European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations

ESCO handbook

ESCO handbook

European Skills, Competences,

Qualifications and Occupations

September 2017 1
 ESCO handbook

European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and

Occupations

European Commission

Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion

Directorate E
ESCO handbook

Manuscript completed in September 2017

1st edition

Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is
responsible for the use that might be made of the following information.

© European Union, 2017

Reuse is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.

The reuse policy of European Commission documents is regulated by Decision 2011/833/EU

(OJ L 330, 14.12.2011, p. 39).

For any use or reproduction of photos or other material that is not under the EU copyright,
permission must be sought directly from the copyright holders.

ISBN 978-92-79-72148-9 doi:10.2767/934956 KE-04-17-755-EN-N

This publication was produced by the European Commission and aims to inform the general
public. It does not constitute or presuppose the Commission’s official position on this subject.
Neither the Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission may be held
responsible for any use made of the information contained in this publication.

Comments would be gratefully received and should be sent to:

EMPL-ESCO-SECRETARIAT@ec.europa.eu
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook

Contents
Foreword................................................................................................. 6
Introduction ............................................................................................ 8
PART I – WHAT IS ESCO? .......................................................................... 9
1. The structure of ESCO ....................................................................... 10
1.1 The occupations pillar ................................................................ 12
Occupations in ESCO ......................................................................... 12
Occupational profiles ......................................................................... 12
Regulated professions ....................................................................... 13
Knowledge, skills and competences in occupational profiles .................... 13
Occupation blueprint ......................................................................... 14
The structure of the occupations pillar ................................................. 17
Occupations primary hierarchy ........................................................... 17
1.2 The knowledge, skills and competences pillar................................ 18
Knowledge, skills and competences concepts ........................................ 18
Content of the skills pillar .................................................................. 19
Transversal knowledge, skills and competences .................................... 20
Skill contextualisation ........................................................................ 20
Structure of the skills pillar ................................................................ 20
Skill blueprint ................................................................................... 21
1.3 The qualifications pillar .............................................................. 22
Content of the qualifications pillar ....................................................... 22
Principles ......................................................................................... 23
Information about qualifications in ESCO .............................................. 23
Linking qualifications to other pillars .................................................... 26
2. ESCO in relation to other classification systems and frameworks ............. 28
ISCO-08 .......................................................................................... 29
National classifications ....................................................................... 29
European Qualifications Framework (EQF) ............................................ 30
ISCED-F 2013 .................................................................................. 30
Digital Competence Framework (DigComp) ........................................... 31
3. Publishing ESCO as Linked Open Data .................................................. 32

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook

The Semantic Web ............................................................................ 32

The European policy framework .......................................................... 32
Linked Open Data ............................................................................. 34
ESCO as Linked Open Data ................................................................ 34
Scope disambiguation........................................................................ 35
Uniqueness of concept identifiers ........................................................ 35
Backward compatibility ...................................................................... 35
PART II – DEVELOPING ESCO ................................................................... 36
1. The governance framework ................................................................ 37
ESCO Maintenance Committee ............................................................ 37
ESCO Board ..................................................................................... 37
Member States Working Group on ESCO .............................................. 37
Sectoral Reference Groups ................................................................. 37
Cross-sector Reference Group ............................................................ 38
Others stakeholders .......................................................................... 38
2. ESCO content development process ..................................................... 39
Desk research .................................................................................. 39
Developing occupational profiles in five major steps ............................... 40
Creating the content ......................................................................... 40
Gap analysis .................................................................................... 42
3. Formulation of terms in ESCO languages .............................................. 44
4. Quality management of ESCO ............................................................. 46
PART III – USING ESCO .......................................................................... 48
1. ESCO and the support of specific use cases .......................................... 48
1.1 Connecting people and jobs........................................................ 48
Job matching based on skills and competences ..................................... 48
ESCO in EURES ................................................................................ 49
1.2 Connecting employment and education ........................................ 50
Career guidance ............................................................................... 50
Enhancing the dialogue between employment and education................... 50
1.3 Understanding skills supply and demand ...................................... 51
Supporting skills intelligence and statistics ........................................... 51
ESCO and big data ............................................................................ 52

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook

2. Implementing ESCO within systems .................................................... 54

ESCO architecture ............................................................................. 54
ESCO data files................................................................................. 55
3. Connecting national, regional and sectoral standards: Mapping
classifications to ESCO ............................................................................ 58
ESCO as a hub for the creation of mapping relationships ........................ 58
Developing a methodology for the creation of mapping relationships ........ 59
Mapping ESCO to other classifications .................................................. 60
4. Extend ESCO .................................................................................... 61
5. Legal conditions applying to the ESCO service ....................................... 62
Use of ESCO .................................................................................... 62
Use of ISCO in ESCO ......................................................................... 62
Use of ISCED in ESCO ....................................................................... 62
PART IV – KEEPING ESCO UP-TO-DATE ..................................................... 63
1. Continuous improvement and updating ................................................ 63
2. ESCO versions .................................................................................. 65
ANNEXES .............................................................................................. 66
ANNEX I .......................................................................................... 66
Contact information ................................................................................ 70

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: Foreword

Foreword
ESCO: Connecting people and jobs!

