Identifying the skills of working-age people

Identifying skills means that a person is able to recognise, verbalise and make visible the competence they have acquired in different ways, both for themselves and for the society around them. The ability to identify skills is particularly important when a person is looking for work, changing jobs or fields of work, or planning new studies or skills development. Identifying skills means that this competence can be harnessed and utilised to its full potential in the labour market.

At the individual level, identifying skills helps increase a person’s self-knowledge and confidence, improves their ability to set and achieve career goals and promotes access to employment. At the level of society, identifying skills helps to improve employment, working life, inclusion, wellbeing and the functioning of society.

Tools for identifying skills

The Identifying the skills of working-age people project, which ran from 2022 to 2024, aimed to develop tools and methods for identifying skills in Finland.  The project has ended in spring 2025. The work was guided by a working group appointed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Education and Culture. 

In its interim report published in December 2022, the working group described the current practices in place for identifying competence and identifies needs for further development. The working group proposed six national principles for identifying competence that can be used by both individuals and communities:

• All competence is valuable. Competence is created and can be acquired and identified in different situations and environments.
• Individual initiative plays an important role in identifying competence.
• Individuals’ ability to identify their competence must be promoted through equal and accessible support and guidance in different situations.
• To make competence visible, there must be open and accessible tools in place that are suitable for different situation and that form a coherent and user-friendly whole.
• Processes for identifying competence must improve individuals’ experience of inclusion, personal wellbeing and opportunities for personal development.
• Parties involved in identifying competence must be given the support they need.

Pilots were carried out for different target groups and at different scales, and they ran until autumn 2024. The end report was published in January 2025 (in Finnish, description sheet available in Swedish and English). 

The project was part of the reform of continuous learning and the measures were financed through the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility.

Inquiries:
Markku Virtanen, Ministerial Adviser, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, [email protected]