Career Module

The Career module is your home for personal development, career progression, skills, certifications, and team-level career planning. It pulls together what you're capable of, where you're going, and what will get you there.

Overview

The Career module provides:

My Development: a single growth home with your career journey, skills to develop, competencies, certifications, and next steps
My Skills: your skill inventory with proficiency tracking
Certifications: professional credentials with renewal tracking and AI-verified document upload
Career Framework: the competency × level matrix that defines expectations for each role at your company
Team Development: manager view of team skills, gaps, AI insights, and competency assessments

My Development

The default landing page when you click Career in the sidebar. Shows everything about your own career progression in one place.

Sections (top to bottom)

Career Journey card: full ladder stepper showing where you are on your career path, past levels you've completed, future levels ahead, and the manager-track branch if your path supports one. Below the stepper is a readiness call-out: a one-line narrative describing what gaps stand between you and the next level ("Close 2 skill gaps in Distributed Systems and Mentoring to reach 80% readiness for L4: Senior Software Engineer").
4 cards row:
- Skills to Develop: top skill gaps for your next level
- My Competencies: your current competency ratings with provenance dots (self-rated, manager-validated, peer-validated)
- Certifications: your top recent certifications with renewal status
- Your AI Career Coach (Growth and above): an on-demand narrative, refreshed at most once a day, skill gaps and recommended actions from your skills, goals, reviews and the feedback you received, plus an Improvement plan: themes drawn from your feedback, each with the feedback it rests on and one suggested milestone. Add to plan puts it on your career goal as a proposed milestone; your manager approves, adjusts or declines it in your next 1:1 or from My Hub, and you are told the outcome. With no career goal yet, Add to plan asks you to set one first.
Bottom 60/40 row:
- Next Up attention card: the most important next action (e.g., "Run your next competency self-assessment") with a primary button and chip shortcuts
- Quick Links: Update My Skills, Browse Career Frameworks, Run AI Assessment, Manage Certifications

Set Career Goal

The Set Career Goal button in the page header opens a modal where you pick a target track (IC or Manager) and a timeline (6 / 12 / 18 / 24 months). Your goal appears as a pill on the Career Journey card.

The sidebar entry for this page is My Development.

Your AI Career Coach

Available in: Growth and above (FEATURES_AND_PRICING row "AI Career Coach: an on-demand narrative refreshed at most daily, skill gaps and recommended actions from your skills, goals, reviews and received feedback, plus a feedback-based improvement plan whose items become milestones on your career goal in one click").

When you open the page, the coach writes (at most once a day) a short narrative about your progress, the skill gaps standing between you and your next level, and a few recommended actions. It draws on your skills, your goals, your reviews and the feedback you have received.

Alongside the narrative is an Improvement plan. Sparko groups your recent feedback into themes; each theme shows how many feedback items it rests on and, when expanded, the quoted excerpts with the giver's name or Anonymous, and one suggested milestone. Click Add to plan to put a suggestion on your career goal as a proposed milestone. Your manager approves, adjusts, or declines it, either in your next 1:1 or from My Hub, and you are told the outcome either way. If you have not set a career goal yet, Add to plan asks you to set one first.

My Skills

Track and manage your professional skill inventory.

Tabs

My Skills: skills already in your profile, shown as cards with the skill name, proficiency badge, and a 4-dot proficiency bar.
Browse Catalog: the company's skill catalog, organized by category. Click Add to add a skill to your profile at Beginner level (you can adjust later).

Filtering and search

The header controls row has:

A Filter button: opens a popover with category checkboxes. Selected categories appear as removable chips below the controls with a "Clear all" link.
A Search input: filters by skill name across the active tab.

Provenance

Each skill on a profile card shows how it was rated:

Validated (green dot): confirmed by a manager. A skill you confirmed yourself shows Confirmed by you instead, so the two are never conflated
Self-assessed (gray dot): your own rating
AI-suggested (blue dot): extracted from your performance reviews. When you run Scan my reviews yourself, nothing is added until you approve it. HR can also run extraction across the company, and that path writes directly; each of those skills shows a Confirm button on your My Own tab so you can vouch for it (or correct and remove it). An Insights card on Home reminds you when unconfirmed skills are waiting.

Scan my reviews

Scan my reviews on the My Skills header reads your own performance reviews and suggests skills mentioned in them. Nothing reaches your profile until you say so.