The digital transformation and the great success of

information technologies have radically changed the way
the labour market is organised. Over the last decade, the
use and importance of new online recruitment tools, such
as online job platforms and social media, have increased
widely. Big data analysis of job vacancies and CVs allows
individuals, employers and policy makers to detect new
emerging skills, mismatches and gaps, and to react
accordingly – for instance, by adapting their career path,
designing new training programmes or adopting better
services tailored to the labour market reality.

In this digital era, our education and training systems need to modernise to ensure
that young people have appropriate skills and are prepared for the jobs in the digital
economy. Employers need access to more accurate and up-to-date information about
skills and qualifications to better manage their workforce. Recruiters and employment
services need to incorporate digital technologies into their operations to better match
people to jobs and improve their services. This is particularly important in a context of
persistent skills gaps, which are both a barrier to people’s employment chances and a
risk for economic growth. In fact, despite high levels of unemployment in Europe –
particularly among young people – 40 % of employers cannot find people with the
right skills to fill their vacancies1. Ensuring a fair and well-functioning labour market
and making sure people’s skills keep pace with change are key priorities of the
Commission, as stated in the European Pillar of Social Rights2.

To meet this challenge, the Commission has developed ESCO, a classification of

European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations available in 26
European languages. As a multilingual digital tool, ESCO connects people with jobs by
supporting both employers looking to find the right people for their vacancies and
jobseekers looking to find the right jobs for their skills. It connects employment to
education by providing a common language. On the one hand, this helps education
and training providers to better understand labour market needs and adapt curricula
accordingly. On the other hand, it helps employers to have a better understanding of
the learning outcomes acquired by jobseekers. Last but not least, ESCO connects
labour markets from different Member States by allowing jobseekers and employers to
communicate more effectively about skills, training and jobs in any chosen European
language.

ESCO is at the heart of several Commission initiatives in the area of skills and
qualifications aimed at making labour market and education systems more

1 Source: European Company Survey, Eurofund, 2013

2 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/deeper-and-fairer-economic-and-monetary-union/european-
pillar-social-rights_en

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: Foreword

transparent, stimulating mobility and creating opportunities: the New Skills Agenda for
Europe3, EURES4, the EQF Recommendation5, EUROPASS6 and the EU Skills
Panorama7. Most importantly, ESCO is the result of a joint effort. I would personally
like to thank the commitment of all the stakeholders that have made it possible for
ESCO to become a reality: national authorities, social partners, public employment
services, labour market experts, sectoral organisations and education institutions, to
name just a few. And this is only the beginning: ESCO will be continuously improved
and aligned to labour market changes. I invite you to participate in this process, as
your commitment will help to keep the classification updated and fit for purpose in the
future.

Stay connected!

Marianne Thyssen, European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Labour
Mobility

3 http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1223

4 https://ec.europa.eu/eures/public/es/homepage

5 http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9620-2017-INIT/en/pdf

6 http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1266&langId=en

7 http://skillspanorama.cedefop.europa.eu/en

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: Introduction

Introduction
The ESCO handbook contains general information about ESCO version 1.0 (ESCO v1),
the first fully fledged version of ESCO. It gives a general overview of the different
aspects of the classification and is divided in four parts:

 I. What is ESCO?: ESCO is a common classification language designed to connect

people to jobs. In this chapter, you will learn how it works and how it is structured.
 II. Developing ESCO: In this chapter, you will find information about the process
that led to the publication of ESCO v1 including the actors involved, the
governance structure and the different steps in the development of the
classification.
 III. Using ESCO: ESCO terminology can be used to support job matching, job
searching, career management or labour market analysis. In this chapter, you will
learn more about the added value of ESCO and examples of how it can be utilised.
 IV. Keeping ESCO up-to-date: In this chapter, you will learn how ESCO has
been designed to adapt to the evolution of the labour market and the education
and training sector, in order to remain fit for purpose.

More detailed, technical and targeted information can be found in the following related
publications8:

 The ESCO guidelines: A document explaining how to develop content for the
ESCO classification. It includes definitions of the ESCO concepts, a description of
the ESCO content model, a set of rules, constraints, do's and don'ts, as well as
methodologies for developing and updating ESCO.
 The ESCO mapping manual: A methodology on how to map other classifications
to ESCO.
 The Qualifications Metadata Schema v1.0 and the manual on how to
publish information as Linked Open Data: National authorities and awarding
bodies wishing to publish information on their qualifications in ESCO need to
structure the data according to this scheme. A manual on how to publish this
information will help them understand and apply the process.
 ESCO technical documentation: Detailed information on the technical aspects
related to ESCO.
 Continuous improvement document: A document detailing the continuous
improvement process and the different ways stakeholders can contribute to keep
ESCO up-to-date.

