Create a career path

What this achieves

A career path states the roles that follow one another in your company, so an employee can see where their job leads instead of guessing. Each step points at a job profile, which is what makes the distance to the next role measurable.

Required role: Administrator.

Before you start

Create the job profiles for every role the path will include. A step cannot exist without one, and the requirements a step is measured against come from the profile rather than from the path.

Steps

Go to Career & Growth → Career Paths.
Select Create Path.
Enter the Name.

Example: Software Engineering Track.
Leave Code blank to have one generated, or enter your own.
Choose the Job Family, or leave it unset.
Enter a Description saying who the path is for.
Select Create Path.
On the path, select Add Step.
Choose the Job Profile and set the Step Order.
Set the Typical Duration (months) and enter the Transition Requirements.
Set Entry Point or Terminal if this step is the start or the end of the route.
Use Add next step… to chain this step to the one that follows it.
Repeat for each remaining step, then select Activate.

The step form

Option	Description
Job Profile	The role this step is. Required, and it carries the skill and competency requirements the step is measured against.
Step Order	Where the step sits in the sequence.
Typical Duration (months)	How long people usually spend at this step. It drives the time estimates employees see when exploring.
Transition Requirements	Free text describing what is needed to move into this step. Written for a person to read; it does not affect scoring.
Entry Point	Marks this step as where the path begins.
Terminal	Marks this step as where the path ends.

Chaining is what makes it a path

Step order alone does not connect anything. A step is joined to the one after it under Next Steps, using Add next step… on the earlier step.

The interface says this in both directions. A step with nothing before it reads No previous step, and tells you to edit the step you want to chain in and add this step under its Next Steps. A step with nothing after it reads No next step.

Because a step can have more than one next step, a path can fork.

Example: a senior engineer step at HC Corp UK Ltd can name both a staff engineer step and an engineering manager step as next steps. Both routes then appear when someone explores from senior engineer.

One entry point, one terminal step

Setting Entry Point on a step when another step already holds it asks you to confirm the replacement, naming the step that currently holds it. The same applies to Terminal. These are exclusive: the path has one start and one end, and setting a new one removes the old.

Draft until you activate it

A new path is not yet published. Activate makes it available in career exploration; Archive retires it without deleting it.

Option	Description
Draft	Being built. Not offered to employees exploring their options.
Active	Published. Appears in exploration and can be searched for as a route.
Archived	Retired but retained.

Deleting a path cannot be undone, and the confirmation says so. Archive instead unless the path was created in error.

Example: an engineering path at HC Corp is built as a draft over two afternoons, checked with Olivia Bennett, and only then activated. Nobody plans against a half-built route.

The AI column

The list shows an AI column marking paths Humavera generated rather than ones somebody drew. A generated path is a proposal for you to review — read its steps, correct anything that does not match how your company actually promotes people, and activate it yourself.

What happens next

An active path appears in career exploration, where employees see the recommended next step from their current role and can search for routes between two roles. Setting a step as a target produces a readiness score against that step’s job profile, and the gaps that score names are what a development plan is built to close.