Data model for skills

[loleg]

As a dev sprint participant, I would like to specify my skills in terms of keywords, competency levels, interest levels, and proofs (e.g. certificates). I would also like to highlight skills that were specifically relevant to a particular hackathon project (e.g. as a badge), that demonstrate my ability. While this is currently done in free-form text on my Dribdat profile, it is not easily searchable or accessible in aggregate.

Having the ability to at least select relevant skills in form of tags would be an improvement. Ideally, an interactive widget like in Puzzle Skills (see below) would allow a user to specify their skill criteria, which would be stored in a standard data structure, or referenced via URL from an external tool.

Note: I'm putting this out here for discussion, because I'm not sure yet whether this is a Dribdat feature or integration, or even the start of a whole new tool. See also #16

Context

As part of a new research collaboration (see Hack Integration, I am investigating several options for improving the way we collect data on skills of hackathon followers and contributors. One such model has been proposed by our team and is being translated into code already. Research sees hackathons mostly as short sprints to match people with potential career trajectories. As you can imagine, career has a broad meaning, and I am on the lookout for data standards that help us pin things down.

References

• Puzzle Skills is an open source app for assigning skills to employees, something we covered at Hack:Org:X
• Skills-ML - an ontology that uses Schema.org entities for analyzing skill references from job posts
• Person type from Schema.org can be quickly generated as JSON-LD with the tool from Honey & Jam
• Examples of Person data can be found at JSONLD.com
• Rich Skill Descriptors "enable skill authors to publish definitions that can be referenced from digital credentials"
• Lightcast has a large Open Skills Library with an API
• Google recommends using ProfilePage and JobPosting metadata