- [Narrator] Before we dive into growth plans,
we have to define career progression requirements.
Career progression requirements outline the skills necessary
to advance from one level to another.
If you lead multiple teams,
you could also consider establishing requirements
for cross-functional progression as well.
But given our focus on entry level talent,
we'll keep it simple
and focus on progression within a specific role.
The following slides provide a high level overview
of a career progression plan that I rolled out
to a security team I led in a previous role.
The goal is to provide you with a baseline structure
to leverage when developing requirements for your own team.
Let's assume you've defined three skill levels
for a security consultant role.
Level one is the entry level.
Level two is mid level.
And level three, the senior level.
Here, we have a clear outline
of the progression opportunities available within the role.
An entry level or level one employee
can clearly see that they have plenty of room to grow,
so now let's help them understand how to improve
and where to focus their efforts.
As you can see here,
I've included two skills categories for us to consider,
security skills and interpersonal skills.
When defining your requirements,
the categories should align
to the desired performance outcomes.
For example, in the requirements
that were rolled out to my former team,
we included two additional skills categories,
technology skills and sales skills.
Be careful though
not to overwhelm your team with too many categories.
Next, we'll double click into each category
and define the required skills at each level.
For simplicity's sake,
I'm only going to include one or two requirements
in each category,
but you should of course
be as detailed as you deem necessary.
The key performance indicators are bolded and italicized
to make it easy to view the main differences
at each level.
We can see that our level one consultant
is required to demonstrate
foundational level security knowledge
across one vertical in the security category,
and have the ability to establish working relationships
in the interpersonal category.
Now, when we move up to level two,
the skillset becomes a bit more demanding.
The mid-level consultant
must demonstrate intermediate level knowledge
across a minimum of two verticals
in the security skills category,
and establish trusted advisor status
in the interpersonal skills category.
It's worth noting that some level of detail will be required
to distinguish the differences.
For example, an employee
will likely want to understand the difference
between foundational versus intermediate level knowledge
and potentially working relationship
versus trusted advisor status.
You can either include these details in the document
or provide examples
when reviewing the requirements with the team.
In my case, we started out including the descriptions,
then removed them
in favor of more opportunity for conversation
and tailored coaching.
Also, note that a certification requirement
has been introduced at this level.
This creates a great opportunity
for you as a leader to motivate and incentivize your team
by investing in their training and certification efforts.
Finally, at the senior level,
we can clearly see
that expert level security skills are required
across multiple verticals,
more advanced certifications are required,
and a proactive engagement requirement
has been added to interpersonal skills.
Your mid-level employees will now have a clear understanding
of what's required of them
prior to advancing into a senior role,
and can plan
their career development activities accordingly.
Documented career progression requirements
provide you and your teams
with tangible, measurable criteria for career advancement.
And that's great,
but it still feels like something is missing.
Hmm, any ideas?
Well, if you feel like we've done a great job
of defining what needs to be done
but not necessarily how it should be done,
you're spot on.
What we need now is a plan for meeting these requirements.
Yep, a growth plan.
Fortunately for you and your team,
that's our next topic of discussion.