McMaster-Carr Career Growth & Development

What makes promotion criteria feel fair and clear — and what evidence supports it? 

I’m never surprised when I see someone get promoted. I’ve usually heard about the work they’ve been doing and the impact they’re making in our department, or someone I know has. It really makes me feel like a promotion is a reward for consistently doing good work. On top of that we have a set of competencies that we use to guide reviews and help determine when someone is ready for a promotion. The competencies build on top of each other as you advance through the roles and act as guidance for how to grow yourself and your career.

Which program most improved your capability in your role — and what changed after?

While I have participated in a variety of different programs outside of my project work at McMaster, I think my project work is actually the main way that I’ve been able to grow here. We structure our teams around our project work, so in the last five years I’ve worked on several different teams and have been given a variety of different opportunities based on the needs of each project. This has provided me time to focus on skills like communicating with non-technical stakeholders, coaching engineers, modernizing legacy systems, designing greenfield systems, and many more. All of these opportunities have allowed me to expand my impact in our department and advance my career.

What manager or mentor behavior consistently accelerates growth?

All of my managers at McMaster have consistently made an effort to assign stretch work to ensure I’m learning new things and developing my skills. Now that I’m in management I’ve carried this into my planning meetings too. Every couple weeks when we’re deciding how to assign project work, one of the factors we consider is whether any of the work items represent a good growth opportunity for a member of the team. This allows us to consistently give people growth opportunities that align with our competencies and allow them to take steps forward in their careers. This practice is widespread in our department and reflects our high expectations as well as the support that we want to provide our team members. My managers have also generally been open to me initiating work based on needs that I see in our project or the department as a whole. Designing and implementing features and tools that I’ve advocated for has been a great way for me to learn and benefit our department.

Career growth can mean different things to different people. For some engineers and managers, it means growing their impact in the organization and contributing to larger projects. For others, it means building more depth in new technologies or becoming an expert at a particular skill. At McMaster-Carr, individuals can try out both managerial roles and engineering roles rather than needing to commit to a path, so growth can also look like preparing for a different role.