Entry Level and Beyond: Job Level Classification Guide

Job titles may differ, but the need for clarity doesn’t. Whether you’re hiring your first employee or restructuring a global workforce, defining job levels is more than a formality; it’s a business advantage. Entry-level roles are where careers begin, but without a structured path, they may also be where potential stalls. That’s why starting with well-crafted role descriptions is essential, they lay the groundwork for accurate classification and long-term talent growth.

For organizations embracing offshore staffing or scaling distributed teams, clarity around job levels creates a common language. At Penbrothers, we help clients build this language from the ground up, ensuring their outsourced teams are classified not just by cost, but by contribution. Explore how we help companies find, hire, and build their offshore teams.

What Is Job Level Classification?

Job level classification is a structured way to categorize roles based on experience, skill, responsibility, and impact. Think of it as a roadmap for organizational design. It brings consistency to your job titles, compensation plans, performance evaluations, and succession strategies.

With job classification:

• You define what “entry level” really means.
• You align roles with real business outcomes.
• You future-proof your talent strategies as your organization scales.

Mercer’s Global Job Architecture Pulse Survey highlights that over half (54%) of organizations feel their job architecture enables career development and mobility, indicating a positive impact on internal talent movement.

Job Classification vs. Job Grading: What’s the Difference?

The terms are often used interchangeably, but they serve different purposes.

Job classification groups similar roles based on shared traits like tasks, qualifications, and responsibilities. These are labeled with clear, descriptive titles such as Administrative Assistant or Software Developer.

Job grading, on the other hand, uses numeric or alphabetic scales to rank roles. It’s more focused on comparative weight factoring in skills, decision-making scope, and organizational impact.

For instance, Whereby uses a 7-level system ranging from entry level to C-suite:

• Level 1: Inaugurate
• Level 2: Associate I, Associate II
• Level 3: Partner I, Partner II
• Level 4: Lead I, Lead II
• Level 5: Director
• Level 6: VP
• Level 7: C Suite

This type of framework can help standardize job roles across markets especially valuable when working with offshore staffing partners like Penbrothers.

Typical Job Levels: From Entry Level to Executive

Organizations may customize levels, but these tiers are most common:

• Entry Level: Fresh graduates, junior staff, and early-career professionals. These roles are task-oriented, supervised, and often the training ground for future leaders.
• Mid-Level: Specialists, analysts, or coordinators who take ownership of small projects or manage junior team members.
• Senior-Level: Experienced professionals making department-level decisions or leading major initiatives.
• Managerial: Leaders managing teams, departments, or processes. Strategic focus begins here.
• Director & Executive: Responsible for aligning their function with company-wide objectives. Vision-driven and outcome-oriented.

The OECD Employment Outlook 2023 highlighted that organizations implementing well-defined job ladders and progression paths saw better retention, especially at the mid-level tier.

Job Families and Career Progression Paths

A job family is a group of roles that share a similar functional discipline, skillset, and general purpose even if the specific responsibilities differ by level. Think of it as an internal ecosystem where each role is a rung on a well-structured ladder. Common job families include Marketing, Finance, Engineering, Customer Success, and Human Resources.

Organizing roles into job families helps companies structure career progression more intentionally and fairly. It also reduces ambiguity when working with distributed teams or outsourcing recruitment services.

Within each family, clear job levels serve three critical functions:

• They outline growth from entry-level to leadership
  Employees see a tangible pathway forward from learning the basics to leading a team. This supports engagement and reduces turnover, especially among early-career hires.
• They define technical and soft skills required at each stage
  Progression isn’t just about tenure. It’s about mastery. For instance, moving from Specialist to Manager often requires leadership competencies, cross-functional collaboration, and decision-making skills on top of technical expertise.
• They prevent role inflation and promote internal equity
  Without a clear structure, it’s easy to over-title roles to attract candidates or meet salary expectations. Job families keep titles meaningful and aligned with actual scope and responsibilities.

Example: Marketing Job Family

• Social Media Coordinator (Entry-Level): Executes daily posts, monitors comments, and tracks basic metrics.
• Marketing Specialist (Mid-Level): Owns campaign execution, A/B testing, and supports strategy development.
• Marketing Manager (Senior-Level): Leads a team, manages budgets, and coordinates with Sales or Product teams.
• Director of Marketing (Executive-Level): Sets vision, aligns marketing with business goals, and oversees cross-channel strategies.

This structure isn’t just helpful for internal clarity, it’s vital when outsourcing. See our latest salary guide to benchmark offshore roles across job families.

When you outsource roles with Penbrothers, we help clients understand where each offshore team member fits within these job families ensuring parity with onshore roles.

