Frequently Asked Questions

To identify your classification, log into the PageUp dashboard, select "Administration" under "Recruitment" and follow these instructions to view your position description:

• Expand the “hamburger” menu in the top left and select “Manage position descriptions” under the Jobs section
• Type your legan name in the "Employee Name" section, then select “Search” 
• Select "View" in the listing
• Expand the bluebox dropdown to view either your staff, A/P, or T&R classification

If you are unable to find your position description, please speak with your supervisor or 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, or Teaching and Research (T&R) faculty, who are classified under the Faculty Handbook.

The A/P faculty job architecture is built on 15 primary functions, approximately 80 sub‑functions, and about 150 disciplines. 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 A/P Faculty Job Architecture website.

 The job architecture is built on three factors: function (broad job groupings with a shared organizational purpose), fub‑function (more specific subsets that require distinct knowledge within each function), and discipline (groups 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 A/P faculty job architecture, developed and maintained by Virginia Tech, established not only a classification framework, but a comprehensive compensation structure to compare A/P faculty positions both internally and externally to the market. This structure, which consists of 26 Market Reference Ranges (MRRs), is used for A/P faculty positions and is informed by the market value of similar roles. This is intended to guide Senior Management Areas as one of the factors to consider when determining pay for an A/P faculty position. 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.