Competencies and career paths bring structured role expectations and career ladder information into 15Five, enabling role clarity conversations and career development planning between managers and employees. Admins configure this content in Career Hub and optionally in performance reviews.
Feature Structure
Competencies
Competencies are measurable clusters of knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes an employee needs to perform their role successfully. Once configured, competencies are visible in:
- Career Hub — accessible to employees and managers
- Performance review question templates — when competency questions are added
- Feature settings — where admins manage and upload competency data
See Add competency questions to a question template for instructions on including competencies in a review cycle.
Career paths
Career paths (also called career ladders) show employees what roles exist across departments and what competencies, skills, and key behaviors those roles require. Career paths are visible in the Career Paths & Roles tab of Career Hub.
Each career path is uploaded by an account admin via CSV. The CSV supports the following fields:
| Field | Required |
|---|---|
| Path | Yes |
| Job title | Yes |
| Key behavior | Yes |
| Competency | No |
| Skill | No |
One competency can group multiple skills and key behaviors. Supported path structures include:
- Job title > Competency > Skill > Key behaviors
- Job title > Competency > Key behaviors
- Job title > Skill > Key behaviors
- Job title > Key behaviors
Skills
Skills are job-specific abilities — for example, "Strategic fluency" or "Concise writing." Skills appear in the Skills tab of Career Hub and in career path exports.
Key behaviors
Key behaviors are role-level expectations — for example, a description of how a person at a given level approaches data analysis or product strategy. Key behaviors appear in Career Hub and in career path exports.
Where competencies appear
| Surface | Who sees it | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| Career Paths & Roles tab (Career Hub) | Employees, managers | All uploaded career paths and associated role competencies |
| Competencies tab (Career Hub) | Employees, managers | Skills and behaviors required for success in each role |
| Performance review question templates | Review participants | Competency assessment questions when added by an admin |
| Feature settings (Admin) | Account admins | Upload, edit, and manage career path and competency CSV data |
Key Rules
- Career paths can only be created via CSV import. Existing path content (competencies tied to a role, key behavior text, path name) can be edited manually in the UI.
- Uploading competencies to 15Five before uploading a career paths CSV allows you to connect competencies to skills and key behaviors in the CSV.
- Use one CSV file per career path to reduce import errors.
- Use the exact job titles shown in 15Five for all employees. Matching job titles enables 15Five to connect career path data across features. See Add People to 15Five — Overview of Methods for how to check and upload job titles.
- Competency, skill, and key behavior are structural hierarchy terms used in the CSV. They are not displayed as labels in the Career Hub UI — only the content itself appears.
What You Can Do
Set Up
- Add competency questions to a question template
- Add Users via Bulk CSV Import — for uploading job title data used to connect career paths to employee records