Skills and areas of expertise

Skillhive makes skills and potential visible. It is a living, visual skills map that supports collaboration and continuous learning across the organization.

Skills

In Skillhive, individual competencies are referred to as skills.

A skill can represent:

  • A technical ability (e.g., Python, Power BI)
  • A methodology (e.g., Scrum)
  • A tool (e.g., SAP)
  • A soft skill (e.g., facilitation)

Skills can be attached to:

  • User profiles
  • Swarms (e.g., training sessions, projects)

When adding a skill to a profile, users assess:

  • Their competence level
  • Their interest level

Skill Library

Admins may create and maintain an organizational skill library.

The system:

  • Recognizes predefined terms as skills
  • Suggests them proactively (autocomplete) when users search or add skills

This promotes consistent terminology.

Users may still add skills outside the official library. In such cases:

  • The skill appears on the user’s profile
  • It is searchable
  • It does not alter or interfere with the official skill taxonomy

Organizations are encouraged to define shared principles for adding new skills.

Naming Guidelines

  • Use short and clear terms
  • Avoid combining multiple skills into one
  • For broader categories, use format:
  • Microsoft: ADFS

Areas of Expertise

Areas of expertise are broader competency categories containing multiple related skills.

Typical groupings include:

  • Strategic/core competencies
  • Role- or team-based competencies
  • Specialized competencies (e.g., leadership, industry knowledge, languages)

A single skill may belong to multiple areas.

Areas of expertise:

  • Are selectable during profile creation
  • Can be edited later from the profile

Since an area of expertise is a swarm type, hierarchical structures can be created using sub-swarms.

Competency Assessments

In addition to areas of expertise, organizations may create specific competency assessments, such as:

  • Sales competency
  • AI competency
  • Project-based assessments

These have a separate view but function similarly to areas of expertise.

Skill Assessment Levels

Skills are assessed on two axes:

  1. Competence level (stars)
  2. Interest level (hearts)

Assessment levels include:

  • 5 levels
  • Half-level increments (10 visual levels total)

Level descriptions can be customized per organization.

Several predefined models are available.

Managing Skills (Admin)

Admins can:

  • Add skills
  • Edit skill names and descriptions
  • Merge duplicate skills (Find & Replace)
  • Remove skills from the system
  • Access skill-related reports and statistics

When merging skills:

  • Assessments are preserved
  • Duplicate terminology is unified

Removing Skills

From a Profile

Users remove a skill by removing its assessment:

  • Click the minus button
  • Each click removes half a star
  • When all stars are removed, the skill disappears from the profile

From the Entire System

Only Admins can delete a skill system-wide:

  1. Open the skill page
  2. Select “Edit”
  3. Select “Delete this skill”

The system confirms where the skill is used before deletion.

Once deleted:

  • The skill and all related assessments are removed
  • The same skill can be reintroduced later