Eighteen months running a skills taxonomy beside job families: an honest account

I'll offer a partial one. For a narrow set of scarce, certifiable skills, premiums work, because someone other than the employee verifies them. We pay for 11 such skills in a Dutch logistics business. Anything self-assessed is hopeless for pay, I agree.

On stale profiles: we stopped asking people to maintain them. Skills are inferred from project assignments and completed learning, and the employee corrects rather than creates. Accuracy is not perfect but profile coverage went from 35% to 88%.

How did you choose which 290 skills to drop?

Mostly by usage. Any skill that had not appeared in a vacancy, a project request or a learning plan in twelve months went, which removed about 240. The rest were near-duplicates that our family leads merged in two workshops. Inferring from assignments is next on my list.