How do you bucket your skills?
We have almost 2,000 unique skills on TeamFit. That may seem like a lot, but one company we are talking with has more than 9,000! And some individuals on TeamFit have as many as 200 different skills, all rated by other people they work with.
Most of us can keep only keep ten to fifteen skills organized in our minds. So we default to categories, buckets into which we can lump our skills to make them more tractable.
Categories are not as powerful as skill graphs, which map the relations between skills, people, projects and outcomes, but they do have their place.
At TeamFit we are beginning with a simple set of categories that are applied across all 2,000 skills. From this, we are going to give each individual, team and organization the ability to create their own categories. Under the cover, we will provide a mapping across individual, team and organizational perspectives.
Where to start.
You can help us by answering this one question on Survey Monkey. Here are some of the possibilities we are testing with users.
Option 1: Call out digital competencies as a category
Organisational/Managerial SkillsJob Related skillsDigital CompetenceOther SkillsLanguagesIndustries
Option 2: Call out interpersonal skills
We want to do this as our current rating system does not really make sense for interpersonal skills and we want to provide some easy alternatives.
Managerial SkillsInterpersonal SkillsTechnology SkillsJob Related SkillsLanguagesIndustries
Option 3: Add a category for occupational skills
Managerial SkillsInterpersonal SkillsTechnology SkillsTools (Software, Hardware, Methodologies)Occupational SkillsLanguagesIndustries
Option 4: Separate out general technology skills from specific tools and methodologies
Management SkillsInterpersonal SkillsTechnology SkillsBusiness SkillsTools (Software, Hardware, Methodologies)LanguagesIndustries
How do you bucket your own skills? Does your model fit well with the categories used by your organization? How do you manage the gaps?
TeamFit is committed to helping you take ownership of your skills. And part of that means owning how you describe them.
What skills are relevant in 2016? We are keeping our skills survey open until the end of April. Please add your views.