Chat GPT Blows Away Skill Clouds

This morning I woke early ready to author an article on how the last 10 years of building our Skills engine had put us in a strong leadership position to challenge new Skills App vendors like Growthspace and even the big boys like Workday, I was wrong. My work on skills dates to the first skill profile I developed for Microsoft back in 2015 when I developed the Sales Specialist and Sales Specialist Manager skill profiles and a library of skill profiles for the Partner organization.

I have come to realize that skills are the currency for the future of work. I love how Jim Stratton, CTO at Workday in his article “The foundation of the Workday Skills Cloud” describes skills as “The great equalizer” and “The fundamental currency of the changing world of work”. I recently read with great enthusiasm and afterwards concern, I must admit, Josh Bersin’s article about how the HR Tech Industry needs to watch out for LinkedIn Learning. Josh tells us that basically LinkedIn is going to eat our lunch in his article “LinkedIn Learning Evolves: Watch Out HR Tech Competitors – Skills, Careers, And More”.

In the LinkedIn article Josh talks about where LinkedIn is going. Josh breaks down the strategy into three, let’s call them workload solution areas, Skills, Career Paths, and Talent Marketplace. In fact, I think what Josh was doing was detailing not only the three most important solution offerings for the future of LinkedIn but for the future of the skills Industry. Luckily, at Pipe9 we saw this trend sometime ago and have been busy building out our skills offerings into three boards (we use Kanban style boards as the basis for our skill solutions) Skills, Career and Academy. The way Josh talks about Talent Marketplace if you listen to his podcast on the topic, he is really talking about connecting users to the best skill development resources, courses, leading experts, coaches, mentors both inside and outside of your company and expert level masterclasses.

Btw. the HBR article entitled “The making of an Expert” is the best authority on the topic of the importance of different types of mentors and coaches that I have read. The article was published in 2007 based on research from k. anders ericsson at the University of Florida.

So let me get to the point. After reading about the Workday Skills Cloud and LinkedIn strategy I decided to investigate how Chat GPT dealt with the three workload solution areas of Skills, Career and Academy.

I started by asking Chat GPT “What are the top skills for a sales manager?”. The answer is below…

Ok so Chat GPT knows what the top skills are for a generic role such as a “Sales Manager”. I then asked Chat GPT to tell me about the top skills for a more specific role such as “Azure Sales Specialist at Microsoft”.

Ok, so Chat GPT can provide me with a list of the top skills for a specific role within a specific company like Microsoft. I then thought, can chat GPT tell me based on a skill I’ve mastered what next still I should consider?

Ok, so Chat GPT was able to make recommendations about the next skill I should consider mastering or the next course I should consider completing. So, then I thought could Chat GPT create a Job Description for the role of Azure Sales Specialist at Microsoft? Voila, of course it can.

Ok, so Chat GPT does an excellent job with skills. But what about Careers. Surely Chat GPT couldn’t provide me with a suggested Career Pathway for the Azure Sales Specialist role at Microsoft, could it?

Ok, so I got back the top skills, the job description, and the career pathway, but what about Academy, surely Chat GPT could not provide me with a list of top courses and mentors or coaches could it?

Yes, it did. Interestingly the links to the courses have been redacted but I am sure it wouldn’t take much to find the links and access the courses on LinkedIn or any courses on any 3rd party course provider’s site. Ok, so Chat GPT knows the top skills, knows the next skills, can produce the job description, can deliver a career pathway and a list of the top courses and mentors. What do you think Workday, Growthspace; M12, Microsoft's venture fund, and Vertex Ventures who have invested so much in Skills Clouds?

Reading the Workday and Josh Bersin articles would have us believe that these two giants are going to blow everything away. But I am left wondering whether the reality is in fact everyone is going to be blown away by Chat GPT? Hence the title of this article Chat GPT’s blows away Skill Clouds. For all Skill vendors the race is on to see who can be the first to integrate Chat GPT into their Apps and develop the most innovative features that serve up Chat GPT Skills data to clients and users to help them grow.

A new day is dawn, a new race has started. Luckily for Pipe9 and Skill.me we are already doing exactly this. Below is the design for our new “Experts Board” which will serve up an “Academy” for any Role and any Skill all based on Chat GPT. The future looks brighter and perhaps there is a place for David’s in the future of Skills. Thanks Chat GPT.

Published by Alan Dowzall

CEO Pipe9

Published 4/18/23

In my latest article I explore how ChatGPT is going to revolutionize the skills technology Industry and just when small skill App vendors are being told that Workday and LinkedIn Learning are going to blow everyone else away along comes Chat GPT and the race is once again on and quite possibly there’s a chance for David’s after all.

#Pipe9 #Skillme #joshbersin #workday #linkedin #skills #hrtechnology #growthspace #microsoftventures #m12 #vertexventures #mfundclub #googlestartups #zeevventures #sapio