“We’re a technical services company; our revenue growth is dependent on our employee growth.  We’ve been slowly growing our organization using college recruiting; but we’re still only around 50 employees.  Now we’ve discovered that someone posted ‘No room for growth’ about us on Glassdoor.  This could really hurt our recruiting,” sighed Bill. “Not really sure what to do about it!?”

“We’ve seen an increase in questions about the career paths at our company too’” noted Erica.  “Fortunately, we have over 200 employees, so there is more opportunity.  What do you tell applicants now when they ask about a career path at your company, Bill?” 

“We tell them that we have about 30 technical staff, with 5 managers.  The reality is that those managers report to my partner and I, and we’re not going anywhere in the near future,” responded Bill.  “So upward mobility is limited.  However, we do get to work on really cool, leading edge technology projects; so we talk about the projects that they get to work on and how we’re flexible with allowing them to move from one project to another.” 

“Obviously, there are pros & cons to working at a smaller company versus one with thousands of employees,” chimed in Cindy.  “You can also point out that with fewer technical people on a project, each person has a wider scope to their responsibilities, so they will have more responsibility than someone on a very large team.”

“When I worked at a smaller company, I actually got the opportunity to lead a team fairly early in my career,” said Rich.  “It was a pretty small team, but I did get a Program Manager title.  Even when I was at a very large aerospace company, upward mobility sometimes seemed equally limited.  The reality was that management positions were hard to come by.  Plus, there were some very talented technical people who either had no interest in managing others or who didn’t have that skillset.  Let’s face it, there are a lot of technical people who will never make good managers!”

“Recognizing that highly talented design people could be just as valuable as someone managing a team,” Rich continued, “they created a parallel technical career path.  They used the title ‘Scientist’.  So someone could move from a Scientist to a Senior Scientist to a Project Scientist without having to manage people.  The pay scale on the scientist ladder was similar to the pay scale on the management ladder, so it worked pretty well.  I remember this one Project Scientist who was quite brilliant, but he would have tantrums when things didn’t go his way!  It was clear why he was not a candidate for the management path.”

“Oh my God,” cried Sarah, “I worked for a guy like that who was my manager … what a nightmare.  I think that’s when I graduated from drinking wine to hard liquor!”  “And look at you now,” laughed Mike!

“That’s an interesting idea,” responded Bill.

Don chimed in: “One thing you would need to do is come up with a list of tasks or knowledge / experience required to move up the technical ladder.   Job scope up the management ladder is usually dependent on the number of people below you.  You’ll need something similar for the technical ladder, so you can show a Scientist what it takes to become a Senior or Project Scientist.  Do you think such a parallel structure would address the ‘No room for growth’ issue?  Do you think it would be attractive to some of your recruits?”

“I do think that could work’” Bill replied.  “In fact, I could see how that could help with retention as well.  We’ve got a couple of senior design people who we fear might want to leave in the not-too-distant future, because they are topping out on the pay range for their position.  We’d hate to lose them. Moreover, we have interviewed some candidates who have very good grades, and even worked on some very interesting projects as students, but socially they seemed awkward; this approach could ease my own hesitation about hiring them, knowing they’ll likely never be management material.  But with this, I could offer them a career path beneficial to them and to the company as well.”

“You can reflect the parallel paths on your org chart’” Sarah noted. 

“Yes, I could,” responded Bill.  “In fact, there are a couple of people I could promote right away, as soon as we get the levels documented.”

“This is great,” concluded Bill.  “As soon as I get back to the office, I’m going to discuss this with my partner and get going on getting it implemented.  Thanks so much for this idea!”

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