Do we have to use a pre-built skills taxonomy?

No. The SkillsDB skills library is fully custom — you define every skill, description, and category in your own language. There’s no locked vendor taxonomy. You can also use AI-powered recommendations to accelerate setup, then refine with your team’s expertise.

How are skills organized in the library?

Skills are organized through a flexible system of categories (up to three levels of hierarchy), labels for cross-cutting tags, and alphabetical grouping for navigation. You can filter by label, assignment status, or search by name to find what you need quickly.

Can employees add their own skills?

Employees can add skills from the library to their own profile. If a skill doesn’t exist yet, they can submit a skill request for admin approval — so the library grows based on real organizational needs.

How does the skills library connect to assessments?

Skills in the library are the foundation for everything. When you build a career framework, you pull skills from the library and set proficiency benchmarks. Assessments grade employees against those benchmarks. Gap analysis runs on the results. It all starts with the library.

What’s the difference between this and HRIS skills tracking?

HRIS platforms store job titles and reporting structures. SkillsDB stores verified proficiency data against a skills taxonomy you define. The library isn’t a field in a personnel record — it’s a system of record purpose-built for tracking what people can actually do.

Can we import an existing skills list?

Yes. Import skills via CSV for bulk library creation. You can also export the full library to Excel for offline review, sharing, or audit purposes.

Who can create and manage skills?

Admins create, edit, and manage the skills library. Managers can assign skills to their direct reports. Employees can browse the library, add skills to their profile, and submit requests for new skills.

Why does a well-structured skills library matter for the rest of the platform?

Every assessment, framework, gap report, and learning plan in SkillsDB draws from one centralized skills library. When your taxonomy is consistent and well-maintained, every downstream function — from proficiency assessment to workforce planning — produces reliable, comparable data. A fragmented or duplicated skills list undermines everything built on top of it.

Skills Library

Your skills. Your language.

A centralized skills library that your organization defines, organizes, and owns — the foundation every assessment, framework, and career pathway is built on.

Book Demo

Skills Library main page showing the alphabetically grouped table with collapsible sections, skill names, labels column, and assigned counts — demonstrating a clean, organized library at scale

Every skills initiative starts the same way: someone needs a list of skills. So they buy a platform with a pre-built taxonomy — thousands of generic skills they didn’t write, don’t recognize, and can’t change. The taxonomy doesn’t match how the organization actually talks about what people do. Adoption stalls before it starts.

The alternative is a spreadsheet. Which works until it doesn’t — no versioning, no connection to assessments, no way to track who has what.

Your taxonomy. Your single source of truth.

The SkillsDB skills library is yours from the start. You define every skill, description, label, and category in your own language. No locked vendor lists. No generic taxonomies you have to adopt wholesale. The library is the single source of truth that career frameworks, assessments, gap analysis, and learning plans all draw from — so when you update a skill once, every system that references it stays in sync.

Trusted by some of the world's best companies

Built in your language, not a vendor’s

Every skill name, description, and category is defined by your organization. No generic taxonomies to adopt, no locked lists to work around. If your team calls it “Client Relationship Management” instead of “Account Management,” that’s what it’s called.

One library feeds everything

Skills defined here flow into career frameworks, proficiency assessments, gap analysis, learning plans, and the skills matrix. One source of truth. Update a skill description once and it’s reflected everywhere.

Organized however your org thinks

Use multi-level categories to build a taxonomy hierarchy. Add labels for cross-cutting tags like department, function, or certification area. Group by alphabetical sections for fast navigation at scale. The organizational model adapts to you.

Employee skill requests built in

Employees can request skills that don’t exist in the library yet. Requests go to admins for approval — so the library grows with your organization’s real needs, not just top-down assumptions.

Assign individually or in bulk

Assign skills to people one at a time or use bulk operations for team-wide rollouts. Managers can assign direct reports. Admins can assign across the organization. Employees can add skills to their own profile from the library.

How It Works

For Talent Development

Build your skills library from scratch or by importing. Organize into categories with labels. Use skills to build career frameworks with benchmarks — the foundation for everything.

For Resource Planning

A well-structured library makes capability searchable. Filter by category, label, or assignment status to see which skills are covered and where the org is thin.

For Workforce Strategy

Use assigned and trained counts across the library to see skill depth and concentration at the org level. Identify where capability is strong and where it’s fragile.

For Frontline Training

Define skills in language operators and trainers recognize. Assign to people, link training resources, and track who’s been trained versus who still has gaps.

The foundation matters. Every assessment, framework, and gap report in SkillsDB draws from one skills library. When the taxonomy is wrong, everything downstream is wrong. That’s why the library is yours to define — not ours.

SkillsDB has helped organizations build and maintain skills taxonomies since 2008. Fortune 500 customers. SOC2 Type II certified. GDPR compliant. 30+ countries served.

The right taxonomy is a core company asset.

Build a skills library in your language, connect it to frameworks and assessments, and give every talent decision a foundation you can trust.