As many of you are aware, the INOU has been involved in a European project entitled SkillsMatch for the past couple of years. The project involves partners in Sweden, Spain and Ireland. We are the pilot partners for Ireland and are working very closely with the Learnovate Centre in Trinity College as well as the partners from the other countries.
The purpose of the project is to develop an online platform and an app that will both measure and help to develop a person’s non-cognitive skills, or ‘soft-skills’. These skills include creativity, entrepreneurship and tenacity. At the moment there are 36 skills available on both the platform and the app, but these will be expanded over time. All the skills come from the European framework that recognizes skills required for employment.
The platform and app matches the skills to specific jobs so that a person looking for employment in a specific area can see the required non-cognitive skills for the job. They can then measure their skill level and, if needed, access training to develop that skill.
We have just completed round three of the pilots, where we have asked people to test what has been developed so far. Given the current health crisis, this pilot was done online and the feedback will be collated and acted upon. To date, the feedback provided by the Irish pilots has been very positive, honest and full of great suggestions for the development team.
We would like to say thank you all our members and affiliate organizations who have taken part in this series of pilots. We very much appreciate the time and effort put in to helping us develop, what we believe, could be a very helpful tool when accessing employment.
SkillsMatch Update
