By ISABELLE ROUGHOL
What does an editorial career ladder look like?
Again, let’s get concrete. Here are (summarised and simplified) guidelines for one of my roles at LinkedIn.
Ladder (manager track)
Lead news editor > Managing editor > Senior managing editor > Executive editor (director) > Executive editor 2 (senior director) > Editor-in-chief (VP)
Title
Executive editor
Level
Manager level 5
Role guidelines
- Manages a team of managing editors
- Scales a team & builds future leaders
- Owns multiple editorial lines of business
Individual guidelines
- Sets product vision and strategy
- Embodies culture and values
- Achieves consistent high scores for 360° feedback
- Recognised as a strong mentor and cross-functional partner, makes others feel part of a team
- Transforms the career trajectory of multiple team members; has hired, developed, promoted and retained top performers; bats far above average in hiring decisions
- Manages performance effectively and consistently; can manage with minimal oversight
- Effective participant and presenter in internal executive meetings
- Able and willing to resolve interdepartmental and interpersonal conflicts
- Creates and drives standards for departmental, cross-functional and company-wide communication and collaboration
- Excellent story editor; opens doors for top-level interviews
- Able to spot long-term trends and put plans in place to stay ahead of them
- Successfully puts into place structures that give the rest of the team more leverage
- Successfully uses data to drive strategy; teaches others how to
- Consistently makes tough calls on priorities and balances demands of the team
- Clear, metrics-backed results in multiple lines of business
- Consistently delivers above expectations
I’ve built a career ladder. Now what?
Early in my career, maybe 9 or 12 months into a role, I asked my editor-in-chief for a meeting. I had an idea to pitch, something to expand my role where I was already starting to feel the walls. I forget what I asked, it wasn’t more money, but I’ll never forget the response: “Isabelle, I can tell you’re ambitious. But you’re gonna have to learn to be patient.”
My boss was probably right but I left frustrated. “Wait your turn” doesn’t appease or focus a hungry 25-year-old. “Wait your turn, but here are the opportunities ahead and what you need to work on to get there” might. A career ladder is essential to retain and motivate your most go-getting staff. It gives managers and employees something tangible to work from in career conversations. It’s a good way to track succession planning, too. If you’re a manager and you don’t see anyone moving up the ladder behind you, worry.
The process also brings much needed transparency and fairness to career advancement. Titles and salaries should stand on more than forceful negotiating tactiques and chummy relations with the boss. Transparency in turn fosters greater diversity in the upper echelons of newsrooms. Advancement based on open and measurable criteria favour those who are good at their job, but not necessarily at tooting their own horn or squeezing money out of a tight purse. For managers, it’s a reassurance that their judgements are fair and factual.
This only works, however, if two conditions are fulfilled.
First, the career ladder is broadly distributed. It should be part of every employee’s onboarding documents. It should be the basis of every career conversation and frequently referred to when giving performance feedback. The ladder isn’t a tool for HR and managers to organise their team. It’s a map for employees to navigate their own careers.
Second, promotions actually happen. Don’t make empty promises. Once an employee has fulfilled all requirements in the ladder, they should be promoted within a reasonable timeframe. Promotions are contingent on budgets and organisational needs, sure, but that can’t last years. If there is nowhere for them to go in the organisation, be honest… and be ready to backfill that role.
This is the concluding part of this article. The first part had earlier been published.