Skills mapping: how to find out what your work actually requires

In brief

In CoreSkills, skills mapping is a chain that starts from the question "what does this work require" and ends with knowing, for every skill of every job role, who reaches the target level and who does not. The chain has four links: sector research says what the sector requires and why; job roles say what each person does and which skills that needs; the competence profile and the interview say where a person is now; and the skills-mapping report shows the gaps and the courses that would close them. Self-assessment and training-verified levels are kept apart throughout.

What must be known: sector research

The competence need is not guessed, nor asked of a course catalogue. CoreSkills produces sector research that answers one question: what must someone working in this sector know, and what does the requirement rest on. AI searches the web for primary sources, that is statutes, authority guidance and sector bodies' material, and writes a report from them. A person checks the report before publication, and a published report ends by saying which model wrote it and when it was checked.

The report states competence requirements so that a course can teach them and an exam or a written assignment can verify them. It also says what training cannot verify: an authority's permit, a practical test or an approved course are obligations whose evidence comes from elsewhere. The sources are listed so that management or an auditor can check them.

Research can also be done for one organisation alone. Then the model gets the organisation's approved description as background, and the report answers the question from that angle. Such a report is visible only to that organisation, and the skills that arise from it are the organisation's own, not the shared library.

Who does what: job roles and skills

A job role is where the competence need is attached. It says what a person's work is, and so which skills and levels it requires. CoreSkills' ready-made roles can be taken into use as they are, and Copy as your own makes an organisation's own version that may be edited freely. Your own titles, in a municipality perhaps early childhood teacher, catering worker or library clerk, are written yourself: title, description and required skills with levels.

Skills come in two kinds. CoreSkills' skills are a library shared by every customer, which can be required in job roles but not edited. The organisation's own skills arise when a course is made from research done for it or from its own material, and each says where it came from. Own skills can be edited and get level descriptions, on which exam questions are written.

There are four levels, and they mean the same everywhere:

Level	Name	What it means
1	Awareness	you know the matter and when it concerns you
2	Practitioner	you act correctly in your own work; the baseline for all staff
3	Owner	you are responsible for the matter and guide others
4	Expert	you resolve edge cases too

Once a job role is given, a learning path can be assigned exactly to those whose work requires it, and a new employee gets their role's paths at their first sign-in.

Where people are now: competence profile and interview

An employee sees on their competence profile page the skills and target levels of their role and where they are now. The current level can be set by hand, or mapped by interview: the AI asks about the person's work and work situations one question at a time, and "I have not done this" is a good answer. After a few answers the AI proposes a level for each skill and says which answer the proposal rests on. For a skill that was not discussed it proposes nothing.

Nothing is saved until the employee checks the levels and saves them. A saved level is their own assessment: it steers their recommendations and shows to the administrator marked as self-assessed. The conversation is visible only to them.

The separation is deliberate. The AI's proposal is a good way to begin a mapping, but it is not evidence. A training-verified level is recorded only when a course's last step is done, and a certificate always rests on the exam taken on top of it. From the AI Act's point of view this is also the safest route: evaluating employees with AI belongs to the Act's high-risk uses, and CoreSkills does not do it. The AI proposes, the person decides, and the exam verifies.

What is missing: the skills-mapping report

The administrator's skills-mapping page collects the result of the three links above, by job role. For every skill of a role it shows how many reach the target level, how many fall short and who has no level at all. For every person it shows their gaps: the skills in which they are below target, and at which level they are. And for the role it shows the courses that would close the most gaps, and for how many people.

Every level names its source: Training is a level verified by a completed course, Self-assessment is one the person set or confirmed after the interview. The administrator does not see interview conversations, only the mapping date. People without a job role appear in a list of their own, because competence is measured against a role's targets. The view can be downloaded as CSV.

The same gaps steer the employee's day. The daily plan marks as Your development areas the subjects in which the target role requires more than they know now, and they come in once the learning path's steps and reviews leave time.

Why this order

Many training systems start from a course and end with an attendance list. Then it is known who watched, but not what each person should have known, nor what is missing now. CoreSkills' order is the reverse: first the need with its sources, then roles and levels, then the current state, and only then training. That is why the report can say "twelve people in this role lack data protection at level 2, and this learning path fixes it", and why the same report serves as the justification to your own management when deciding where training time goes.