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)

  1. 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").

  2. 3 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

  3. 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.

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
  • Self-assessed (gray dot) — your own rating
  • AI-detected (blue dot, coming soon) — extracted from your reviews, resume, or project history

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:

  1. 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).
  2. AI verifying — Sparko AI extracts fields from the document and matches the name against your employee record. Usually takes 5–10 seconds.
  3. OCR results — review the extracted fields, see the confidence score, and confirm. Edit any field that doesn't look right, then "Looks good, add it."

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

Note: Inline editing of cells (changing a competency's required proficiency at a given level) is shipping in a follow-up update, alongside a click-to-expand drawer per competency that explains the skills and indicators that demonstrate each proficiency level.

Team Development (managers only)

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

Tabs

  1. 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.
  2. Members — card grid of every direct report with their level, skills/competencies/certs counts, readiness bar, and a "View profile" link.
  3. Skill Distribution — coverage cards showing which skills are well-covered (≥70% of team) vs. thinly held.
  4. Risks — single-points-of-failure rows with severity-coded borders and per-row Find training / View profile actions.
  5. 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)
  6. 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.

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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 Career Framework — Manage 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
  • Auto-build · all — creates default career path assignments for any unassigned employees

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).

Manager Observations

Managers can write structured, per-competency observations about a direct report — a running record of evidence tied to the same competencies used in assessments, rather than a generic note. Each observation can be marked shared (visible to the employee) or private (manager/HR only).

Competency-to-Skill Mapping (admin only)

For each competency in a framework, Sparko AI can suggest which skills demonstrate it — 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.

Role Level Redesignation (admin only)

Renaming a level in a career path shows a before/after impact preview first — 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

  • Skills can't be removed once added. There's currently no way to delete a skill from your profile after adding it — only add and adjust proficiency.
  • 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
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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