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Capturing and managing the skills and experiences in a professional services firm

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Using CV Partners official suggestions instead of dropdown or radio buttons

Adding skills to your CV should be easy. When designing CV Partner we did user testing and interviews to see what method of capturing this data is the most efficient way. Based on this insight we decided that a free text field is too "broad" and dropdown or radio buttons is too "narrow". Users don't want locked fields, as they might not fit in the description, or find the actual skill they are searching for. Therefore, we designed a hybrid between a dropdown and a free text field. Also, the users like to get suggestions, because this helps them select the correct wording, as well as save them time. These features, combined with the powerful master data tool, you will both have flexibility, control and usability.

To get this started do the following:

1. Import or add the list of your most common "official" skill names in master data, categorise them in your own desired categorisations.

Example of master data view of 4 skills and the category they are associated with (admin access required)


2. Add these skills to the official projects as they will appear on suggestions in the users CV

Suggestions to skills used in a project will appear for each user in their CV, add with one click!


3. Add help text or instructions where you describe how skills are added, shown in the "Skills Overview"

You can create your very own help text


4. Let the users log in and add their skills, link to login page.

Ask a few users to add their skills


5. Make rules and categorise and create official skills based on new data from your team

Create rules based on what users type


6. Search for skills to get a full overview of the skills and experiences

You can also combine searches, or do free text searches, all employees can search across all CVs



7. Run reports to build dashboards, comply with bid or proposal requirements and lots more

Reports available for admin users

Top tip: Also, if you have a list of skills in Excel, or in your CVs, this can in some cases be imported, prior to the users logging in, creating a baseline or initial set of skills to start with.


Check out this 1 minute video on how to add and categorise skills in a CV in CV Partner.

Learn more by contacting CV Partner