The top 5 features of a career mobility platform
The five features below are some of the most powerful tools a career mobility platform can offer, propelling individuals toward their career goals with precision and purpose.
1. A catalog of education and skilling programs aligned with company needs

This is key: The more aligned the programs in an employer’s catalog are to the open roles at their company, the higher the probability that employees will actually achieve career mobility.
The programs in an employer’s catalog should:
Align with internal mobility opportunities: Show a clear connection between the skills employee need & the programs that will teach them those skills.
Be financially accessible to those who stand to benefit the most from them: Employees at any job & income level should be able to access learning opportunities. In other words, provide a robust catalog of Tuition Assistance programs in which employers cover tuition costs upfront (versus reimbursement).
Be flexible: Programs should be designed to meet the needs of employees as working adult learners (e.g. dynamic online learning, options for self-paced learning, access to learning tools and resources online).
Be vetted for quality: With over 4,000 degree programs in the US alone –and exponentially more short-form and certificate programs – learning and skilling programs should be rigorously vetted for quality, learner outcomes, and alignment with business needs.
Meet a broad range of learning needs. Some employees may want to complete their GED, pursue English language fluency, or earn their MBA (and some may want to achieve all three eventually).
For Guild employer partners: We help your employees navigate this catalog in a user-friendly, interactive way. They can even take a quiz to see what programs best align with their own interests.
For a deeper dive on this topic, check out our guide on how to design education benefits to enable career mobility.
2. Clearly defined career pathways
Career pathways are a critical part of any effective career mobility program.
They refer to sets of roles that exist across an organization — from frontline to “destination” roles, the skills that connect them, and the on-and off-ramps between them.

Although each person’s career pathway will look different, career mobility platforms offer pre-built pathways that connect multiple roles, particularly priority roles organizations need to fill.
Here’s the win-win: These pathways not only help employees explore and choose education programs that align with their own goals, but also their organization’s priority growth areas.
Finally, these pre-built career pathways can be turned on immediately, but can also be tailored to fit unique organizational needs.
3. End-to-end education benefit administration
Career mobility platforms should provide support within the platform for employees to understand their education benefit and their eligibility. They can also show how much funding has been used, and how much is available for the current benefit period.
Career mobility platforms also take a number of administrative burdens off employer’s plates, from:
Program administration
Invoicing
Data synthesization
The secret sauce: Progression data
Progression data is important both for measuring success and for refining talent strategies.
Tracking learner progress in their education programs helps companies understand how well employees are persisting and how close they are to completing a program.
Reporting dashboards can help:
Scope internal pipelines: Talent executives can better understand the size and shape of internal pipelines
Prep internal hiring managers: Internal hiring managers determine when to reach out to employees who are close to becoming qualified for priority roles
Fast-track your internal mobility goals: These features – when used correctly – can help employers reach their internal mobility scores significantly faster
When career mobility platforms have deep data integrations with their learning partners, progression data can also be used to improve program participation.
For a closer look at this process, here is a case study on how Guild worked with a learning partner to optimize their programs for first-time college students.
4. Personalized coaching and support services
According to the statistics below, coaching consistently proves to improve employee persistence and confidence in their education and skilling programs, and helps these learners stay:
When it comes to coaches, instead of just having third-party technical support, it is extremely beneficial to have coaches that are in-house and aligned with your current talent strategy and goals.
“[My coach] kept me strong, accountable, even through all my bad times… She was wonderful. She listened, gave criticism, told me affirmations, and told me how great I was doing. I don't know what I would've done without her all this time helping me and supporting me... I just can't say enough about her."
Recent Guild graduate and future analyst, Bachelor of Web Development
They’ll be able to better articulate to your employees what the growth areas of your business are and where they are more likely to find career mobility.

For Guild employers: Guild’s enhanced coaching services include career coaching.
Career coaches help employees prepare for the next step in their career journey, whether it’s by:
Learning how to navigate LinkedIn or
How to identify new job opportunities or
Prepping mock interview questions
Guild coaches support employees all the way through their career development journey.
5. Career development resources
The secret to an agile workforce?
Empower your workers to navigate career pathways with confidence. This is where career development resources play a pivotal role.
Career development resources help employees gain the confidence they need to successfully move into a new role. These resources can be a combination of self-paced and guided:
Interactive skills modules offered at different levels of skill fluency help employees prepare for the career advancement process. Guild’s Career Accelerator tool, for example, provides multi-modal, self-paced modules to help members learn how to build a resume, prepare for an interview, network and grow their social capital, and more.
Career discovery pages embedded in the platform help employees to explore internal roles available to them. This resource is important as employees are considering how they want to grow their careers, as well as visibility into roles aligned with their skills.
Guided support from an expert helps employees discuss goals, options, and strategies for mobility in personalized 1:1 sessions.
“The #1 most impactful practice for driving business, talent, and innovation outcomes is creating extensive career growth opportunities.”
The Josh Bersin Company research study of 94 L&D practices across 1,000+ organizations