How it works:

A confirm screen shows how many reviews were found and how many are new since your last scan. The button is disabled when nothing is new.
The scan runs. It reads your reviews only, never anyone else's.
You get a list of suggested skills, each with a confidence score, the proficiency the scan proposes, and the evidence behind it. Anything at 60% confidence or above is pre-selected; below that you opt in.
Click a skill to include or exclude it, then Add N skills. Anything you did not pick is discarded.

Approved skills land on your profile marked AI-detected. If you close the modal before deciding, the suggestions wait for you and the modal reopens on the approval step.

You can remove any skill from your profile later, whatever its source.

Certifications

Track your professional certifications, renewal dates, and AI document verification.

Tabs

My Certifications: your active and draft certifications
Expiring Soon: anything within 90 days of expiry
Pending Approval (managers only): direct reports' certifications awaiting your sign-off

Adding a certification

Click Add Certification to open a 3-state modal:

Empty form: enter name, issuer, dates, credential ID/URL, and drop your certificate document into the upload zone (PDF / PNG / JPG, up to 10 MB).
AI verifying: Sparko AI extracts fields from the document and matches the name against your employee record. Usually takes 5–10 seconds.
OCR results: review the extracted fields, see the confidence score, and confirm. Every extracted field is editable, so correct anything the scan got wrong before saving. A field the scan missed falls back to what you typed on the form, so saving never blanks a value you already entered.

Once a certification has been submitted for approval or approved, these fields are locked to you and only an approver can change them. If an approver does change them, the certification goes back to draft and needs approving again, because what was approved is no longer what the record says.

Verified certifications get a green AI verified footer line on the card with the confidence percentage.

Status badges

Active: current and not expiring soon
Expiring Nd: within 90 days of expiration
Expired: past the expiration date
Draft: added but not yet submitted for approval
Pending Approval: manager review queued

Career Framework

The matrix view of your company's career paths, levels, and competency expectations. Browse what each role looks like at every level.

Picking a framework

Use the Framework dropdown at the top to switch between paths (e.g., "Software Engineering: IC track" / "Engineering Management: Manager track"). Each framework includes:

Levels as columns (e.g., L1 → L5 for IC, M1 → M5 for Manager)
Competencies as rows, grouped by category (Technical / Behavioral / Leadership)
Cells show the proficiency required at each level (Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced / Expert)

If you have a current level assigned, that column shows a "You are here" badge.

Editing (admin only)

Users with the Manage Career Framework permission see pencil/+ icons inline on the matrix. Click the Create Framework header button to add a new path.

Starting from a department that has no ladder. When the Needs your attention card on Recruiting > Job Postings reports a department with no career path, Generate framework on that row drafts one in place, proposed from that department's real job titles and the level names your company already uses. You review and edit the path name and every level before confirming, and nothing is written until you do. Departments already covered by a ladder, whether under any spelling of the name or through the people already assigned to it, are not reported. Same gate as the editor: career.framework.manage and Growth or above.

Editing cells. On the Manage route, clicking a cell selects it and a sticky toolbar appears above the matrix naming the selection. From there:

Edit opens the cell editor (required proficiency + the behavioural indicator). Double-clicking a cell opens it directly.
Fill right copies the selected cell into every level to its right on the same competency row; Fill down copies it into every competency below at the same level. Both show how many cells they will write.
Copy from previous level pulls the level to the left into the selection: the "L4 inherits L3 plus a delta" pattern in one click.
Clear cell removes the competency from that level.

The selected cell also carries a small green handle in its bottom-right corner. Drag it right along the row or down the column to preview a range and release to fill it.

Finding a mentor

Open your profile's Career tab and choose Find a mentor. Each suggestion carries a match percentage and the reasons behind it, worked out from your company's own records rather than guessed at:

Shared skills you both hold, where the mentor is further along than you. A skill few people in the company have counts for more than a common one.
What they mentor on, matched against the goals you have written down.
Seniority. A mentor has to be further up the ladder than you. From director level up, someone at your own level counts too, since the useful mentors there are your peers as much as the few people above you.
How close they sit to you in the organisation.

People who are already at their mentee limit, already paired with you, or no longer with the company are left out, so nobody on the list is unavailable.

When AI is available on your plan it adds one line under each card explaining why the pairing was made. It only phrases a match that is already decided: it never changes the score, the order, or who is on the list, and if it is unavailable you still get the full ranked list.

