture is not very different in Europe: on our continent too, the lack of prospects for internal growth is one of the main reasons for emigration.

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The career path, therefore, becomes a strategic lever for retaining high-potential talent, creating internal equity, and drastically reducing turnover and quiet quitting.

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What is a career path?

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A career path is a map that describes how a person can grow within the organization in the short, medium, and long term.
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We can define it as a system that explains:

• what skills are needed to progress;
• what levels or steps exist within a role;
• what lateral opportunities (job rotation, changes of function) are possible;
• what behaviors and expected results define progress;
• Which development paths (training, mentoring, projects) accelerate growth?
  
  

For HR, career paths are a fundamental tool for aligning three critical elements:

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1. the organization's needs, i.e., understanding which roles are needed and which skills will be strategic;
2. people's performance and potential, i.e., defining who can grow and in what timeframe;
3. employee expectations, i.e., understanding what they want and what paths they perceive as realistic.
   
   

The result is a system that makes growth transparent, measurable, and explainable, reducing the risk of arbitrary or perceived unfair decisions.

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Why every company should guarantee a career path (and what happens when there isn't one)

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Many resignations are not caused by immediate frustration within a role, but by a very simple perception: "I don't know how I could grow here."

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For this reason, a career path serves both to build a vision for your brand's mission and values and to specifically define the objectives associated with each role and function.

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There are several reasons to integrate career paths into a company: let's take a look at them together.

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1. Retention and reduction of turnover

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When an employee does not see clear development, they start looking elsewhere.
As we mentioned, the Work Institute 2025 Retention Report confirms that career-related reasons are the leading cause of voluntary resignations in the US (18.9%), more significant than pay, well-being, or the relationship with their manager.

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Turnover is one of the highest invisible costs to manage, because it forces the company to start from scratch on several fronts at once in order to manage:

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• recruitment costs (advertisements, screening, interviews, technical tests, managers' time);
• onboarding costs (training, mentoring, slowdowns in teams);
• loss of tacit skills (those that are not documented but are essential for working independently);
• loss of continuity in projects;
• risk of overload for those who remain, often leading to further resignations.

A well-designed career path drastically reduces talent turnover because it provides visibility into the future, a clear direction, explicit expectations, and understandable criteria for growth.

If you want to learn more about turnover, download our free white paper.

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2. Engagement and motivation

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• what is the next step;
• what is needed to achieve it;
• if someone is investing in their growth.
  
  

A career path allows you to transform generic feedback ("you need to grow in leadership") into more concrete plans based on skills, behaviors, and measurable milestones.

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3. Talent planning and organizational sustainability

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Without a clear growth system, it is difficult to identify who has the potential for roles of responsibility. Not to mention that, without a clear strategy and vision, promotions risk becoming sporadic or "emergency" measures, and HR loses visibility on the future skills that will be needed.

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With a structured career path, however, the organization can build an internal talent pipeline and reduce

drastically reduce costs related to external recruitment, onboarding, and role mismatches.

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4. Fairness, meritocracy, and transparency

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One of the most common problems in companies is the perception of injustice:
"Why was he promoted?"
"What criteria did you use?"
"What do I need to prove in order to grow?"

The career path eliminates ambiguity and reduces bias because it defines objective criteria for advancement, observable behaviors, skills required for each level, and clear and measurable paths.

5. Support for new regulations on wage transparency

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From 2026 (EU Directive 2023/970), wage transparency will also be a reality in Italy . Among the various adjustments required by law is the requirement to demonstrate that career progression, pay increases, and wage differences are based on measurable criteria that are gender-neutral. 

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To learn more about salary transparency, you can review our webinar "Towards salary transparency: the role of assessments in adapting to new regulations." You can find it at this link.

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Returning to our career path, creating a structured one will therefore become not only useful, but necessary in order to be compliant.

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How to build an effective career path: the 6-step method

A career path only works if it is linked to the reality of the organization: here is a 6-step method that you can adapt to your company.

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1. Define the company's job architecture

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The first step is to build the structure on which the entire career path will rest: the job architecture. If you don't have a clear map of roles, levels, and professional families, any career path risks becoming abstract or inconsistent. 

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Your job architecture must clearly identify:

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• roles (actual positions);
• professional levels (junior, intermediate, senior, lead, manager);
• professional families (e.g., HR, Tech, Sales, Finance)
  
  

Once this framework has been defined, building a career path becomes much easier because the path reflects the structure of the company instead of inventing it from scratch.

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2. Build the competency model on which the path will be based

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Once you have defined the role architecture, you can answer the next question, which is:
"What does a person really need to be able to do to be successful in this role and at the next level?"