At any time, the reader can find updated information and all necessary documentation
on the ESCO Service Platform: https://ec.europa.eu/esco/portal/home

8
Some of these publications are not available yet. Once ready, they will be published on the ESCO Service
Platform.

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

ESCO is the multilingual classification9 of European Skills, Competences, Qualifications
and Occupations. The ESCO classification identifies and categorises skills,
competences, qualifications and occupations relevant for the European labour market
and education and training.

The Commission has developed ESCO with the following aims:

 to improve the communication between the education and training sector and the
EU labour market;
 to support geographical and occupational mobility in Europe;
 to make data more transparent and easily available for use by various
stakeholders, such as public employment services, statistical organisations and
education organisations;
 to facilitate the exchange of data between employers, education providers and job
seekers irrespective of language or country;
 to support evidence-based policy making by enhancing the collection, comparison
and dissemination of data in skills intelligence and statistical tools, and enabling
better analysis of skills supply and demand in real-time based on big data.

26 languages
+350 000
occupations terms 3 888 comments
+30 pilot provided in the online
projects
4 103 ratings consultation
provided in the 13 485
online consultation
skills ESCO 11 Sectoral
Reference Groups
2 942 3 pillars
occupations
1130 experts
registered in the
+514 000 online consultation
skills terms

9
A classification or taxonomy is the systematic arrangement of something into groups or categories
according to established criteria (in this case, of occupations, skills, competences and qualifications).

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

1. The structure of ESCO

ESCO is organised in three pillars:

 the occupations pillar;

 the knowledge, skills and competences pillar;
 the qualifications pillar.

These three pillars are interrelated with each other, as explained in the following
section.

Overall, this three-layered structured approach allows ESCO to organise terminology

for the European labour market and the education/training sector in a consistent,
transparent and usable way.

Occupations Qualifications

Skills

Figure 1: ESCO three-pillar structure

Concepts and terms in ESCO

In the development of ESCO, a distinction has been made between concepts and
terms. A concept is a thing, idea or shared understanding of something. Concepts are
not language dependent. A term refers to the linguistic description of a concept and is
therefore language dependent.

Example: The idea or shared understanding of a person baking bread and selling it to
customers is a concept. Terms that are frequently used to refer to this concept are
e.g. "baker" in English or "Bäcker/Bäckerin" in German.

In ESCO, each concept is associated with at least one term in all ESCO languages. In
many cases, a language contains more than one term to refer to the same or a very
similar concept. ESCO can therefore contain several terms per concept.

Within the ESCO data model, each term is a separate element and all terms always
have a relationship with a concept. This is illustrated in the following diagram, which
shows a concept-term relationship for eight languages:

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

TERM

Пекар
TERM (BG) TERM

Boulanger Pekař
(FR) (CS)

CONCEPT
TERM TERM
Idea/shared
understanding of a
Panadero Bager
person baking
(ES) (DA)
bread and selling it
to customers

TERM TERM

Baker Bäcker/in
TERM
(EN) (DE)
Pagar
(ET)

Figure 2: Concepts and terms

In ESCO, three types of terms are used: preferred terms, non-preferred terms and
hidden terms.

Each ESCO occupation and skill concept has at least one term for each of the 26 ESCO
languages: the preferred term. It is not reused for another occupation or skills in the
same language and is therefore unique. Out of a group of terms with a similar
meaning, the preferred term is the one that best represents the occupation or skill.

As previously mentioned, a language can contain more than one term to refer to the
same/a similar concept and ESCO can therefore contain several terms per concept in
each language. Non-preferred terms can be synonyms (words with similar or the
same meanings), but can also be spelling variants, declensions, abbreviations, etc.
They are regularly used by jobseekers, employers or education institutions to refer to
concepts that are described in the classification with the preferred term.

ESCO also captures terms that are commonly used in the labour market to refer to an
occupation, but are also considered outdated, misspelled or politically incorrect. These
are referred to as hidden terms as they are useful for indexing, searching and text
mining purposes, but are invisible to the end users. When searching for a hidden term
on the ESCO portal, the user is automatically redirected to the occupation with its
preferred term. The hidden term is not displayed.

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

1.1 The occupations pillar

The occupations pillar aims to describe all occupations relevant for the European
labour market. ESCO v1 features 2 942 occupations.

Occupations in ESCO

Occupations are not the same as jobs (which are not covered in ESCO). Their
distinction is based on the following definitions:

 Occupation: a ‘set of jobs whose main tasks and duties are characterised by a
high degree of similarity’10;
 Job: a ‘set of tasks and duties carried out, or meant to be carried out, by one
person for a particular employer, including self-employment’11.