Review the suggestions and pick someone whose background fits what you're trying to build.
Click Request mentorship on their card. Add the focus areas you want help with and a short message if you like.
They receive the request and decide. Already-requested people show "Request sent" rather than offering the button again.

Suggestions are a starting point, not an assignment: nobody is paired automatically, and asking is always your move.

You can also ask Sparko: "find me a mentor for system design". The assistant uses the same ranking, and each mentor comes back as a card you can open.

Team Development (managers only)

Manager view of your team's skills, gaps, certifications, and AI insights. Visible only when you have direct reports.

Tabs

Overview: leads with a "Needs your attention" banner showing up to 3 actionable items (low-readiness team members, critical skill gaps, single points of failure). Below the banner: 3 mini cards (Top Skills · Skill Risks · Certifications) summarizing the team at a glance.
Members: card grid of every direct report with their level, skills/competencies/certs counts, readiness bar, and a "View profile" link.
Skill Distribution: coverage cards showing which skills are well-covered (≥70% of team) vs. thinly held.
Risks: single-points-of-failure rows with severity-coded borders and per-row View profile / Plan cross-training actions. Once a plan exists the row reads "Cross-training planned" with its due date, taken from the goal itself.
AI Insights: Sparko AI surfaces team-wide patterns:
- Skill Convergence: multiple reports want the same skill → group training opportunity
- Mentorship Pairing: internal knowledge transfer matches
- Growth Bottleneck: employees stuck at a level
- Stretch Fit: project-based growth match
- External Resource: Coursera / Udemy / AWS Skill Builder suggestions (named, not delivered)
Insights are stored per manager and per report scope, so opening the tab shows the last set immediately with an "As of" timestamp instead of re-running the model. Sparko re-checks your team's skills, assessments and goals on every open: if none of them moved, nothing is regenerated and no AI action is spent. When they have moved, the stored set is shown straight away and refreshed once in the background. Refresh forces a new run whenever you want one.
Assessments: team assessment inventory with List, Heatmap, and Radar views (switch via the dropdown top-right), scoped to your direct reports or your full subtree.

Plan cross-training

A skill only one person holds is a risk to the team and a load on that person. Plan cross-training on the risk row (or on the attention banner item) opens a short form: tick the teammates who should learn the skill and set a target date: 60 days out by default.

Confirming creates three things at once:

a development goal on the skill holder, "Cross-train N teammates on {skill}", carrying the skill and the target date;
a mentorship request from the holder to each teammate you picked. These are requests, not assignments: the pairing starts when it is accepted;
a notification to the holder that links straight to the new goal.

Either all three are created or none are. The risk row then shows "Cross-training planned" with the due date, and won't offer the action again for that skill and holder while the goal is open.

Competency Assessments

AI-powered promotion readiness analysis. Open via Career → Assessments in the side menu (when permitted) or as the "Run AI Assessment" link from My Development's Quick Links.

Workflow

The assessment lifecycle has five stages:

Self-assessment form: you pick a target level (or "current snapshot" with no target) and rate yourself per competency at that level. Add evidence per row: a project, a review quote, a skill you applied. Submit when all competencies are rated.
AI analysis: Sparko AI rates each competency from your self-input + your skills + recent performance reviews. Computes an overall readiness score for promotion-readiness assessments.
Detail view: once AI is done, you can review per-competency results: AI-rated proficiency vs. required, AI evidence trace, your self-input recap. Three tiles up top: readiness % circle, exceeded/met/gap counts, generation metadata.
Manager review: your manager validates the AI ratings, can override any cell with a manager rating + reason, and adds a final note for you. After submit, the assessment is signed and locked.
Stretch assignments: once the assessment is complete, Sparko AI generates 3-4 stretch suggestions matched to your gaps: project, mentorship, cross-functional, or external course opportunities. Add them to your development plan or skip.

Dashboard

The Competency Assessment dashboard lists your assessments (My) and optionally your team's (Team, manager only) as single-column aligned cards. Each card shows: name + employee/target · readiness bar · exceeded/met/gap counts · status. Click any card to open detail.

Note on AI cost: Sparko AI assessments use Claude under the hood. Cost is logged to internal audit trails but never surfaced on any user-facing screen. You see the analysis, not the bill.

Career Management (admin only)

Live at Admin → Career for users with the Manage Career Framework permission. Bulk-manage employee career-path assignments and AI skill extraction across the company.

