Frequently Asked Questions

To find the position description for your job, log into the PageUp dashboard and follow these instructions:

Role 1 Users (Most Employees):

• Go to https://hokies.pageuppeople.com and log in using your 2-Factor Login credentials.
• From your dashboard, select "My position description" to view all the details of your job. 

Role 2 (and Higher) Users:

• Go to https://hokies.pageuppeople.com and log in using your 2-Factor Login credentials.
• From your dashboard, open the "hamburger" menu (☰) in the top left corner. Under the "Jobs" section, select "Manage position descriptions."
• In the "Employee Name" field, type in your legal name, then select "View."

If you are unable to find your position description, please speak with your supervisor or Human Resources (HR) representative.

Follow the steps for finding your position description, as shown above. 

Expand the caret in the bluebox dropdown to view either your staff, A/P, Research Faculty, or T/R classification.

For Staff, your classification is in the Role/Title field. See the Staff Classification section for information on how to understand your Role/Title field.

For A/P Faculty and Research Professional Faculty, your classification is in the Classification Title field. See the A/P Faculty Job Architecture Classifications or Research Professional Faculty section of this page for more information on how to understand your classification title.

For Teaching and Research Faculty, your faculty rank is in the Role/Title field. Please see the Faculty Handbook for further information.

If you are unable to find your classification title, please speak with your supervisor or Human Resources (HR) representative.

There are several ways an employee can move from one classification to another:

1. The most common reason for a change in an employee’s classification to occur is that they move from one position to another position in a different classification, typically through a competitive lateral move or promotion. The job catalog can help employees identify potential career progressions, sometimes outside of the current discipline, but in a related field. For example, an Academic Coordinator, Academic Advising may compete for a Senior Academic Coordinator, Student Success. This would be a natural career growth, within the same function, but moving into a different discipline.

2. A classification can be reviewed based on updates to a position description that reflect significant changes in the type of work that is being performed, autonomy, complexity, experience, knowledge, and scope of impact. This includes, but is not limited to, when:

• A position moves from being an individual contributor to being a people supervisor

• A department is being restructured and additional duties and responsibilities are being added to the position
• The requirements of the position have gradually but significantly changed based on university needs and the position description requires an update  

3. Reclassifications can sometimes occur due to internal promotion procedures and practices. Some departments have created internal promotion practices for some of their positions that align with the Staff and/or A/P Faculty job classification systems. 

• It is not always appropriate to have a structured promotional ladder for all types of positions, but the Classification and Compensation Team works with different departments on evaluating the need for structured promotion ladders for their positions, evaluating the university-wide impact of developing these promotion practices, and aligning them to the existing structure. 

Any change in classification requires the approval of a position’s supervisor, applicable departmental leadership, and the department’s HR Representative. Questions regarding your department’s internal classification review process should be directed to your supervisor or your Human Resources (HR) Representative. 

No, having a salary does not automatically mean you are exempt from overtime. Non-exempt Virginia Tech employees are compensated for overtime at 1.5 times their regular pay rate for hours worked over 40 in a workweek (Friday midnight - Friday midnight). Compensation may be in the form of pay or compensatory leave, determined by the department. Overtime must be pre-approved. If you have any further questions, please speak to your supervisor or your HR Representative.

Non-exempt staff at Virginia Tech must accurately record all hours worked and leave taken, typically through the Leave and Time Worked Reporting system or Banner Time Entry. Please speak with your supervisor if you are not aware what systems your department uses.

To be considered exempt, a position must pass a duties test, salary basis test, and a salary threshold test set by the Department of Labor (DOL). For further information on the exemption tests, visit our FLSA webpage.  

At Virginia Tech, all university and classified staff positions include both a role title and a Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) title, determined respectively by the Virginia Department of Human Resource Management (DHRM) and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Using both classifications helps ensure that positions can be compared consistently across the university and with external labor market standards. These classifications also determine the appropriate pay band for each position.

You can find your role title and SOC title in the blue box within your position description, or you can learn more by speaking with your HR representative.

If you are a university staff or classified staff employee at Virginia Tech, your position is aligned with the job structure established by the Virginia Department of Human Resource Management (DHRM). This structure defines your occupational family, career group, and role, which together provide more detail about your position title and classification.

• Occupational family: A broad category of jobs that share similar types of work and vocational characteristics.
• Career group: A more specific subset within an occupational family that reflects a defined occupational field commonly recognized in the labor market.
• Role: A group of related positions within a career group that represent varying levels of responsibility, expertise, and career progression. Virginia Tech uses roles to classify staff positions based on the duties and requirements outlined in the position description.

You can learn more about your role—and the structure behind it—by reviewing the DHRM job classification framework or by speaking with the HR representative for your area.

You can find more information on your Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) title by reviewing the SOC code assigned to your position. At Virginia Tech, SOC codes are used to further distinguish positions within the same role.

