Job and skills dictionary
Search the role you need and get, in two clicks, the profile: skills required, where it sits in the international classification, and what to assess before hiring. A solid starting point for a job descriptor. Over 3,000 roles and 14,000 skills.
Search using the title you actually use. It understands synonyms.
Or browse the occupation tree
The ten broad families that organise all work, from the general to the specific.
Armed forces occupations
Roles in the armed forces: commissioned, non-commissioned and other military occupations.
21 roles1Managers
People who plan, direct, coordinate and evaluate the overall activities of organisations, departments or teams.
349 roles2Professionals
Professionals who apply scientific concepts and specialised knowledge, and often teach or advise others.
932 roles3Technicians and associate professionals
Technicians and associate professionals who perform operational tasks of medium complexity in support of professionals and managers.
670 roles4Clerical support workers
Workers who record, organise, store and retrieve information and carry out routine clerical and administrative tasks.
92 roles5Service and sales workers
Workers who provide personal, protective, travel, catering, care and sales services to customers and the public.
212 roles6Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers
Workers who grow crops, raise animals, manage forests or catch fish using specialised skill rather than industrial machinery alone.
44 roles7Craft and related trades workers
Craft workers who build, maintain, print, process or repair materials and products by hand or with tools.
414 roles8Plant and machine operators and assemblers
Operators who run and monitor industrial, agricultural or transport machinery, and assemble products from components.
353 roles9Elementary occupations
Workers who perform routine tasks that may require hand tools and physical effort, often with limited formal training.
77 rolesHow occupations are organised
Occupation taxonomies group work by two criteria: how much training a task demands, and what subject matter it deals with. The result is a tree where every role hangs from exactly one place, which makes roles comparable across companies, countries and industries without arguing about job titles.
- Level 1Major group
The ten families all work is divided into.
1 — Managers
- Level 2Sub-major group
Splits by area of responsibility.
12 — Administrative and commercial managers
- Level 3Minor group
Narrows the specialisation within the area.
121 — Business services and administration managers
- Level 4Unit group
The group that is comparable across countries. ISCO-08 stops here.
1212 — Human resource managers
- Level 5Occupation
The actual role, with its description and skills. Contributed by ESCO and MAPHA.
1212.2 — Human resources manager
Each role is also linked to its skills, classified into knowledge, skills, transversal competences and languages, and flagged as essential or optional. That is the raw material of a good role profile.
From profile to candidate
A clear profile is half the work. The other half is finding someone who meets it and confirming that they really do. That is where we come in.
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What this tool is, where the data comes from, and how far it goes.
- What is an occupation taxonomy?
- It is a classification that organises every job into a tree, grouping roles by the tasks they involve and the skills they require. The most widely used one is ISCO-08, from the International Labour Organization, which has four levels; ESCO and MAPHA add a fifth level with the concrete roles and their skills.
- Where do these roles and skills come from?
- From MAPHA, the first occupation and skills taxonomy designed for Latin America, developed by OTIC SOFOFA on top of the European Commission's ESCO classification. We add a layer of Chilean synonyms, because the original dataset uses European Spanish and does not recognise everyday local titles.
- Can I use it to write a job ad?
- Yes, and that is its most common use. The downloadable profile includes the purpose of the role, essential skills separated from optional ones, and a note on what to assess. It is a solid starting point that you then adjust to your company: a taxonomy describes the role in general, not your role in particular.
- Are essential skills mandatory?
- No. Essential means that, according to the taxonomy, these are the skills that define the typical practice of the role; optional ones appear frequently but do not define it. It is a guide for prioritising what to measure in a selection process, not a legal requirement or a certification standard.
- What is the difference between skills and transversal competences?
- Knowledge and technical skills are specific to a trade and can be verified with tests, certificates or references. Transversal competences (self-control, teamwork, tolerance to pressure, achievement orientation) run across almost every role, never show up on a CV, and are the best predictors of performance. Those are measured with psychometric assessment.
Sources
This service uses the ESCO classification of the European Commission and the Mapha Taxonomy developed by OTIC SOFOFA (CC BY 4.0), in an adapted version. Group codes come from the ILO's ISCO-08. See sources and licences