Career Development Metrics might be defined as a process of measurement of career development in an organization.

What is Career Development?
Career Development or Career Development Planning refers to the process an individual may undergo to evolve their occupational status.

It is the process of making decisions for long-term learning, to align personal needs of physical or psychological fulfillment with career advancement opportunities.

Gone are the days when people used to work until retirement. In today's world, when there is so much to achieve, employees can't afford to be static. They need continuous development and evolvement.

A career program in such a scenario tries to strike a balance between the employee requirements and objectives and the organization's requirements and objectives. 

Some of the career development metrics are as follows;
1. Number of people promoted during a certain period: This is one of the important career development metrics, which gives an idea about the possibilities of promotion or growth in an organization.

If there are fewer people promoted in a year or after completion of the Performance Management Cycle, it shows that the organization believes in hiring more people from outside and is not promoting internal staff.

2. Number of open positions filled from inside the organization compared to no of positions filled from outside the organization: As this sentence is self-explanatory, if we are providing more opportunities to people from within the organization, it makes a career switch easy for employees and they are associated with the organization for a longer time.

Also, how many references are we using or if there is cross-departmental training is something that gives a better opportunity to employees as they can increase their skills.

For Example, in Hotel Industry, cross-departmental training and transfers are common, which allows hotels to run on even as low as 70% of the overall manpower.

3. Trend for the number of internal applicants: If there is a trend with regards to employees applying for cross-departmental positions, it gives a good idea that the organization is open to train employees and also allow them to exceed further in their career.

4. Reduction of recruitment costs associated with internal hiring: This career development metrics shows the efficiency of internal hiring and also shows if the organization is open to career or skill development opportunities.

This can be checked by comparing external and internal hiring costs.

When people make internal transfers, they are already aware of the culture of the organization and hence they might only require to learn new skills in order to exceed in their careers. This again reduces the recruitment costs and time for sourcing.

5. Greater self-awareness among employees: The effectiveness of the career development program can also be measured by the degree of increase in self-awareness among employees. If they feel that they have achieved greater self-awareness and self-determination and acquired necessary and useful information about their career, the program is definitely a big success.