Let’s talk about Skills.

As Individuals, we all have Skills. These incorporate our professional Knowledge, Experience, Use of Tooling or Equipment, Behaviours, and Leadership attributes. 

More importantly, for most of us our skills are our most valuable, income generating asset. 

Yet for most of us, this valuable asset is poorly recorded and evidenced, typically as subjective and ambiguous text contained in infrequently updated free form CVs and LinkedIn profiles, and or as static hard copy ‘verification’ documents, such as licenses and certificates, stuffed into plastic sleeve folders or lost in email archives. 

Worse still, it is this recording of ‘skills as words’ that leads to the frustrations and lack of transparency that we’ve all experienced when applying for jobs, pursuing higher paying roles or contracts, or otherwise trying to maximise the value of our skills.  For instance, we've all spent hours 'wordsmithing' our CV's, hoping to create the maximum impact for that seemingly ‘perfect fit’ role, only to find that you weren't considered because your CV was ‘difficult to interpret’ or the formatting was not to their liking - Argh. 

Recording our ‘Skills as Data’ in a digital portfolio is far more sensible and beneficial.

Meanwhile, as Businesses, employing the skills and service of our staff is usually one of our biggest costs. Yet, whilst we record their service carefully (time and attendance, leave entitlements, etc), we rarely record and monitor their skills (knowledge, experience, use of tooling or equipment, behaviours, and or leadership) in the same measurable ways we do with other significant investments and assets. 

This is because, until now, we have thought of skills as words (words on position descriptions, job ads, resumes, performance reviews, etc), and words are very difficult to quantify. For instance, we all know that ‘years of experience’ is no guarantee of broad or advanced skills, and that claims and interpretations of terms such as ‘Senior’ or ‘Experienced’ vary wildly. 

In turn, it is these ‘skills as words’ that is fuelling the inconsistencies, inefficiencies, and natural biases that are compromising the core people management functions of recruitment and resourcing, performance management, training and compliance, diversity and integrity, and enterprise capability planning. 

Implementing ‘Skills as Data’ delivers major efficiency and bottom-line benefits across your enterprise.

Implementing your Skills as Data begins with self-assessments and 360 reviews of your skills against industry ‘best practice’ and internationally recognised skills and competency definitions. This is what quantifies your skills in measurable terms - as data. In turn, these Skills as Data assessments complement and inform your traditional Talent Acquisition and HR processes - because we are still dealing with real people after all. 

Verification and Compliance management extends your Skills as Data via the centralised and robust document management of your Qualifications, Certifications, Registrations, Licences, Checks and Clearances, and References. 

Talk to Seera about our integrated ‘Skills as Data’ solutions.