Header bulk actions

Refresh: reload the table
Extract skills · all: kicks off AI skill extraction for every employee. This admin path writes straight to each profile as AI-detected; it does not go through the employee approval step that Scan my reviews uses. Employees can remove anything they disagree with from their own Skills list.
Auto-build · all: creates default career path assignments for any unassigned employees

Auto-build reuses an existing ladder wherever it can, so your framework stays a handful of discipline ladders rather than one per job title. Paths are named after the discipline ("Software Engineering"), never after a person's seniority or track, and a title only joins a ladder on the same track, so an engineering manager is never filed onto the individual-contributor ladder. When a department has a single ladder that fits, a new title routes to it as long as the title and the department have something in common; otherwise Sparko builds a new ladder rather than guessing, since a wrong assignment would carry the wrong skills, levels and pay band.

Per-employee table

Seven columns: Employee · Department · Job Title · Career Path · Level · Skills · Actions. Tabs split into All / Assigned / Unassigned with counts. Unassigned rows get an amber border-left signal. Per-row actions: Auto-build (if unassigned), Reassign / Assign, Extract.

The Assign / Reassign modal has a path dropdown that cascades into a level dropdown, plus a help block explaining what changes after reassignment (readiness recalc, skills carry-over, AI suggestions).

Coaching notes

Live at /career/coaching-notes. There is no sidebar entry: you reach it from Career → Team development (the Coaching notes action on any team member row), from the Career Path card on an employee profile, or from the View coaching notes link on the confirmation after you save a note. A running record of what you noticed about the people you manage, tagged to the same competencies used in assessments, so review time starts from evidence instead of memory.

The page has two columns. On the left is the entry card:

About: the employee. Managers see their own reporting line; admins with company-wide access see everyone.
What did you notice?: the note. Be specific: situation, behavior, impact.
Competencies: optional tags drawn from your company's competency list.
Visibility: one of three:
- Private to me: only you, the author, can read it. Nobody else can, including HR and company-wide admins
- Shared with {name}: visible to the employee on their career page
- Calibration panel: HR and the panel see it at review time

On the right is the timeline of everything you are allowed to read, filterable by employee and by visibility. Each entry shows who wrote it, when, its visibility pill, and its competency tags.

Write coaching note in the page header opens the same form as a modal. The same modal is reachable from a 1:1 in Performance → 1:1s, so you can capture something right after the conversation.

Employees see the coaching notes shared with them and nothing else.

Writing requires career.observations.create. Every employee can read what was shared with them.

Competency-to-Skill Mapping (admin only)

Below the matrix in Career Framework › Manage, each competency gets an accordion card. Expand one to see the required-proficiency strip across the framework's levels and the skills mapped to that competency. The card header counts what's confirmed and what's still waiting on review.

Sparko AI can suggest which skills demonstrate a competency: either one competency at a time or in bulk across an entire framework. Every suggestion goes through human review: an admin confirms or rejects each proposed mapping before it's applied. Manage skills on a matrix row jumps to that competency's card and opens it.

Role Level Redesignation (admin only)

Renaming a level in a career path shows a before/after impact preview first, listing affected employees currently at that level, any in-flight competency assessments, and open job postings tied to it, so you can see the blast radius before committing the rename.

Known limitations

Stretch assignment tracking is local to your browser. Marking a suggested stretch assignment as accepted/skipped is saved to your browser only; it does not sync across devices and isn't visible to your manager as a tracked action item yet.

Permissions

Permission	Who	What it unlocks
`career.framework.view`	All employees	Read-only access to career frameworks
`career.framework.manage`	HR Admin / Super Admin	Create / edit frameworks, inline edit affordances on the matrix
`career.certifications.verify`	HR Admin or any manager	Pending Approval tab on Certifications
`career.observations.create`	Managers, HR Admin / Super Admin	Write a coaching note, and the 1:1 shortcut
`career.observations.view_own`	All employees	Read the coaching notes shared with you
`career.observations.view_team`	Managers	Read coaching notes about your reporting line, except other authors' private notes
`career.succession.manage`	HR Admin / Super Admin	Name successors and set role risk on Succession Planning
`performance.analytics.view_team`	Managers (auto-granted)	Team Development page + Assessments tab

Managers automatically get performance.analytics.view_team when an employee is assigned to them. The grant is reconciled nightly and revoked when their last direct report is removed.

Still need help? Reach us at [email protected].

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