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Want to make your job postings stand out from the rest? Borrow an idea from the public sector and share your career paths — right in the job description. 

Salary transparency has dominated the conversation for job seekers over the last several months, with New York, California, and Washington being the first to put transparency laws into action. But while important, salary ranges are only one component of a job description. And now that they’re often mandated, salary ranges don’t say much about a company’s overall commitment to transparency — especially with some companies posting ranges so broad as to be completely unhelpful.

But in the public sector — like jobs in government and public education — salary transparency has long been a feature in some job descriptions. And, increasingly, so have clearly defined career promotional tracks. 

And with good reason. Career pathing offers a number of important benefits: It can increase applications and candidate interest, improve retention, boost business performance, and help future-proof an organization as it pivots to seize new opportunities.

LinkedIn survey data shows that while compensation, work-life balance, and flexibility are the top three things candidates are looking for in a job, career advancement and upskilling are fourth and fifth. So, defining and declaring the potential for growth right in the job description conveys that you take employee growth and development as seriously as your candidates do.

Adding information about career advancement to your job posts can be simple

Given that it’s still a very small number of organizations that add career pathing information to their job descriptions, you may be wondering what it looks like. It can be as simple as a single sentence that delineates what job people in your open position are likely to be promoted into. But it can also be as detailed as laying out what an entire career path might be from the role that is posted.

The City University of New York, for example, lists the next position in the promotional pathway as a matter of practice in its classified civil service job descriptions.

In an effort to be as transparent as possible, GitLab has experimented with including in its job postings 1) a detailed description of the hiring process; 2) a salary calculator; and 3) a “Career Ladder” section in which it calls out the position above the one being advertised. Applicants can then click on a link that takes them to a description of the higher-level role.

For some positions, GitLab has provided even more detail. For a time, applicants to product manager roles could go to the company web site and see a potential career path for individuals working their way up in product management at the company.

Healthcare is leading the way with “career ladder” roles

Some organizations actually list specific jobs as “career ladder” positions, meaning that they will help successful candidates, once they’re in seat, get the training needed to move up to an even more responsible position. This seems to happen most often in healthcare, which has been struggling to find qualified talent for an array of positions. 

Pacific Clinics designates many of their jobs as “Career Ladder” roles. For example, it posted an opening for an associate ABA behavior technician, in which it detailed the path to becoming an ABA behavior technician:

“This is a Career Ladder Position: This position is available as a development plan/career ladder to work towards promotion into ABA Behavior Technician within designated length of time based upon performance and contingent upon your ability to satisfy all position requirements. Compensation changes associated with this promotion will be determined through the Agency’s compensation processes, policies and pay ranges in effect at the time of the promotion. Additionally, this promotion will be available without further posting or competition for the position.”

Other job postings will not only lay out the next career step, they’ll lay out an extended career path. Or paths.

In a recent posting for a social worker, Fresenius Medical Care trumpeted: “We believe in encouraging our employees to achieve their full potential by offering opportunities for advancement.” The posting then notes that Fresenius has a career ladder specific to social workers that leads potentially to three levels of facility social work, “as well as a leadership path from Social Worker to Manager, Senior Manager, and Senior Director.”

Final thoughts: This is a tactic worth experimenting with

Not every role in any organization has a clear next step — a position in the same department or organization with increased responsibility. But many undoubtedly do.

Job posting transparency these days can be about more than compensation. Employees care deeply about their professional development and want to know that their employers do too. Sharing the next step of a career ladder in the job description is a powerful signal of what your organization values. Even if career paths, partial or complete, are hard to find in job descriptions now, you should consider adopting the practice of including them. It may put you in a better position to attract — and retain — the talent that you want for years to come.

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