Key Criteria for Classifying Roles

• Scope of Responsibilities
  What’s the breadth and complexity of the work? Entry-level roles may be task-focused with defined parameters, while higher levels may own entire workflows or business functions.
• Competency Level
  Both technical and behavioral competencies matter. From foundational skills at the entry level to strategic leadership capabilities at senior tiers, competency frameworks help distinguish not just what someone does, but how they do it.
• Decision-Making Authority
  Roles should be classified by the degree of autonomy and influence they carry whether operational (day-to-day tasks), tactical (mid-term planning), or strategic (long-term vision).
• Organizational Impact
  How does the role contribute to business outcomes? Direct impact could involve driving revenue or managing teams, while indirect impact may include supporting functions or enabling infrastructure.
• Industry-Specific Considerations
  Job levels should reflect nuances unique to your sector such as regulatory complexity in finance, technical specialization in software, or compliance demands in healthcare.
• Employment Type & Structure
  While full-time roles tend to anchor classification systems, companies must increasingly factor in part-time, freelance, or offshore roles especially when leveraging outsourcing recruitment services.
• Compensation Alignment
  Pay bands should map clearly to job levels. Classification isn’t just about titles, it’s about ensuring equity and market competitiveness at every step of the org chart. Use our offshoring salary calculator to model compensation by role and region.

The World Economic Forum’s Report notes that 44% of workers’ core skills are expected to change in the next five years, underscoring the need for organizations to adapt their job classifications to remain resilient and agile in the evolving labor market.

At Penbrothers, we guide clients through this complexity ensuring their offshore teams are not only hired efficiently but also mapped accurately within their global job architecture.

Building a Job Leveling Matrix

A job leveling matrix is a visual tool that maps roles against levels and expectations. It ensures:

• Internal fairness across departments.
• Transparency for employees seeking career advancement.
• Standardized expectations across global and offshore teams.

When clients work with Penbrothers, we help them co-create this matrix so that remote team members are aligned in impact and accountability with their global counterparts.

According to LinkedIn’s 2023 Global Talent Trends, 61% of HR leaders plan to restructure or reclassify job roles in the next 12 months to improve clarity and transparency across hybrid and remote teams.

Best Practices for Creating a Job Level Classification System

A job classification framework isn’t just a tool for HR, it’s a business asset. When done right, it brings consistency, transparency, and fairness to how teams are built, managed, and developed. Here’s how to get it right:

1. Be Consistent Across Functions and Markets

Uniformity across departments, teams, and even geographies is non-negotiable. Use the same set of classification criteria across the board, regardless of whether the role is in your headquarters or managed offshore.

Example: Promoting a remote employee to “Senior Specialist” should follow the same standards as someone based in your home office. This builds trust and reinforces equity across your organization.

2. Ground Classifications in Objective, Measurable Criteria

Avoid subjective assumptions or personal biases. Use both quantitative and qualitative factors:

• Quantitative: Years of experience, required certifications, education
• Qualitative: Decision-making authority, communication skills, business impact

Think of it like engineering: precision matters more than gut feel.

3. Build in Flexibility Without Sacrificing Structure

Rigid systems break when companies grow. Your classification model should accommodate evolving roles and new functions especially important as you adopt new technologies, expand to new markets, or scale your offshore teams.

For example: If you suddenly need a “Customer Success Enablement Manager” to support growth in your Asia-Pacific operations, your system should be able to accommodate that without confusion.

4. Prioritize Transparency Internally and Across Borders

Clarity prevents misalignment. Be upfront about how roles are classified, what it takes to move up, and why someone holds a particular title. This is especially vital when integrating offshore team members who may otherwise feel left out of internal development paths.

Tip: Set expectations during onboarding, and revisit them during 1:1s or performance reviews to reinforce fairness and mobility.

5. Audit Your System Regularly

Job roles evolve and so should your framework. Conduct periodic reviews to catch misalignments or outdated role definitions. This ensures you’re not under-leveraging talent or misclassifying roles across geographies.

Example: If a “Client Engagement Lead” in your offshore team is performing at the same level as a “Client Success Manager” in your HQ, that discrepancy needs to be corrected.

Final Thoughts

Classifying roles isn’t just a paperwork exercise. It’s the foundation of scalable hiring, equitable pay, and long-term employee development. And it all starts with defining entry level right.

As more businesses outsource to the Philippines or hire offshore teams, job level classification becomes a strategic lever. Penbrothers supports clients in making sure every hire, no matter where they are, fits into the big picture.

Want to build clarity, consistency, and growth into your workforce? Let’s start.