New tool to unlock potential for University staff
By Stephanie Oley

The University of Sydney has launched a sophisticated Career Capability Framework, matching University jobs against skills that can be developed through the Centre for Continuing Education.

With a workforce of around 8,500 and a consistently high rating as an employer, the University of Sydney offers many career opportunities for its professionals. Staff work across academic, administrative, financial, technological, managerial and other areas. Retaining talent is important to the University, which is why so many resources are available to encourage staff to explore career pathways internally.

Building on this ethos, the University recently launched its Career Capability Framework, which serves as a centralised platform to match University jobs via their shared capabilities. The Framework also explains how to develop these capabilities through a combination of on-the-job experience, mentoring and professional development.

Even better, University of Sydney professionals can enhance many of the capabilities described in the Framework by taking a short course right here at the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) – the professional development provider-next-door, as it were.

For some years, CCE's workshop offering has evolved in recognition of the fact that our society has entered the era of the '60-year curriculum'. Modern professionals are entering their careers through increasingly diverse channels, and interrupting them with personal commitments such as parenting or the pursuit of personal goals. We’re also working longer years compared to previous generations.

Short courses such as CCE’s are a valuable way to support evolving careers in such a setting.

What is the Career Capability Framework?

But first, some background. The idea for the Career Capability Framework was first floated in 2018 as a practical tool to support staff in their career advancement. A formal project began soon afterwards, with the bulk of the work completed over 3.5 years and the Framework formally launching in 2022.

To develop the Framework, its project leads worked with hundreds of University stakeholders to identify 90 individual job families, which were further categorised into 24 job family groups. They identified 13 core capabilities and 19 professional capabilities, with competency levels ranging from foundational to intermediate, advanced and expert.

The Framework offers greater clarity in identifying roles with transferable skills. For example, a project officer can learn about opportunities across the University – whether in business, engineering, philanthropy or elsewhere.

It also helps professionals understand how to advance within their chosen fields. As an example, an administrative officer seeking to become a project officer would simply need to open a role description, check the required capabilities, assess whether they have them, and finally learn how to obtain the skills.

And it’s working. Team members behind the Framework report that the tool has been accessed 5,000 times within the first two years of its launch, recording 1,451 unique visitor actions in 2024 alone. Staff have completed almost 150 training sessions based on its recommendations.

The Framework also helps hiring managers to improve hiring efficiency by defining jobs and capabilities using consistent, cross-referenceable job architecture and capability-aligned interview questions.

Upskilling with CCE to fill career gaps

As you might imagine, many job descriptions in the Framework refer to the top 10 in-demand skills regularly identified by key sources such as LinkedIn. These include data literacy, leadership, financial accountability and communication, all subjects available at CCE. Project leads from CCE and the Career Capability Framework collaborated closely throughout, creating a user-friendly mapping tool that matches relevant CCE courses to the desired capability and level.

CCE has origins as the University's adult education department, officially founded in 1984 but with roots dating as far back as 1886. Aligning with the University of Sydney's 2032 Strategy, CCE delivers high quality non-award short courses that enable the University to meet its aspiration of being a dynamic provider of lifelong learning.

More than 1,000 University of Sydney professionals attend our courses each year, thanks to an offering of over 150 professional development courses and average facilitator feedback rating of 4.7/5.

The Career Capability Framework also offers other learning pathways beyond CCE, ranging from short LinkedIn Learning modules to formal university courses.

Get started on the Career Capability Framework

If you haven’t checked the Framework already, as a University staff member you could start by reading about the Career Capability Framework on the University’s intranet (login required). Next, your career-planning journey might look like this:

1. Log in to the intranet’s Workday page and browse jobs of interest.
2. Click on a job description and scroll to the ‘Capabilities’ section, to gauge your current skillset and any gaps.
3. Scroll back to the Framework’s landing page to learn more about what these capabilities mean.
4. Cross-check the Framework’s ‘Learning Library’ to be linked to specific courses that develop these skills, ranging from 1-hour online courses to immersive workshops offered at CCE.
5. Apply for the role, confident you are using the correct language to describe existing and in-progress skills.

If this is your year for a meaningful career change, you’ll be interested to see what’s on offer within the University and the clear pathways to get there. Best of all, you can be confident that many of the job capabilities listed can be learned right here with CCE professional development courses.