FAQ3 questions
Skills software for mid-sized organisations
We have no HR department. Can we still run MuchSkills?
Yes, and in consultancies it often works better. The natural owner is whoever staffs projects, because they have a daily reason to keep the data honest. What you cannot skip is the taxonomy decision, a short piece of work on which skills your organisation will track, and onboarding covers it with you. Skip it and near-duplicate skill names pile up quickly, which makes search and reporting less reliable.
Do we need a skills taxonomy before we start with MuchSkills?
No, and building one from scratch first is a common way to stall a skills project before it starts. MuchSkills ships a curated database of over 20,000 unique skills and more than 70,000 capabilities, including 12,000+ in technology, plus 9,700+ certifications, and that is the right starting point for most organisations. The remaining work, cutting what you will never track and adding vocabulary specific to your industry and clients, is exactly what onboarding covers if you would rather not do it alone.
What is the smallest useful first step with MuchSkills?
Map one team against the roles you are actually trying to staff or develop, rather than the whole organisation against everything. Ten to 15 people, the 10 to 30 skills that matter most for those roles, levels on the 1 to 9 scale and certificates uploaded is enough to answer a real question at the end. Organisations that open with a company-wide taxonomy workshop are often still in the workshop a quarter later.