SOC codes are part of the federal classification system that groups workers into the specific occupation that best matches their job duties. Every staff position at Virginia Tech is assigned one of 867 detailed SOC occupations, which provides a clear, standardized description of the work performed.

To learn more about your SOC title, you can:

• Look up your SOC code on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website, which provides full occupational definitions.
• Speak with your HR representative, who can help explain how your SOC code was assigned and how it relates to your position.

Virginia Tech’s A/P faculty job architecture organizes more than 2,200 unique A/P faculty titles. It applies only to A/P faculty and does not include university or classified staff, who follow the Commonwealth of Virginia classification system, Research Professional Faculty, who follow their own VT internal structure, or Teaching and Research (T/R) faculty, who are classified under the Faculty Handbook.

The A/P faculty job architecture is built on 14 primary functions, approximately 80 sub‑functions, and about 150 disciplines.

A function is a broad job grouping with a shared organizational purpose.

A sub‑function is a more specific subset that require distinct knowledge within each function

A discipline is a group of jobs with the same nature of work, aligned with internal needs or external labor markets.  

A/P Faculty positions are also grouped into career tracks, which reflect distinct types of responsibilities. Virginia Tech uses five primary career tracks-academic, clinical, development, general administration, and technical/STEM—with an additional manager/leadership track for roles that include people supervision. 

Career track leveling is determined using five key indicators: autonomy, complexity, experience, knowledge, and scope of impact. Supervisory responsibility, which is defined as administrative responsibilities over subordinate positions, include recommendations for hiring and termination, writing evaluations, disciplinary actions, day-to-day oversight, long-term goal setting, and accountability for the performance and productivity of the employees.

A/P Faculty classifications are expressed as Classification Titles, which are separate and distinct from employees’ Working Titles (what they use day to day). 

More details are available on the A/P Faculty Job Architecture website or you can learn more by speaking with your  HR representative.

You can find your A/P classification in the blue box within your position description as described in the answers to the Employee Classification questions above. 

You should review your Classification Title and be familiar with its different components. This will help when you are looking for more information in the AP Faculty Job Catalog (described in the next section)

Your AP Classification Title will be structured like this example: 

General Coordinator, Business Ops & Admin- BOA-BOA-BOA-GI2

                     1                                            2                                   3

1. This is your Classification Title. This is different from your day to day working title (what you put in your signature block on your emails or have business cards identifying you as). This is for classification purposes only and tells us your career track and career track level. 
2. After the comma will be your Discipline. A Discipline is a description of the type of work expected by the position. The Discipline is important because it is the combination of the Discipline and the Career Track Level that is used to market price your position. The best place to review your Discipline is in the Job Catalog.

3. The last component is called the Job Code. This Code is for systems and analysis purposes and aligns with the position classification in a way that allows us to cross reference in spreadsheets, pull data across systems, and acts as a unique identifier for the classification. You do not need to understand this code; it contains all the same information as in the rest of the Classification Title.

More information about your A/P position classification—including your function, sub‑function, discipline, career track, career track level, and job summary—can be found in the job catalog. If you have any questions regarding your classification, please speak with your HR representative.

Virginia Tech’s Research Professional Faculty classification organizes unique Research Professional Faculty titles. It applies only to Research Professional faculty and does not include A/P Faculty, who follow a separate classification system, or university /classified staff, who follow the Commonwealth of Virginia classification system, or Teaching and Research (T/R) faculty, who are classified under the Faculty Handbook.

The Research Professional Faculty classification system is built on 1 Job Family (Research), 8 subfamilies, and about 63 specializations. This structure creates consistency, improves understanding of roles across the university, and allows for comparison of similar positions both internally and against the external market. More details are available on the Research Professional Faculty classification website.

Research Professional Faculty are further classified into 6 distinct Levels that reflect progressive levels of responsibilities, scope, complexity, and accountability within the Research Professional Faculty rank.

The Research Professional Faculty classification system is built on three factors: one job family (broad job grouping with a shared organizational purpose), sub-family (more specific subsets that require distinct knowledge within the job family), and specialization (groups of jobs with the same nature of work, aligned with internal needs or external labor markets).

Research Professional Faculty positions are also grouped into six levels which reflect progressive levels of responsibilities within the Research Professional Faculty field.

You can find your Research Professional classification in the blue box within your position description, or you can learn more by speaking with your HR representative.

You should review your Classification Title and be familiar with its different components. This will help when you are looking for more information in the Job Catalog (described in the next section)

Your Research Professional Faculty Classification Title will be structured like this example: 

Research Associate I, Behavioral Science Research- RES-BSR-BSR-R01

               1                                         2                                            3

1. This is your Classification Title. This is different from your day to day working title (what you put in your signature block on your emails or have business cards identifying you as). This is for classification purposes only and tells us your level.
2. After the comma will be your Specialization. A Specialization is a description of the type of work expected by the position. The Specialization is important because it is the combination of the Specialization and the Level that is used to market price your position. The best place to review your Specialization is in the Job Catalog.