Example: Being the "pilot of Boeing 747 aircraft for the route Paris-New York" is a
job. "Commercial pilot" or "airline transport pilot" are occupations (i.e. groups of jobs,
to which this job belongs). Occupations can be used as job titles. An employer
recruiting for the above-mentioned position might entitle the vacancy notice with the
name of an occupation, e.g. "airline transport pilot".

The ESCO occupations include:

 relevant occupations at EU level, regardless of the size of the business;

 self-employed occupations;
 volunteer-based occupations;
 subsistence-based occupations;
 arts and crafts occupations;

 political mandates in case they constitute a job (e.g. mayor).

Occupational profiles

Each occupation concept describes the meaning of the occupation, and provides a
number of useful pieces of information about it (metadata12).

The core element that defines an ESCO occupation is the main idea or understanding
of what the occupation is about and how it differs from other occupations. These are
captured in the description and scope note.

10 Source: International Labour Organisation, ILO, International Standard Classification of Occupations

(ISCO-08) – Conceptual Framework

11 Ibid.

12 Metadata is a systematic method for describing […] resources and thereby improving access to them
(source: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/content/optimise/metadata/index_en.htm)

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

 A description in ESCO is a text field providing a short explanation of the meaning

of the occupation and how it should be understood. Most importantly, it clarifies its
semantic boundaries. For this reason, a description is always provided for each
ESCO occupation.
 A scope note in ESCO is sometimes used to make things less ambiguous. It
clarifies specialisms that are considered to be within the scope and it redirects the
user to similar occupations that are out of scope of an occupation.

If a formal definition that is either widely accepted or legally binding throughout the
EU is available, this is captured in the definition field. This particularly includes
definitions agreed by social partners at a European level or definitions stipulated by
law.

Regulated professions

Employers and jobseekers can use ESCO to gain insights into occupations and skills
that are relevant for the labour market. However, they also need to know if there are
any legal requirements associated with an occupation. Therefore, the laws that
regulate access to professions also need to be taken into account.

ESCO ensures that citizens can easily gather information about how occupations are
regulated in each Member State when they are searching for a job. By providing a
direct reference to the Regulated Professions Database13, ESCO increases
transparency regarding the legal requirements of these occupations.

Additionally, for occupations that are regulated at European level, ESCO provides a
direct link to the Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional
qualifications, as amended by the Directive 2013/55/EC14.

Knowledge, skills and competences in occupational profiles

Each ESCO occupation is related to essential and optional knowledge, skill and
competence concepts:

 Essential are those knowledge, skills and competences that are usually relevant
for an occupation, independent of the work context, employer or country.
 Optional are those knowledge, skills and competences that may be relevant or
occur when working in an occupation depending on the employer, working context
or country. Optional knowledge, skills and competences are very important for job-
matching because they reflect the diversity of jobs within the same occupation.

13 http://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/regprof/

14 Directive 2005/36/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 7 September 2005 on the
recognition of professional qualifications, OJ L 255, 30.9.2005, as amended by Directive 2013/55/EU of the
European Parliament and of the Council of 20 November 2013 amending Directive 2005/36/EC on the
recognition of professional qualifications and Regulation (EU) No 1024/2012 on administrative cooperation
through the Internal Market Information System (‘the IMI Regulation’) OJ L 354, 28.12.2013

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

Example: waiter/waitress

Essential skill Serve beverages

Optional skill Prepare flambeed dishes

Note that, while indicated as an optional skill for the ‘waiter/waitress’ occupation,
‘prepare flambé dishes’ may be essential for a specific job (e.g. for working in a
French restaurant that serves Crêpes Suzette).

Occupation blueprint

The image on the next two pages shows an example of the information attached to
each ESCO occupation and its relationship to knowledge, skills and competences.

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ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

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European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

The structure of the occupations pillar

Occupations in ESCO are structured through their mapping to the International

Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08), which has been developed by the
International Labour Organisation (ILO). The ESCO occupations and their ISCO-08
hierarchy make up the ESCO occupations pillar.

ISCO-08 provides the top four levels while ESCO occupations provide the fifth and
lower levels. Each ESCO occupation is assigned to one ISCO-08 unit group (even if
they are not directly related to it, e.g. if they are at level six or seven).

ESCO provides the translation of ISCO in 24 languages (Icelandic and Irish are not
included).

Figure 3: The structure of the occupations pillar

Occupations primary hierarchy

Occupations in ESCO are described at different levels, depending on the language

used and requirements of the labour market. However, these may differ between
groups of countries (e.g. some Member States may need to cover different types of
sommelier, while for others this occupation may have little relevance). In order for
ESCO to accommodate both cases, some occupations have broader-narrower relations
between them.

