AI and Skills Ontologies: Transforming Talent Management Across Industries

No matter the industry, organizations today face the challenge of effectively managing and developing their workforce, and they’re seeking innovative solutions to streamline their talent management processes. At AI Day 2024, we dove into how AI and skills can reshape how organizations approach employee development and retention.

You can watch all of AI Day right here, or read on for the highlights on how skills data can advance talent management.

The Role of Skills Ontologies in Workforce Development

At the core of workforce management today is a clear understanding of skills—what they are, how they relate to each other, and how they drive organizational growth. Organizations are increasingly adopting a skills-driven approach to achieve workforce planning and management, but drawing actionable insights from vast amounts of skills data can be daunting without the right tools.

A skills ontology is a structured framework that organizes and defines the relationships between skills—it is the foundation for making sense of this data. Phenom’s approach centers on a dynamic skills ontology powered by AI, which organizes skills data in a way that evolves with your workforce.

For example, if you’re looking for new finance partners to join your team, a skills ontology can identify accounting as a core skill and recommend related proficiencies such as Excel and data analysis, which have strong connections to accounting. Conversely, if an employee lists writing alongside accounting, the ontology recognizes that these skills do not strongly correlate, ensuring accurate skill assessments and role alignments.

Three key components of a skills ontology:

• Skill-to-Skill Relationships: Defines how each skill is related to others and the strength of their connections.

• Skill-to-Role Relationships: Maps specific skills to relevant job titles and roles within the organization.

• Role-to-Role Relationships: Illustrates how different roles are interconnected and support each other within the organizational structure.

This comprehensive framework enables organizations to:

• Identify Skills Gaps: Easily spot areas where additional training or hiring is needed.

• Enhance Talent Acquisition

• Facilitate Career Development: Provide employees with clear pathways for skill development and career progression.

By mapping skills to roles and understanding how these skills interconnect, organizations can make better hiring decisions, identify skill gaps, and provide clear career development pathways. This is particularly important as industries diversify and the demand for new skills intensifies.

Related reading: Demystifying Skill Ontologies: Your Roadmap to Clarity

A Skills Ontology That’s Tailored to Your Workforce

Phenom’s skills ontology isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s tailored to each organization’s specific workforce data, providing a contextualized and actionable understanding of how skills relate to roles and growth opportunities.

Jesus Latorre-Socas, Lead Product Manager at Phenom, explains the power of Phenom’s skills ontology: "Our customers receive an out-of-the-box ontology that is tailored further with their unique data, creating a dynamic, contextualized ontology." This tailored approach ensures that the skills ontology uses Phenom's extensive knowledge base and adapts to each organization's needs and data.

"We're taking your data, we're taking your roles, your employees, all of your systems of records, all of that unstructured data. We're actually running it through our AI to normalize it, standardize it, mesh it together to ultimately create proximity and relationship of all of that into a single context," said Latorre-Socas.

This tailored approach ensures the ontology remains relevant as the organization grows, offering a continuously updated foundation for workforce planning and development. Phenom’s AI continuously integrates new data, making it possible to keep up with the evolving skill landscape—something traditional systems cannot manage efficiently.

Unlocking Personalized Career Journeys with AI

AI is essential for maintaining and leveraging skills ontologies, enabling organizations to adapt to emerging skills and create tailored career paths for employees. By automating data management and drawing insights, AI ensures that personalization thrives.

Phenom's AI-powered platform exemplifies this approach, offering guidance across various industries. Key aspects include:

1. Graph algorithms for career path visualization: "We use graph algorithms to identify career paths and progression opportunities, helping employees visualize their growth potential," said Manogna Kuchimanchi, Product Development Engineer III at Phenom.

2. Personalized experiences guided by AI: "Experience is delivered across the platform all the way down to the Persona level and guided by AI. Employees care about understanding where their unique skills translate across the organization for overall career growth," explains Mark Feneis, Sr. Director & Manager, Solutions Consulting at Phenom.

Feneis elaborates on the comprehensive nature of this approach: "This journey doesn't begin at a moment of time or when they're hired; it actually begins when career exploration turns into a candidate or job seeker becoming a lead, becoming a candidate, and then an employee. All these unique data sets build up to provide guidance on that overall experience for your employees' journeys."

Additionally, Phenom's X+ agents serve as intelligent career guides, facilitating access to insights like available skills for specific roles and growth strategies. These agents enhance the platform's capability by helping employees identify skills gaps and opportunities for development across various sectors.

Intelligent Skills Recognition and Recommendations

Can AI coach my team? Actually, yes.

Beyond career mapping, Phenom’s AI takes skill recognition and recommendations to the next level. AI systems often recognize implicit skills — those that may not be listed on an employee's profile but can be inferred from behaviors, interests, or ongoing training. Phenom uses a Neural Graph Collaborator Filter (NCF) to map out skills and make personalized recommendations based on each employee’s actions, interests, and career history.

The AI coaching is innovative in understanding and leveraging employee skills across different roles and sectors.

Arjun Guru, Product Engineering Manager at Phenom, explains: "We leverage implicit user actions and tenure within the company to provide more tailored job suggestions that align with individual interests. Additionally, we incorporate the courses that the users are currently undertaking to further personalize job recommendations to match the evolving skills and career aspirations.”

Moving from Reactive to Proactive with Strategic Workforce Planning

Phenom’s AI capabilities extend beyond individual career development to support broader strategic workforce planning. By analyzing skills across the organization, Phenom enables HR leaders to anticipate skill gaps and workforce needs before they become critical. This proactive approach helps companies move beyond reactive hiring and develop a more strategic view of workforce planning, driven by AI insights.

"Dynamic workforce plans are becoming a reality by leveraging the power of X+ agents, allowing for curated strategies that optimize cost and readiness," said Feneis.

Real-Time Skills Benchmarking with LLMs

Organizations need real-time insights into evolving trends in an environment where skill demands shift rapidly. Phenom integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) into its skills ontology, allowing companies to track skill trends and benchmark their workforce against industry standards.

"We use statistical methods like Pearson correlation or Spearman rank correlation to measure the strength and direction of relationships between skills. Phenom has deployed a fine-tuned LLM model to analyze this data in conjunction with a skills ontology and compute the skills that are gaining importance versus trending lower in the job market within the specific industries," said Siva Phani Kumar Maddi, Director of Engineering at Phenom.

With this capability, Phenom ensures that organizations remain competitive by continuously updating their understanding of critical skills. Whether it’s tracking the rise of telemedicine in healthcare or autonomous technologies in logistics, Phenom’s system adapts to emerging trends.

The Future of Talent Management

Phenom’s AI-driven skills ontology is more than a tool — it’s a comprehensive approach to modern workforce management that empowers organizations to:

• Deliver personalized career guidance to employees at every level

• Maintain up-to-date skills data to make informed workforce decisions

• Plan proactively for future skills and workforce needs

• Provide clear career pathways, improving engagement and retention

As industries continue to evolve, the ability to adapt to new skills and manage talent dynamically will become a key differentiator for organizations. By leveraging Phenom’s AI-powered solutions, companies can future-proof their workforce and thrive in the competitive landscape.

To learn more about how Phenom can help transform your talent management strategies, explore our platform and discover the benefits of AI-driven workforce planning for your organization. Or, watch AI Day on demand.