Robson Beaudry

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On April 14, 2020, Robson Beaudry commented on A Cloud of Skills – Workday’s Attempt to Redefine Jobs :

Great analysis of a complex issue!

I think skills categorizing gets so complicated that it’s easy to throw up our hands and give up. Often it seems job skill requirements are just there to satisfy legal and HR requirements rather than to provide guidance to hiring managers and candidates. One area that may hold potential is unsupervised machine learning, given that we have trouble clarifying the outcomes we are looking for. This would require more careful and systematic data collection on employees (and privacy concerns), but it might turn up surprising characteristics of top performers, which can then be translated into better requirements than “project management skills” or “comfortable in a fast paced environment”.

Great analysis of these difficult issues! I think ownership is a key element for us to consider – especially since the legal frameworks are so behind the technology. Similar to how certain regulations like the GDPR try to stake out individual ownership of one’s data, we should likewise be able to own our data that employers collect about us. Right now, it’s very much a one way street which creates a power imbalance. This should include the right to be forgotten if we leave a company, and the right to download our own data for our own use.