However, only the occupations that are relevant for the European labour market are
included. Therefore, the more detailed occupations do not necessarily cover the entire
scope of the more generic occupation. (e.g. not all types of sommelier are covered
under sommelier).

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

Figure 4: Primary hierarchy

1.2 The knowledge, skills and competences pillar

The knowledge, skills and competences pillar, also referred to as the “skills pillar”,
provides a comprehensive list of skills that are relevant for the European labour
market. ESCO v1 contains 13 485 skills.

Knowledge, skills and competences concepts

The skills pillar includes knowledge, skills and competences that are defined as
follows15:

 Knowledge: The body of facts, principles, theories and practices that is related to
a field of work or study. Knowledge is described as theoretical and/or factual, and
is the outcome of the assimilation of information through learning.
 Skill: The ability to apply knowledge and use know-how to complete tasks and
solve problems. Skills are described as cognitive (involving the use of logical,
intuitive and creative thinking) or practical (involving manual dexterity and the use
of methods, materials, tools and instruments).
 Competence: The proven ability to use knowledge, skills and personal, social
and/or methodological abilities, in work or study situations, and in professional and
personal development.

15 Source: Council Recommendation of 22 May 2017 on the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong
learning and repealing the Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 of April of
2008 on the establishment of the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning
https://ec.europa.eu/ploteus/sites/eac-eqf/files/en.pdf

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

Example: Working as a "commercial pilot" requires the competence to combine

knowledge about “geographic areas” and “air transport law” with skills relating to
"read maps" and "execute flight plans".

While sometimes used as synonyms, the scope of the terms “skill” and “competence”
can be distinguished. “Skill” refers to the use of methods or instruments in a particular
setting and in relation to defined tasks. “Competence” is broader and refers to the
ability of a person, facing new situations and unforeseen challenges, to use and apply
knowledge and skills in an independent and self-directed way. However, there is no
distinction between skills and competences recorded in the ESCO skills pillar.

Content of the skills pillar

As for the occupations, ESCO provides metadata for each concept in the skills pillar
including the following:

 A preferred term that is used to present the concept.

 Non-preferred terms (synonyms, spelling variants, declensions, abbreviations,
etc.).
 Hidden terms (e.g. outdate, misspelled or politically incorrect terms).
 A scope note that clarifies the semantic boundaries of the concept.
 The skill type: i) skill/competence concepts or ii) knowledge concepts.
 The relationship with ESCO occupations. This shows for which occupations the
knowledge, skill or competence is typically relevant including those for which it is
essential and those for which it is optional. In some cases, a relationship will show
how the knowledge, skill or competence is relevant for other knowledge, skills and
competences. The relationship also includes the distinction between essential and
optional.
 The reusability level, which indicates how widely a knowledge, skill or competence
concept can be applied. This is crucial for supporting occupational mobility. ESCO
distinguishes four levels of skill reusability:
 Transversal knowledge, skills and competences are relevant to a broad
range of occupations and sectors;
 Cross-sector knowledge, skills and competences are relevant to
occupations across several economic sectors;
 Sector-specific knowledge, skills and competences are specific to one
sector, but are relevant for more than one occupation within that sector;
 Occupation-specific knowledge, skills and competences are usually
applied only within one occupation or specialism.

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

Transversal knowledge, skills and competences

As mentioned above, transversal knowledge, skills and competences are relevant to a

broad range of occupations and economic sectors. They are often referred to as core,
basic or soft skills and are the cornerstone for the personal development of a person.

Within the skills pillar, transversal skills and competences are organised in a
hierarchical structure with the following five headings:

 thinking
 language
 application of knowledge
 social interaction
 attitudes and values

Both the concepts and hierarchical structure of the transversal knowledge, skills and
competences were developed by the Cross-sector Reference Group16. The
development was based on the analysis of a wide range of existing national and
sectoral classifications, the European Dictionary of Skills and Competences (DISCO)17
and other sources.

Skill contextualisation

Skill contextualisation is a method to create knowledge or skill and competence

concepts by analysing how transversal skills, competences or knowledge are applied in
the specific context of a sector or an occupation. This allows transversal knowledge,
skills and competences that are rather abstract to be brought to a more detailed level
so that they can be directly used in occupational profiles.

Example: The skill “measure” is too abstract to be linked directly to the occupation
“metal furnace operator”. This relationship would produce too many results if used in
competence-based job matching since measuring is relevant for a large number of
occupations and sectors.

Through skill contextualisation, the skill can be made more specific. A skill named
“measure furnace temperature” could, for example, be used in the occupational profile
of the “metal furnace operator”.