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To answer, you can start from your competency model, which, to be useful, must include:

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• hard skills: specific technical knowledge and skills required for the role: tools, methodologies, languages, processes. For example, "advanced knowledge of ATS," "performance marketing campaign management," "financial data analysis";
• soft skills: transferable skills that impact the way we work: communication, collaboration, time management, problem solving, adaptability;
• managerial skills related to coordination or leadership roles: delegation, feedback management, coaching, decision making, conflict management, vision;
• Expected behaviors: These are the most important and most often underestimated part: how these skills manifest themselves in practice. For example, not "results-oriented" in the abstract, but: "meets deadlines," "defines clear KPIs," "regularly monitors progress."

3. Map the required proficiency levels

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At this point, you have roles, levels, and skills at your disposal.

A fundamental piece of the career path is missing: "how well" a skill must be expressed at each level.

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To answer this question, you can use the concept of proficiency levels, which is a scale that clearly and objectively defines the maturity with which a person expresses a skill. 

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The most common model is structured on four levels:

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• beginner: applies basic knowledge and procedures, needs frequent guidance;
• intermediate: manages most activities independently, only asks for support in complex cases;
• advanced: anticipates problems, improves processes, supports less experienced colleagues;
• expert: influences strategic decisions, innovates, transfers skills to the entire team.
  
  

The really important part is that each level is defined by observable behaviors rather than abstract descriptions.

To understand this even better, let's take an example of the "Time Management" skill in an HR context:

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• Beginners need support in planning activities, tend to underestimate timeframes, and only meet deadlines under stable conditions.
• Those at the intermediate level can plan their work week independently, meet most deadlines, and report any critical issues in advance.
• Those at the advanced level manage multiple projects simultaneously, reorganize priorities based on urgency, and help the team meet complex deadlines.
• Finally, those at the expert level design and optimize team workflows, anticipate bottlenecks, and introduce tools or processes to improve overall efficiency.

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4. Establish clear and measurable advancement criteria

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Having skills and levels is not enough: you need to state exactly what needs to happen for a person to move from one level to another.

An effective advancement criterion combines four elements:

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• goals achieved (KPIs, results, contribution to the team);
• skills acquired (new technical skills or consolidated soft skills);
• observable behaviors (autonomy, handling complexity, impact);
• Key training/experience (courses, cross-functional projects, mentorship)
  
  

The more explicit these criteria are, the more you help managers justify (and defend) their choices and give people a clear answer as to what is required of them to grow within the company.

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5. Link career path and compensation

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Professional growth must always have a clear economic impact.

People don't just want to know how they can grow, but also what changes in terms of compensation when they reach a new level of responsibility or mastery.

For this reason, it is essential to establish a direct link between career path levels, associated salary bands, and objective criteria that determine pay increases.

This work is not only necessary for internal consistency: with the new EU Directive on pay transparency, it will become mandatory to demonstrate that pay progression and differentials follow transparent, measurable, and gender-neutral logic.

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6. Communicate and make routes accessible

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A career path is useless if it remains in a company folder or a 40-page PDF.
The advice, therefore, is to engage people by making career paths accessible. We can summarize this concept in three priorities:

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• accessibility: the path must be available on the intranet, HR portal, or dedicated tool;
• visual clarity: less text, more diagrams, examples, real-life scenarios;
• manager training: they are the ones who bring it to life through feedback, one-to-one meetings, and performance reviews.
  
  

How Skillvue supports the creation and management of career paths

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Skillvue combines advanced psychometric science and proprietary AI to assess technical skills, soft skills, and potential in an objective, fast, and scalable way.

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With a Skill Assessment that takes just a few minutes, the company obtains a clear and standardized snapshot of each employee's profile thanks to:

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• situational questions based on the BEI (Behavioral Event Interview) methodology, which gather real behavioral evidence;
• technical tests for hard skills, with over 150+ skill tests ready to use or customizable according to your competency model;
• assessments on leadership, problem solving, emotional intelligence, responsibility, collaboration, and many other soft skills;
• indicators of potential and ability to take on more complex roles.
  
  

For you and your company, this means finally having reliable data for:

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• define proficiency levels within career paths;
• link skills ↔ career progression in a clear and transparent manner;
• identify real gaps in order to plan consistent training and development paths;
• support internal mobility, job rotation, and upskilling based on evidence, not perceptions;
• eliminate bias and make assessments explainable, defensible, and consistent with business growth criteria.
  
  

Want to build clear, fair, data-driven career paths? Get started today with Skillvue's Skill Assessments.

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