3. The last component is called the Job Code. This Code is for systems and analysis purposes and aligns with the position classification in a way that allows us to cross reference in spreadsheets, pull data across systems, and acts as a unique identifier for the classification. You do not need to understand this code; it contains all the same information as in the rest of the Classification Title.

More information about your Research Professional Faculty position classification—including your job family, sub‑family, specialization, and level —can be found in the Research Professional Faculty job catalog. If you have any questions regarding your classification, please speak with your HR representative.

To learn more about your T/R classification, please refer to the Faculty Handbook or speak with your HR Representative.

• Faculty and staff employees participating in non-credit instructional programs through Continuing and Professional Education
• Adjunct teaching faculty members, including retired faculty and staff, on or off-campus, for teaching credit courses or providing other credit instruction, or overload payments to full-time instructional faculty who are teaching professional continuing education classes for credit through distance learning
• Current faculty and staff participating in university-sponsored consulting activities (Technical Assistance Program) coordinated through Continuing and Professional Education
• Part-time or temporary faculty members, including retired faculty, for administrative, instructional support, research, extension, or outreach activities
• One-time payments such as payments to current Virginia Tech employees, which would otherwise be paid as an honorarium.

P14 positions are required to meet the federal DOL threshold of $35,568/year, $684/week, $1,482/pay period.

Typically, non-exempt staff positions should be paid at an hourly rate for any work done for the university. However, non-exempt staff may be permitted to be paid on a P-14 and teach one course per semester if approved by Human Resources. These positions must be paid at a minimum time and a half of their rate of pay for any hours worked over 40 in a work week. Further information can be found in Policy 4071: Policy for Staff Employed to Teach For-Credit Courses (PDF).

Virginia Tech seeks to be competitive by using a matching pay strategy. This means that we aspire to match the market pay at the aggregate level so that groups of like employees, as a combined average, match the median pay within a market salary range. For more information, visit the Pay Philosophy page.

Pay decisions are based on a number of factors including the scope and responsibilities of the position, the employee’s relevant work experience, certifications for positions that require them, internal comparisons, external market value, and the organization’s budget.

If you have questions about your individual pay, please talk to your supervisor or your Human Resources (HR) Representative. 

At Virginia Tech, we have five main requirements in order to purchase a salary survey that is appropriate and useful to our university:

• Comprehensive data collection: The data must come from various employer-reported sources, such as different companies, industries, and locations that are reported by HR or industry professionals.
• Detailed job descriptions: Having clear job descriptions that precisely outline each job's responsibilities is crucial. Without this, it becomes challenging to make accurate comparisons between different roles.
• Regular updates: The world of work is constantly changing, with new industries, economic conditions, and employment trends emerging all the time.
• Transparent methodology: How the survey was completed, how the information was collected, and how the data was analyzed and presented.
• Confidential: We rely exclusively on highly confidential, reputable compensation surveys to inform our pay decisions.

University and classified staff positions at are assigned a role title within the state structure, which is tied to one of nine pay bands. Virginia Tech must abide by the guidelines set by the state for which pay bands are tied to which role title. These are the required minimums and maximums that staff positions must be paid, but Virginia Tech chooses to have a higher minimum for pay bands 1-3 to lead the market. Visit the Salary and Pay Structure page to learn more about staff pay bands.

The Market Reference Ranges (MRR) is a compensation structure used for both Research Professional Faculty and A/P faculty positions and is informed by the market value of similar roles.  If you are in a Research Professional Faculty or A/P Faculty position, you can find your Market Reference Range in the relevant Job Catalog. You can also find your assigned MRR in the blue box in your position description under your Classification Title.

Data for market pricing these classifications are not pulled for a specific geographic area (such as the south or the southeast or Blacksburg area), but at a national level since it is Virginia Tech’s intention to be nationally competitive. Virginia Tech positions which are located in the DC/Metro area have the same MRR minimums as other positions, but have an extended maximum to reflect the difference in that market area. 

The market data for Market References Ranges is updated annually and changes to assigned MRRs are made as appropriate based on changes in the market value of the classification. Classifications are reviewed on a three-year cycle to ensure the most accurate market data is applied to positions.

This structure is intended to guide Senior Management Areas as one of the factors to consider when determining pay for A/P and Research Professional faculty positions. Unlike staff and non-student wage pay structures, employees whose positions fall under the MRRs may be paid outside their assigned ranges based on a holistic evaluation of employee qualifications and position requirements. For further information, visit Salary and Pay Structure page.

At Virginia Tech, both Teaching and Research Faculty positions are dictated by the Faculty Handbook.

We encourage compensation discussions to begin with your direct supervisor/ department head. Afterward, we recommend speaking with the HR representative for your Senior Management Area.