Structure of the skills pillar

The ESCO v1 skills pillar does not contain a full, top-down hierarchical structure.
Instead, the 13 485 elements of the pillar are structured in four different manners:

16
See Part II.1: The governance framework

17
http://disco-tools.eu/disco2_portal/

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

 through their relationship with occupations, by using occupational profiles as an

entry point;
 through a hierarchy (only for transversal knowledge, skills and competences);
 through relationships indicating how knowledge, skills and competences are
relevant to other knowledge, skills and competences (in particular in cases of the
contextualisation of skills);
 through functional collections that allow subsections of the skills pillar to be
selected, according to the purpose it is going to be used for. For example, an
organisation may want to use ESCO to implement an online CV editor where a user
can indicate his/her language skills. The organisation would not need all the ESCO
skills in that CV section, only the language skills. If a user searches for "Chinese"
in this section, the system should suggest "Chinese", "understand spoken
Chinese", “understand written Chinese” or "interact verbally in Chinese", but not
"traditional Chinese medicine" or "give shiatsu massages". A functional collection
would allow the user to pick exactly the skills (or occupations) s/he is looking for.
ESCO v1 includes three functional collections: Digital transversal skills (identical to
the Digital Competence Framework)18; Language skills; Transversal skills.

Skill blueprint

The image below shows an example of the information attached to each ESCO skill.

18 See Chapter 3: ESCO and the Digital Competence Framework (DigComp)

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1.3 The qualifications pillar

The qualifications pillar aims to collect existing information on qualifications19. The

final objective of the pillar is to provide a comprehensive list of qualifications relevant
for the European labour market.

Content of the qualifications pillar

Qualifications in ESCO come from two types of sources:

 National qualifications databases of Member States. These qualifications are

included in National Qualifications Frameworks that have been referenced to the
EQF. Since 2014, the Commission has been financially supporting Member States
and other partner countries (EFTA, EEA and candidate countries) to develop
national qualifications databases and to interconnect these with the Learning
Opportunities and Qualifications in Europe portal (LOQ)20 and with ESCO.

 Other qualifications that are directly provided to ESCO by awarding bodies21. These
are not part of national qualification frameworks but are also relevant for the
European labour market. They include private, sectoral and international

19
As defined by EQF Recommendation, a qualification is the formal outcome of an assessment and
validation process which is obtained when a competent body determines that an individual has achieved
learning outcomes to given standards (2016): http://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-9620-
2017-INIT/en/pdf

20
https://ec.europa.eu/ploteus

21
“Body issuing qualifications (certificates, diplomas or titles) and formally recognising the learning
outcomes (knowledge, skills and/or competences) of an individual, following an assessment and validation
procedure” (Cedefop, 2008)

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qualifications22. The Commission is currently piloting this approach and will discuss
the results and following steps with Member States.

In contrast with the occupations and skills pillars, the qualifications pillar is therefore
populated exclusively by external sources, not by data created by the Commission.

Principles

When collecting information on individual qualifications, the Commission applies the

following principles:

 Subsidiarity: The competences of Member States, their different education and

training system traditions, and where applicable, the autonomy of the awarding
bodies are fully respected.
 Learning outcomes approach: ESCO follows the learning outcomes approach,
which expresses what someone knows, understands and is able to do on
completion of a learning process.
 Bridging the communication gap: Information on qualifications can be
interlinked with the skills pillar, supporting closer cooperation between
employment and education/training.
 Transparency: Information on qualifications needs to be fully transparent. This
includes information that is required by market actors to assess the quality and
trustworthiness of a qualification.
 Up-to-date: Data on qualifications needs to be up-to-date, reflecting the actual
qualifications landscape in Europe.
 Non-discriminatory: Transparent information, including on quality assurance, is
provided, but no judgement on the quality of qualifications is made by the
Commission.
 Complementarity between ESCO and the EQF: The qualifications pillar of ESCO
is developed in full compliance and complementarity with the EQF.

Information about qualifications in ESCO

The qualifications pillar supports the understanding of the individual qualifications

needed by employers, public and private employment services, learners, workers,
jobseekers, education and training providers, and other actors. This information
should be as complete and transparent as possible to meet their needs. Information
on qualifications in ESCO follows the elements for data fields for the electronic
publication of information on qualifications included in Annex VI of the EQF
Recommendation.

22
As defined by the EQF Advisory Group (2017), an international qualification is a qualification awarded by a
legally established international body (association, organisation, sector or company), or by a national body
acting on behalf of an international body, that is used in more than one country and that includes learning
outcomes assessed with reference to standards established by an international body.

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Therefore, only qualifications data that includes the following core information will be
displayed in ESCO23:

Qualifications data: core information

Title Exact title of the qualification (without translation).

Field Based on ISCED Fields of Education and Training 201324.

Country/region Based on the European nomenclature of territorial units for

statistics (NUTS)25.

EQF level Only relevant for qualifications that already have an EQF level
assigned through the referencing process of national
qualifications frameworks to the EQF.

Awarding body Name of the awarding body, location and hyperlink to the
or competent website.
authority

Description of the Description of what the learner is expected to know, understand

qualification and be able to do. This description shall consist of open text
expressed fields, with no prescribed use of standard terminology and no
in learning obligation for the Member States to translate the description
outcomes into other EU languages.

