ESCO

Project

ESCO is a vocabulary of occupational titles, skills and competences in 27 languages.

image of a taxonomy
My role

Team leader of the product management team.

photo of Vito Spinelli presenting ESCO at the ESCO launch conference in Brussels
Client

European Commission DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion.

Project vision

Online job boards need to be able to exchange job vacancies and candidate CVs to facilitate job placement. This is especially true for European Public Employment Services. However, these records are drafted using different languages and methods across European countries. In fact, job portals use their own occupational and skill classifications/vocabularies to classify and organize these records.

As a multilingual classification, ESCO allows job boards that adopt it (or make their systems compatible) to exchange CVs and job vacancies across geographical and language barriers. As a result, they have higher chances of matching candidates with employment opportunities.

Users

ESCO has a diverse user base with different needs:

Job board developers...

... can use ESCO to exchange CVs and job vacancies with partner organizations by making them compatible.

Researchers and statisticians...

... can use ESCO to collect, process and analyze data on the supply and demand of occupations and skills.

Career counselors...

... can use ESCO to identify their clients skill gaps and advise them on learning opportunities that are most suitable for them.

Employers and jobseekers...

...can use ESCO as a template to create job vacancies and CV and translate them easily in 27 different languages.

User research

The product team carried out primary research throughout the project life-cycle.

  • Expert interviews - The project allowed comprehensive meetings with high-level stakholders and experts.
  • User interviews - The team conducted interviews with early adopters to gather feedback on usability and fitness-for-purpose.
  • User surveys - The team conducted a survey with end users that included structured questions as well as open-ended questions.
snapshot of a moment during one of the workshops with the representatives of the Member States

Data exchange challenge

User needs

The product team mapped the users of the ESCO portal and collected useful information on the pain points and opportunities for service.

Pain points:

  • CVs and job vacancies exchanged across systems cannot be matched, if only per broad categories.
  • Changes to current systems are very expensive due to the need to re-process the data.
  • Solutions are complex and challenging to communicate and require buy-in of several stakeholders and different types of users to be effective.

Communication challenge

Service opportunities:

  • Develop a multilingual classification compatible with existing systems.
  • Provide different methods of accessing and integrating the classification, including full or partial download and an API.
  • Develop a consistent narrative, a visual identity and a communication plan targeting different user segments.
  • Draft a wide range of manuals, communication material and marketing activities for different audiences.

Product and design solutions

Prototype - The product team tested a prototype of the new classification with a small number of selected users.

Data availability - Different slices of the classification are made available, together with the full vocabulary, in different formats. The classification can also be accessed through a local API that can be downloaded on the ESCO Portal.

ESCO Portal - The ESCO project has a wide and diverse audience. Website visitors have different goals and interests for visiting the website.

  • Stakeholders - are interested in meeting updates and policy developments.
  • Professional organizations - and contributors are interested in content about their specific sectors.
  • Software and application developers - are interested in technical documentation, release plans, API access and database download.

Using a consistent design and visual identity, the team layered the content in a simple, straightforward way based on user needs. The content layout makes it clear where to find different kinds of content, so that users do not need to use more than 1 or 2 clicks to find the information they are looking for.

Product and design solution

ESCO Portal

The top bar menu clusters the main topics of the website. The homepage does not include other menus or buttons, thus giving users confidence that they are not missing any information. In fact, clicking on one of the main headings opens a sub-menu with additional sub-topics which allow users to access all the content of the portal.

The homepage includes a visual banner that can be swiped to access recent news about the project.

Finally, the bottom of the homepage embeds a tutorial video explaining what the project is about.

The website complies with the visual identity of the European Commission and includes legal information as well as a language toggle that changes of the language of the entire website.

screenshot of the ESCO Portal

Marketing and social media

In my role I coordinated the development of two marketing videos (below).

I also drafted two articles to promote the ESCO project conference on social media: