Closing the Digital Skills Gap
A Preview of ICTC’s Skill Mapping Tool, Coming in 2021
Nearly a year after it was first announced, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to create ripples in the Canadian economy and labour force. According to Statistics Canada’s January 2021 Labour Force Survey, there are 858,000 unemployed workers still impacted by the initial COVID-19 economic shutdown and subsequent lockdowns.[1] Canadians need constructive and clear information and resources to emerge from unemployment and under-employment situations. The Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), through a project funded by Employment and Social Development Canada’s (ESDC) Sectoral Initiative Program, is soon launching a Skill Mapping Tool to help Canadians navigate pathways to jobs in the digital economy. The tool embodies the evolution of Canadian skill mapping tools ICTC pioneered in 2018.
Job seekers can use the Skill Mapping Tool to see how well their current stack of digital skills map to in-demand jobs in the Canadian digital economy. They will receive a percentage output for the jobs they are best suited for. They can also drill down into the specific skills that they have (skill matches) that are relevant to the in-demand jobs, as well as gain clarity on the skills they need to develop (current skill gaps) to better secure employment in a digital-first future.
The portfolio of impactful digital skills in this labour market is fast evolving, from AI to blockchain to cloud. To keep pace, ICTC will be releasing future iterations of this tool based on the best-in-class labour and skills forecasts for Canada’s digital economy. In the future releases, ICTC will also add non-digital jobs and verified course recommendations to fill skill gaps.
The first release of the Skill Mapping Tool is focused on 41 in-demand digital jobs for the Canadian digital economy. The 41 jobs were curated through a year and a half of research on Canadian digital job data across 14 Canadian cities.
For each of the selected jobs, skills were identified by analyzing job postings associated to the roles, and the most frequently mentioned skills were then identified for each role. Most job mapping tools stop there. Yet, skill frequency is only one part of the equation and does not reflect the relative importance of that skill in successfully qualifying for the job.
To that end, ICTC took the list of high frequency skills per job and conducted a nationwide survey of Canadian hiring professionals and technology recruiters to determine the relative importance of each skill associated with a job. These survey results were then used to build an algorithm that determines how well an individual’s skill portfolio maps to the jobs in the Skill Mapping Tool.
Skill mapping tools are complex, requiring reliable and timely data built on in-depth data analytics, forecasting, and validation in collaboration with industry, academia, and job seekers. Anything less, and such tools can contribute to a less efficient labour market (supply adequately meeting demand) and adversely impact Canada’s economic performance at time when the jobless rate is at its highest in years.
Stay tuned! The beta version of ICTC’s Skill Mapping Tool will be released in early March and will be free to use by all Canadians.
[1] Statistics Canada Government of Canada, “The Daily — Labour Force Survey, January 2021,” February 5, 2021, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210205/dq210205a-eng.htm.
