Building career paths when most don't exist yet

In our first post in the series we talked about why SMBs should be growing skills for the future now. Most SMBs have no career ladder written down. If they do, it’s possible that it’s not fully operationalized within the organization. I experienced this at a previous company as an incoming Director of People Operations. The career lattice framework was solid, but the rollout was stalled because of other priorities. When review season came around, the question for managers remained – what does the career lattice mean and how do I promote within it? Even worse, the question in employee’s minds was how do I move to the next role when I’m ready?

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People move up because a manager noticed them, or they leave because nobody did. McKinsey's research shows why it matters more now: even where a viable route exists, it often runs through a credential the worker does not have. Most growing jobs require a credential or certification, so an employee can hold most of the skills for the next role and still be unable to take it. Nobody tells them which certificate is missing, what it costs, or whether the company would help pay for it. An unwritten ladder hides that gap, and the employee is left to find it alone.

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Roughly 85% of growing jobs require a credential or certification. The report says these barriers "can twist or block otherwise viable pathways." It gives examples. A dishwasher moving to home health aide has only about 20% skill overlap and needs formal certification, which takes roughly a month of training. A packager moving to production fabricator has 52% overlap, a meaningful wage increase, and needs targeted skill upgrading. An office assistant moving to project manager has 58% overlap and the largest wage gain in the set at 154%, but the route needs a bachelor's degree and a professional certification.

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The pattern is that overlap alone does not decide whether someone can make the move. Overlap tells you how much the person already knows.The credential tells you whether the market will let them in. An SMB can influence both.

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Here is how the same pattern looks at a 75-person software company. These are illustrations, not figures from the report.

A support agent moving into cloud operations has little overlap. The agent knows the product and the customers, but the role needs infrastructure skills and usually a vendor or industry certification such as an AWS or CompTIA credential. With a study plan and exam fees covered, that is a few months of focused work.

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A QA tester moving into a software engineer or test automation role has about half the skills already. The tester understands the product, the bugs, and the release process. The gap is writing production code in the team's stack, working in version control, and getting code reviewed. A paired project with a senior engineer closes most of it, and the pay increase is meaningful.

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An operations coordinator moving into delivery or project management has the most overlap. The coordinator already schedules work, tracks dependencies, and talks to every team. The barrier is on paper: job postings ask for a bachelor's degree and a certification such as PMP or Scrum Master. The company can pay for the certification and decide whether the degree requirement is real for an internal move. This is the biggest pay jump of the three, and the one where a written path matters most.

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Here is a way to build a pathway in a week of part-time effort.

1.    Pick two target roles. Choose roles that are hard to fill or will grow, such as an operations lead, a customer success manager, or a technician.

2.    List the skills and credentials each requires. Use your own job descriptions plus a few postings from competitors.

3.    Pick two feeder roles. These are current jobs where employees already hold a large share of those skills.

4.    Find the gap. For each feeder role, write down what is missing: a certification, a tool, a type of experience.

5.    Close the gap on the company's terms. Pay for the certification, assign a stretch project, or pair the employee with someone already in the role.

6.    Publish the path. Put the steps, the timeline, and who to talk to on one page that every employee can read.

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Two cautions from the research apply here. First, feasibility is not the same as ease. The report notes that workers need support beyond task-specific instruction, so a course alone will not carry anyone across. Second, access is uneven. High earners are about four times more likely than low earners to have a direct pathway, and in the bottom wage quintile only about 10% do. If your paths only work for people who already have a degree, you have written a path for people who did not need one.

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A short written path is worth more than a long policy. Start with two, test them with real employees, and add more as people use them.