Understanding the skills ontology · lesson 2 of 4
How skills connect to people and work
In this lesson
- Trace how a skill on a profile becomes a match on a request
- Identify the three places skill data comes from
The ontology only becomes useful when it touches real data. Skills connect to two things: people and work.
Skills on people
A person’s skill profile is assembled from three sources. First, declared skills: what they add themselves. Second, work history: skills inferred from the engagements they have actually been staffed on. Third, endorsements and verification: confirmation from managers or from completed assessments.
These are not equal. A skill demonstrated on three recent engagements says more than one typed into a profile two years ago, and ProFinda weights them accordingly when ranking candidates.
Skills on work
A resource request is expressed in the same ontology. When a partner asks for “someone who can run a carve-out data room”, the request is translated into the skills that phrase implies. Because both sides, the person and the work, live in one structure, matching is a comparison of like with like rather than a keyword search.
The practical takeaway
When a match looks wrong, the first place to look is the data feeding it. Is the requested skill actually the one the work needs? Is the candidate’s profile current? The ontology is rarely the problem; the inputs usually are.
Key takeaways
- Skills attach to people through profiles, work history and inferred signals
- Requests are expressed in the same ontology, which is what makes matching possible
- Verified skills rank higher than declared ones