Skills Accelerator Pilot Guide

Start with 25–50 priority roles that create the greatest business value — not every role in your org.

See How it Works

THE PROBLEM

Trying to start everywhere usually slows everything down

COMMON MISTAKE

“How do we build skills for every role?”

This question creates months of work before HR or the business sees meaningful value. Not every role carries the same business risk.

BETTER QUESTION

“Where would trusted skills data matter most right now?”

A focused pilot gives you a manageable place to build, validate, and prove your skills architecture before expanding across the enterprise.

THE ADVICE

Start with roles where talent risk creates business risk

When selecting your first 25–50 roles, look for three types of workforce challenges.

Critical to the Business

What happens if this role is vacant or the organization does not have enough capable people?

•   Business operations
•   Revenue or customers
•   Safety & compliance
•   Strategic initiatives
•   Succession continuity
•   Institutional knowledge

Hard to Find

How difficult is it to recruit or replace the expertise required for this role?

•   Unusually long recruiting cycles
•   Scarce qualified candidates
•   High compensation premiums
•   Specialized expertise required
•   Long ramp-to-productivity
• Repeated competition for talent

Hard to Keep

Where is turnover creating ongoing disruption?

•   Consistently high turnover
• Significant recruiting costs
• Productivity losses
•   Role within a critical business unit
•   Employees lack visible career paths

ALSO CONSIDER

Key Leaders Across Job Families

Where does the loss of one person create disproportionate organizational risk?

Companies often overlook cross-functional succession. Starting with key leaders across many job families—not just within one—surfaces the most consequential gaps first.

• Senior leaders with no identified successor

• Critical roles spanning multiple functions

• Retirement or transition exposure at the top

• Unique institutional knowledge held by one person

• Leadership gaps that would slow strategic execution

• High-potential talent with no defined path forward

THE FRAMEWORK

Evaluate Risk First. Then Evaluate Readiness.

A role can be important and still be a poor first pilot.

STEP 1 — ASSESS BUSINESS RISK

Business Impact

Would a vacancy or capability gap materially affect the organization?

Talent Scarcity

How difficult is the expertise to recruit or replace?

Turnover Exposure

Is turnover creating recurring operational or financial impact?

Succession Risk

Is there limited bench strength, retirement exposure, or upcoming transitions?

Regulatory Exposure

Does the role require capabilities that must be demonstrated or verified?

STEP 2 — ASSESS PILOT READINESS

Do we have leadership support?

Is there a business leader who wants to solve the problem?

Can managers and SMEs participate?

Are knowledgeable people available to validate role requirements?

Can we act on the results?

Will data support development, succession, mobility, or workforce planning?

Are the roles connected?

Can the pilot include related roles across levels or career paths?

ROLE SELECTION

Build a role portfolio, not a role list

The strongest pilots contain groups of connected roles within the same job family.

EXAMPLE: ENGINEERING CAREER PATH

● Director of Engineering

● Engineering Manager

● Principal Engineer

● Senior Engineer

● Engineer II

● Engineer I

TYPICAL 40-ROLE PILOT DISTRIBUTION

PRIORITY AREA	PILOT ROLES

Engineering	12

Product	8

Customer Success	10

Sales	10

Total	40

Aim for 2–4 priority job families with approximately
8–15 roles per area. This creates enough breadth to test the model while keeping validation manageable.

PILOT OUTCOMES

Your pilot should answer business questions, not just create profiles

By the end of the pilot, you should be able to answer:

01	What skills does each priority role actually require?

02	What proficiency level is expected at each level?

03	Where do employees already meet those requirements?

04	Where are the biggest capability gaps right now?

05	Which employees could move into adjacent or higher roles?

06	Where do we have succession risk?

07	Where should development investment be focused?

08	Which capabilities should we build vs. recruit externally?

A SIMPLE WAY TO GET STARTED

Ask your leadership team these three questions

Then look for connected roles around those answers — that is your starting pool.

Which roles can we least afford to leave vacant?

Identify roles where a vacancy or capability gap creates material business risk.

Which roles are the hardest or most expensive to recruit?

Identify the expertise the organization cannot easily replace through external hiring.

Where is turnover hurting us most?

Identify important areas where the organization repeatedly spends time and money replacing talent.

From there, evaluate readiness and narrow the list to
25–50 pilot roles.

WHAT YOU NEED

What Data Do You Need for a Successful Pilot?

You do not need perfect data to get started. But a few inputs will make the process faster, more accurate, and easier to validate.

Job Descriptions

OPTIONAL — BUT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Job descriptions are helpful, even if they are outdated or inconsistent. They provide context about:

•   Responsibilities and scope
•   Industry terminology
•   Organizational language and tone
•   Existing skills and qualifications
•   Role-specific requirements

They do not need to be perfect. They are simply a useful starting point.

Subject-Matter Experts

REQUIRED FOR VALIDATION

For each role or job family, identify the people who best understand the work. These may include:

•   High-performing employees
•   Managers
•   Functional leaders
•   Technical experts
• Long-tenured employees

Their role is to validate what the job actually requires — not just what is written in the job description.

Your Priority Role List

THE FOUNDATION OF THE PILOT

Bring the 25–50 roles you want to include in the pilot, ideally grouped into related job families or business functions.

Grouping connected roles — such as an engineering career ladder or a customer success track — makes the architecture immediately useful for career progression and mobility.

Helpful, But Not Required

If available, you can also use:

• Existing competency or skills libraries	• Career levels or job architecture	• Certifications and licensing requirements

• Performance expectations	• Learning content	• Succession or talent review data

The key point: you do not need to clean up every job description or build a perfect skills library before you begin. Start with the best information you have, then use business experts to validate and improve it.

Job Description Naming — Getting It Right

IMPORTANT IF YOU USE JDS IN THE PILOT

✓ DO THIS

Make sure each document is clearly matched to the correct role. The job title in the file name should exactly match the job title inside the document.

FILE NAME

Senior Software Engineer.pdf

TITLE INSIDE DOCUMENT

Senior Software Engineer

Consistent naming makes it much easier to associate each job description with the correct role and reduces errors when processing multiple documents.

× THINGS TO AVOID

Avoid using location, department, business unit, or other qualifiers in the job title unless they represent a genuinely different role.

AVOID TITLES LIKE THESE:

× Software Engineer — US
× Software Engineer — Canada
× Software Engineer — IT
× Software Engineer — Product
× Software Engineer — Austin

USE ONE STANDARDIZED TITLE:

✓ Software Engineer

Manage differences such as location, business unit, or reporting structure as attributes — not as separate job titles.

When a different title is appropriate:

Create a distinct role only when the work itself is materially different.

✓ Software Engineer
✓ Embedded Software Engineer
✓ Security Software Engineer
✓ Machine Learning Engineer

Simple rule

Different title = meaningfully different work.
Different location or department = usually the same role.

— YOUR GOAL —

Start small enough to move quickly.

Start important enough to matter.

Get Started Today!