Career Tracks

Career Tracks is the job classification structure that aligns jobs at the University to their respective labor market by occupation and supports the development of possible career paths designed to enhance career mobility. Levels for individual contributor, supervisory and management roles within each distinct functional area are defined consistently across occupations and with the labor market for comparable jobs.

Career Tracks organizes jobs into families, functions, categories and levels which corresponds to specific job codes and salary grades. Job categories and career levels are used as needed within each family and function. Each staff member will receive a new job description, or job standard, based on this structure which will be further customized to the position.

UC Riverside Career Tracks Salary Structure

Career Tracks Structure

Job Family: A group of jobs in the same general occupation (e.g. Finance)

Job Function: A more specific area within a family (e.g. General Accounting)

Job standards within families fall into one of the categories in this illustration.

Defining jobs using consistent definitions of function, category, and career level (rather than using generic titles such as "analyst" or "manager") allows accurate pay comparisons with other employers in our labor market for comparable jobs.

Job Families and Functions
Job Categories and Levels

compensation_career-tracks_career-tracks-illustrated

Career Tracks – Career Mobility

This chart illustrates career mobility in the Career Tracks structure. Every job in the Career Tracks structure will fall within a cell on the chart.

At the highest level, jobs are organized by job family and function.

A job family is a grouping of jobs that are related. Within each job family, jobs are more narrowly defined by occupation, or job function. Jobs are further defined by category, which defines the type of work performed, as opposed to the occupation or subject matter.

There are three categories, Operational & Technical, Professional (individual contributors) and Supervisors and Managers, who achieve results through the efforts of staff.

Lastly, jobs are defined by career level that defines the scope, impact, responsibility and requirements of a given job title within a job category and function. The number of available levels within a given job family has been determined by looking at market survey data and working with subject matter experts for that family and function. For example, a Financial Analyst in the Professional job category could be a level 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 professional.

Career Tracks Supports the development of career paths that enhance career mobility and development by defining options for next steps in a career progression within a job function.

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Job Descriptions

As part of the Career Tracks implementation, Human Resources generated individual job descriptions based on the relevant job standard for each position which transitioned to Career Tracks. All UC staff who are not represented by unions and are not part of the Senior Management Group (SMG) are mapped to the Career Tracks structure. Academic and represented positions are not mapped to the Career Tracks structure.

Job Description Tip Sheet

This resource will guide you through on how to seamlessly complete a job description and includes tips on how to get started, effective job writing, common action verbs and more.

Job Description Tip Sheet

Consistent Methodology

With the collaborative work between HR and each of the organizational units, Career Tracks ensures a high degree of consistency across the campus and across the system. This continues to be critically important to the integrity of the systemwide initiative, all campuses agreed to abide by a set of procedures to ensure consistency, and to actively engage in leveling our positions to reflect a single set of standards.

As we reviewed hundreds of job descriptions, comparator positions, and the leveling of positions, we applied that consistent methodology in reviewing the system-wide job standards.

With Career Tracks, we have a classification structure that reflects the external job market and makes it easy to identify relevant benchmarks and comparators. Our structure, based on specific job families and functions, allows us to map paths for career progression and individual employee development so that we can manage our careers at UCR. As other UC locations transition to the common Career Tracks structure, career planning can encompass positions across the UC system.