Main conference presentation

Creating career paths for UX professionals

Kristen Johansen

Sunday April 13 2008, 3:30 - 5:15PM

What makes a Senior IA? Is going down the management path the only way to get ahead? Do you need a team of generalists or specialists? How do you know when to promote someone? Are you hiring the person or the job description? These are questions all managers face, but some answers are better than others.

Defining career paths within a UX group is an easy thing to do, yet many managers never get around to doing it. This session presents a framework around which you can clearly define roles, set goals, and provide clear opportunities for career advancement for your team.

I’ve found that using this career pathing framework has increased job satisfaction for my direct reports, created a way to facilitate conversations about career advancement and performance, improved our recruiting process and helped me to be a better manager.

This session will cover:

• Defining structure: exploring agency vs. in-house group models
• Defining parallel tracks: people management vs. technical leadership paths
• Creating job descriptions, titles, job families and salary grades
• Recruiting and selecting great team members – the difference between job descriptions and job ads, using career pathing as a recruiting tool
• Using career pathing documents: creating development plans, setting goals, and using them to deal with difficult conversations about performance, expectations and compensation.