Overview of the Career Family Classification System

The Career Family Classification System (CFCS) is a market referenced system consisting of elements that links current University positions to relevant market data. The CFCS elements include Career Family, Career Band, Job Role, and Market Title. These elements provide an environment in which related jobs are viewed in common career groupings.

Career Family

A foundational basis for the Classification framework is the concept of Career Family, a broad meaningful grouping of jobs commonly clustered within a career emphasis. Content of defined work within a job is the key criteria in determining the family into which a job falls. This element mirrors how jobs are often marketed on recruitment or job posting web sites, and is a common way that people define their overall career area or discipline. Additional career families can be added to as disciplines or the needs of the units of the University change over time. The CFCS currently contains 20 career families that represent the broad groupings of jobs found at the University of Michigan.

Career Band

Career Families are further differentiated by Career Bands which are sub-sets of more specialized jobs within each Career Family. Currently there are 81 Career Bands in the CFCS. Career Bands represent titles commonly marketed on recruitment or job posting web sites. More importantly, Career Bands help an individual define meaningful career paths by showing related specialty areas in the same Career Family so an employee can evaluate the difference between related jobs and the key skills required for each.

Job Role

Every position falls into one of three job roles that reflect the level of general organizational impact: professional, managerial or executive.

Market Title

The Market Title is derived from a comparison of job duties to the duties of related jobs in the external market found in salary surveys. By titling the University’s classifications in parallel with similar jobs in the market we can make direct comparisons to related jobs and compensation levels as well as communicate with external job applicants using the job titles most familiar and meaningful to them. When a particular job at the University has no similar job in the market, a custom description and title is developed.

Working Title

The Working Title is an optional customized title that provides greater understanding of the responsibilities and scope of the job than does the market title. Working titles are set by the unit or department.