The impact of marrying Macro and Micro Skills Data

Imagine marrying macro and micro skills data to give a real time vision of the gap between education and industry. For providers of learning this can give a powerful insight to the skills needed in curriculum development and support graduates and trainees to be employable and re-deployable. For associations and organisations this can revolutionise learning outcomes. 

There are three types of Skills Data; Macro “Big” Data, Micro Data and Real Time Data. 

1. Macro Skills Data tends to be the scrapping and analysis of job board data to give an overview of skills, qualifications, expertise and salary ranges. While this macro view can give a general skills demand analysis, skills gap identification and overall trends it is important to note that the availability and extent of skills data on job boards may vary depending on the platform's features, the unconscious bias in skills selection and the level of information provided.
2. Micro Skills Data comes from the collection and analysis of data related to specific, detailed, and focused skills possessed by individuals, employees or learners. This type of skills data can have incredible insights but for many the output is summarised in a written report and rest of the skills data remains stored on a CSV and excel files. 
3. Real Time Skills Data is the capturing of new skills being acquired as learning happens within a University, through Vocational courses or within an organisation. This measurement of skills mobility can provide tremendous value and insight across hard skills, human skills and transversal skills. 

It is very common to have Macro Skills Data supplied by large web scraping organisations and then to engage a separate consulting firm to activate surveys to get a timestamp on skills needs. Sometimes these two data skills sets are married into an annual report to predict skills gaps and future skills needs but in many cases it can feel a little disjointed.

The greatest impact is when we marry all three in one centralised location where all key stakeholders can get a Skills Pulse at any time and not have to have a Data Analyst qualification to extract the gold in the skills insights. 

First let's talk about Real Time Skills Data because this should be accessible through learning platforms to demonstrate ROI for every euro or dollar spent on content for up-skilling and re-skilling. If you don’t currently have access to this Skills Data this is the first action because without this it can be very challenging to get a foothold on what is sticking and how it is helping to close the skills gap.

How to Marry Skills Data

1. Have a common skills ontology

This will establish a standardised  vocabulary and framework for defining skills. This ensures that different stakeholders share a common understanding of what each skill entails, reducing ambiguity and misinterpretation. It will mean the skills data sets can exchange and integrate seamlessly.

2. Ensure all three skills data sources are centralised and visualised 

Agree how frequently big skills data and micro skills data will be captured to be combined with the real time skills counter and how this will be visualised to showcase the skills gap and skills mobility through supply and demand. Then using machine learning forecast future skills needs. 

3. Make the skills data accessible 

This is key that there is easy and open access so learners can understand skills acquisition paths to desired careers, educators can extract skills gaps in real time to develop world class curriculum and employers can get a handle on skills pipeline to future proof. The skills visualisation dashboard should be intuitive and support self navigation and instant report. 

To summarise

You are most likely sitting on a wealth of skills data that perhaps is in silo and it still has value but not the exponential impact it could have by combining. By marrying multiple skills sets and having powerful data lakes feeding in to merge with skills data you are capturing internally within your ecosystem or marketplace this is where we truly can evolve learning outcomes for all. 

By

Vanessa Wainwright

Founder Abodoo - transforming future learning and lives

Our 2030 Skills Mission to impact 100 million lives

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abodoo is an AI Skills Platform that powers marketplaces and ecosystems to provide greater inclusive access to learning pathways and opportunities. The cornerstone of our platform is the Skills Passport with built in recommended learning, inclusive skills first matching and for stakeholders geo skills mapping marrying macro, micro and real time skills mobility to measure skills gaps for future learning needs and skills planning.

Learn more at www.abodoo.com