Forecast


  • Performance reviews are more sophisticated as employers must invest more in re- and up- skilling employees – an ideal application of Skills-Based Approach.
  • Larger acceptance of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AI) is more realistic with the release of Meta and Apple headsets. Both support practicing and applying skills.
  • Skills Gaps persist. According to the World Economic Forum 2023 Future of Jobs Report, 60 percent of respondents reported difficulty “bridging skills gaps locally” and 53 percent “attracting talent” as barrier to their business.
  • Lifelong learning is required for most workers. (Future of Jobs Report) managers predict the shelf life of 44 percent of workers skills is less than 5 years.
  • Gamification is more common in the classroom and at work. According to a Badgeville study:  “78 percent of workers are utilizing games-based motivation at work and nearly 91 percent say these systems improve their work experience by increasing engagement, awareness and productivity”.
  • Seeding of AI and machine learning. (Future of Jobs Report) for managers of companies +50,000 employees it is their top training priority and for all respondents it was third.

How to make Skills-Based Approach more effective.


Course listings at university and colleges explicitly mention what skills are being taught in every course. (Skills Syllabus accomplished this.) It makes sense that when you take a course, you know precisely what skills you are going to learn. This is especially important when you are learning transferable skills such as writing, research and analysis, or computation thinking. For example, you should present skills learned in math classes while working towards a computer science degree (computational thinking) or skills learned in a humanities class (writing and research). The cost of education is increasing rapidly, so students should efficiently plan every course – each course should develop a skill on their desired skill set. Some colleges are known for churning out liberal arts degrees and it makes sense to teach students transferable skills that can be utilized across disciplines. Although, this concept would be more effective if the students know exactly what skills that they are learning – so they can plan, build, and present them.

There is a universal list of skills with definitions (that are published to the end-user).There needs to be a list of skills professionals can access to understand the meaning of a skill and any nuances between one skill over another. For example, it is not clear the difference between the skills of website design and website development. A universal list of skills also makes sense for recruiters searching on skills; they need to be confident that their search results encompass the right pool of candidates.

Providers of skills lists agree with a universal method of assigning skills. (Skills Parser takes content and suggests skills.) <There are two barriers with the current implementations of assigning skills. First, there is no clear way to handle specific technologies. For example, in LinkedIn you list HTML as a skill but in other platforms the skill is web design and HTML is a programming language. Second, there should be delineation between assigning “transferable skills” and “technical skills”.

The demand for skills should be tracked. (Skills Label accomplished this.) Rapid changes in technology and demographics are affecting the responsibilities for different careers, professionals have to adapt and retool their skill sets to accommodate these changes. Therefore, it makes sense to publish the future demand for skills. Professionals can better anticipate and plan to build an expertise with skills needed for their career; they can also target developing a skill set that will be in high demand and increase their chances of landing an opportunity.

Skills sets can be ported from one platform to another. (Skills Emblem is one way to do this.) Currently, it is a requirement to maintain a skill set on different platforms because each of them is proprietary. The main disadvantage is redundancy and inefficiency. It would be ideal to build one skill set list that can be effectively used across platforms.

Use Cases for Skills Based Approach


Let Learners and Workers Be in Control of Their Short and Long Term Goals / Plans. Skills Based Approach epitomizes the workers perspective to stay relevant. The methodology suggests a young adult constantly plans, acquires, and verifies skill throughout education and training processes.

Put Skills Based Approach Apps in the Hands of Young Adults. The apps, based on the methodology, are designed to put users in control – understand their current skill competencies, learning process, and their short and long term goals.

Workers bear some of the responsibility to stay relevant with their skills (master the displacement of 50 percent of their skills in 5 years), while gaining some leverage in negotiating (performance reviews) and navigating through their careers (countering AI and automation).

Use Skills Based Approach Instances to target jobs more effectively. The advantage of a Skills Based Approach Instance is that it could be structured – a degree, training module, or job pathway or unstructured – a free flow process of learning, acquiring, and verifying skills. An instance also may or may not be constrained time, allowing for responsive pivoting.

To counter “Skills Gaps”, use Job Label Templates to set employer skills demands and let prospective learners target the skills precisely. There is functionality to import the Job Label Template as a Skills Based Approach Instance. Furthermore, beyond job preparedness, this should improve job contingency. A learner who use Skills Based Approach to prepare for a job should be more confident in getting a job after post- secondary education.

This is a link a current list of 200 actual Job Label Templates.