Other fields:

 credit points/ notional workload needed to achieve the learning outcomes

 internal quality assurance processes
 external quality assurance/regulatory body
 further information on the qualification
 source of information
 link to relevant supplements
 URL of the qualification
 information language (code)
 entry requirements
 expiry date (if relevant)
 ways to acquire qualification
 relationship to occupations or occupational fields

Information on other fields is optional and should be included if available, as this

complementary information increases the transparency of the qualifications for users.

23 Based on Annex VI of the EQF Recommendation (2016)

24 http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/isced-fields-of-education-training-2013.pdf

25 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/overview

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
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In particular, information on quality assurance adds an important element of

transparency that will enhance trust in the published qualifications.

Qualifications will only be displayed in ESCO if they comply with these core data
requirements.

The Qualifications Metadata Schema

Information can only be comparable throughout Europe if all Member States and other
actors have a common view on the attributes that all qualifications share such as the
title, the awarding body, the EQF level, the description of the learning outcomes, etc.
This common understanding or common language is structured in an agreed
‘metadata schema’.

A schema is a logical plan showing the relationships between metadata elements,

normally by establishing rules for the use and management of metadata. The schema
tells IT systems, search engines and web portals (such as the LOQ portal or the ESCO
Service Platform) how to search for information and what kind of information to look
for on qualifications. Using a schema for qualifications makes it easier to integrate
information with classifications like ESCO and it enables qualifications to be linked and
integrated easily with other structured metadata published on the Internet. The
current version of the schema (Qualifications Metadata Schema v1.0) is available on
the ESCO Service Platform.

Member States and other stakeholders wishing to publish information on their

qualifications in ESCO need to structure their data according to the qualification
metadata scheme (QMS) and upload it in the Qualifications Dataset Register (QDR), a
central platform that manages the exchange of qualification data between different
stakeholders and European portals (in particular LOQ and ESCO).

In the framework of the Erasmus+ programme, the Commission has made funding
available to support any EU Member States and partner countries (EFTA, EEA and
candidate countries) wishing to create or upgrade their national qualifications
databases according to the QMS and link them to European portals (ESCO and LOQ).
Calls for proposals have been published for this purpose on a yearly basis since 2014.

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ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

Linking qualifications to other pillars

Figure 5: Linking qualifications with the occupations and skills pillars

Links with the occupations pillar

Direct relationships between qualifications in ESCO and the occupations pillar are only
displayed if they already exist at national level. It is up to Member States to decide if
they develop such data. The relationship can indicate, for instance, if a qualification is
a requirement in order to work in an occupation in the specific Member State.

Otherwise, the relationship between occupations and qualifications is indirect, via the
skills pillar, as shown in Figure 5.

Links with the skills pillar

Organisations that provide data on qualifications can annotate learning outcomes

descriptions with ESCO skills terminology: they can add knowledge, skills and
competence concepts in the skills pillar that correspond to the learning outcomes
description of the qualification.

This additional information will help people better understand the content of the
qualification. For example, educational experts might prefer to look at the learning
outcomes description created by the awarding body to understand the content, but an
employer in another Member State might find it easier to look at the ESCO skills
(which are available in 26 languages). Interlinking learning outcomes descriptions of
qualifications with the skills and competences concepts will enable better
understanding of the scope of qualifications and their relevance to the labour market.

In the example below, the skill “maintain a vessel’s weather and watertight integrity”
corresponds to the ESCO skill “ensure watertight integrity”.

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
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Example of annotation of the qualification “Diploma in maritime studies-sea fishing”, UK-

Scotland, Scottish Qualifications Authority. Source: pilot project with the Scottish Qualifications
Authority, February 2017.

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

2. ESCO in relation to other classification systems

and frameworks
The Commission is publishing ESCO v1 as Linked Open Data26 so that it can be
connected to a range of external knowledge sources such as classification systems,
controlled vocabularies and frameworks, databases, syntactical standards or tools that
make use of ESCO to provide services.

Interested parties can reference their classification to ESCO. This is typically done by
creating mapping tables that establish a relationship between each concept in their
classification to a concept in ESCO. As a result, each party that uses ESCO v1 or a
classification that is mapped to it can exchange information across systems and
language barriers.

Figure 6: ESCO interoperability map

26
See Part I.3: Publishing ESCO as Linked Open Data.

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
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Some of the classification systems and frameworks related to ESCO v1 are detailed
below.

ISCO-08

ISCO-08, developed by the ILO, provides a system for classifying and aggregating
occupational information obtained by means of statistical censuses and surveys, as
well as from administrative records. It is a four-level hierarchically structured
classification that allows occupations to be classified into 436 unit groups.

