Everyone’s professional journey is unique, yet collectively, career path data illuminates the future of work. By understanding these patterns, businesses, educational institutions, and communities can make informed decisions about connecting talent with the right opportunities.
Lightcast introduces Career Pathways, a groundbreaking tool designed to navigate the evolving world of work. Leveraging an extensive database of job postings, professional profiles, and skills data, this innovative Career Pathway Tool reveals how individuals can advance and thrive in today’s job market. Career Pathways is readily accessible through Talent Analyst, Analyst for education, and Developer, or via API for customized integrations. Explore its capabilities through these platforms, or contact us to discover how this career pathway tool can benefit you.
Instead of limiting perspectives to specific industries and traditional promotion ladders, Career Pathways adopts a wider lens, identifying job roles with similar skill sets. This comprehensive approach provides a holistic view of the job market, complementing existing data within Analyst, such as demand fluctuations and compensation benchmarks.
Despite varying sectors and responsibilities, numerous jobs share common skill requirements. Utilizing the Lightcast Occupation Taxonomy, along with established taxonomies like O*NET and SOC, our data pinpoints these skill overlaps. This unveils new talent pools for employers and empowers workers to achieve upward mobility by leveraging a robust career pathway tool.
Focusing on skills, this career pathway tool not only differentiates between jobs but also offers clear guidance on the essential skills needed for career progression. Within Career Pathways, job-to-job transitions are categorized into four key types:
- Similar: Roles with comparable salaries within the same occupational group.
- Lateral Transition: Roles with comparable salaries requiring a shift to a different occupational group.
- Advancement: Higher-paying roles within the same occupational group.
- Lateral Advancement: Higher-paying roles necessitating a move to a new occupational group.
Consider the occupation of a Teller. With a career pathway tool like this, it becomes evident that a Teller possesses many skills transferable to roles like Banking Branch Manager (Advancement) or Financial Services Sales Agent (Lateral Advancement). While significant skill overlap facilitates these transitions, and data confirms their viability and financial benefits, the career pathway tool also highlights new skills a Teller would need to acquire for success in these new positions.
Analyzing “feeder” jobs yields similar insights. A diverse range of occupations can lead to a lateral advancement as a Customer Service Representative. Jobs with the strongest skill alignment include Retail Sales Associate, Baggage Attendant, Fast Food/Counter Worker, and Personal Shopper, all identified through our career pathway tool.
Career Pathways pinpoints these crucial skills for both next-step and feeder jobs, enabling individuals to pursue targeted training to bridge skill gaps. This makes it an invaluable career pathway tool for personal and professional development.
Image alt text: Career Pathways tool showcasing four categories of job transitions: Similar, Lateral Transition, Advancement, and Lateral Advancement, illustrating career mobility based on skills and salary changes.
Leveraging Career Pathways for Strategic Growth
Employers can harness Career Pathways to broaden their talent acquisition strategies. In a persistently competitive labor market, businesses that tap into the widest possible candidate pool gain a significant advantage. Analyst, powered by this career pathway tool, provides this edge by expanding recruitment beyond conventional promotions, revealing the full spectrum of potential talent and their skillsets. Because Career Pathways is skill-centric, it promotes inclusivity, welcoming individuals regardless of industry background, educational degrees, prior experience, or other barriers that might hinder job seekers from finding optimal roles. This career pathway tool helps create a more equitable and efficient hiring process.
Community leaders can utilize Career Pathways to guide individuals towards the most promising jobs and relevant training programs within their region. For instance, in the event of large-scale layoffs affecting machinists, this career pathway tool can identify roles demanding similar skill profiles, such as engineering or robotics positions, facilitating seamless career transitions. Where skill discrepancies exist between previous roles and desired next steps, community leaders can leverage insights from this career pathway tool to develop targeted education and training initiatives, preparing workers for successful transitions. This makes Career Pathways a powerful career pathway tool for regional economic development.
Higher education institutions can empower students and alumni to maximize their career trajectories with Career Pathways. Graduates entering the workforce need to understand how their initial roles pave the way for future advancement. Career Pathways’ emphasis on skills is also pivotal for faculty in curriculum design, students in major selection, and institutions in tracking alumni career progression. By understanding the skills demanded by target jobs through this career pathway tool, students can strategically choose courses aligning with their aspirations. This career pathway tool becomes essential for career services and academic advising.
Informed decision-making is rooted in access to superior data, and Career Pathways delivers precisely that. Whether the objective is talent acquisition, workforce development, or individual career advancement, this innovative career pathway tool provides the essential data for success.
Image alt text: Screenshot of the Career Pathways tool interface, demonstrating its visual and interactive features for exploring career paths and skill requirements, emphasizing user-friendly design and data visualization.
Watch our complimentary webinar to delve deeper into Career Pathways, featuring product demonstrations, usage tips, insights into its development, and practical use cases. Whether you are focused on talent acquisition for your organization or supporting individual career success, this webinar offers valuable information about this career pathway tool.
Current Lightcast clients can connect with their account representatives to explore Career Pathways within Talent Analyst, Analyst for education, and Developer. New to Lightcast? Get in touch to learn more and begin leveraging the power of this career pathway tool today.
