The OECD Skills Profiling Tool: A new instrument to improve career decisions

This paper documents the development and piloting of the OECD Skills Profiling Tool. The OECD Skills Profiling Tool assesses three types of skills: occupation-specific skills; foundational skills (literacy, numeracy and digital skills); and a set of noncognitive skills using academically validated self-reported tests. After completion of the assessment, the OECD Skills Profiling Tool generates two sets of results: a personalised skill profile, which can be benchmarked against other users; and a list of suggested occupations that make use of those skills. In December 2021, 270 users and 38 career guidance counsellors in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru tested the OECD Skills Profiling Tool. This paper describes the selection of assessment instruments, the methodology used to generate the results provided by the OECD Skills Profiling Tool and the outcomes of the piloting phase of the tool.