Since each ESCO occupation is mapped to one ISCO-08 unit group, the two
classifications are interoperable. This allows ESCO to build on the international
acceptance of ISCO. This is particularly important because most national occupational
classifications are currently mapped to ISCO-08. This will also make it easier to map27
them to ESCO. Additionally, since ISCO-08 is currently used to enhance the
international comparability of statistical data, it makes ESCO an interesting tool to
support labour market statistical reporting.

National classifications

Some EU Member States developed and currently use occupational classifications to

deliver labour market services at national level. The Commission services used several
of these classifications as reference during the development of ESCO.

The EURES Regulation (EU) 2016/589 lays down, inter alia, principles and rules on
cooperation of the Member States and the Commission regarding interoperability and
automated matching between job vacancies and job applications and CVs via a
uniform system to enable an efficient search and matching of the data provided and
by using common standards and formats for the data to be exchanged.

The Regulation envisages that:

Member States:

 cooperate on interoperability;

 support technical work on an European classification (aka ESCO) contents and

updates;

 will create an inventory of their national, regional or sectoral classifications listing

occupations, skills and competences;

 will adopt the European classification (ESCO) or map their national occupational
classifications to it within three years;

 that have classifications of skills and competences will map them to the skills and
competences of the European classification (ESCO). If this is not the case, by
mapping their national occupational classifications to ESCO, Member States will
gain access to a skill classification in their own language.

27
See Part III.3. Mapping classifications to ESCO

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The Commission:

 informs Member States about the European classification (ESCO);

 adopts & updates the European classification (ESCO), by Implementing Act(s);

 integrates inventories and updates into Portal and Network functioning.

It should be noted that the support in this context, whether it is of a technical or

financial nature, is limited to the mapping, i.e. the creation, updating and publishing of
correspondence tables, or to the work of replacing a national classification with the
European classification. It does not involve development or adaptation of IT systems
related to the exchange of Job vacancies and Job seeker profiles for the purposes of
EURES in accordance with the technical standards and formats of the uniform system
adopted under the provisions of Article 17 of the Regulation.

European Qualifications Framework (EQF)

The EQF, originally adopted in 2008 and replaced by the Council Recommendation on
the EQF for lifelong learning of 22 May 201728, is a common reference framework that
helps learners, graduates, education and training providers and employers to
understand and compare qualifications awarded in different countries and acquired in
different qualification systems in Europe.

The main goals of the EQF is to facilitate lifelong learning and promote people’s
mobility between countries. It consists of eight common European reference levels29,
described in terms of learning outcomes that the learner should acquire through the
completion of a learning process. Each level is formulated in terms of knowledge,
skills, responsibility and autonomy and should be attainable though a variety of
educational and career paths. Using learning outcomes as a common reference point,
the EQF facilitates comparison and transfer of qualifications among countries, systems
and institutions and is therefore relevant to a wide range of users at European and
national levels.

National databases of qualifications, which provide their data to the ESCO

qualifications pillar, provide information on the EQF level of the qualifications they
contain, therefore fostering transparency and comparability.

ISCED-F 2013

The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) is a framework

developed for assembling, compiling and analysing cross-nationally comparable
statistics on education. It belongs to the United Nations International Family of
Economic and Social Classifications. ISCED Fields of Education and Training (ISCED-F)
has been designed principally to describe and categorise fields of education and
training at the secondary, post-secondary and tertiary levels of formal education.

28
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32017H0615(01)&from=EN

29
https://ec.europa.eu/ploteus/content/descriptors-page

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
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Qualifications published in the qualifications pillar of ESCO need to be mapped to

ISCED F-2013. This will ensure better comparability and transparency of qualifications
across Member States and organisations.

Digital Competence Framework (DigComp)30

The DigComp 2.0 provides a vocabulary of digital competences at European level. It is

developed by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS)31 of the
Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC)32. DigComp 2.0 structures 21 competences
in 6 competence areas.

The Commission integrated the competences of DigComp into the ESCO list of digital
transversal skills.

30 https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/digcomp-20-digital-
competence-framework-citizens-update-phase-1-conceptual-reference-model

31 https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/about/jrc-site/seville

32 https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en

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3. Publishing ESCO as Linked Open Data

The Semantic Web

In the last few years, digitalisation has changed the way information is exchanged in
the labour market: it is now mainly organised through electronic means. In addition to
this, computing power has increased so much that information technology can process
large amounts of data, which becomes accessible to employers through the increased
use of social media. This changes the traditional, prevalent recruitment model, in
which employers explain their requirements and wait for the right candidate to apply.
Employers are now increasingly looking for candidates themselves and active sourcing
has become an important recruitment strategy. This requires employers to understand
the skill profiles of potential candidates and use this information in their search.

However, different actors on the labour market need to describe what they are
offering or what they are searching for through characteristics that are often
intangible (e.g. team spirit, social skills, leadership skills). Semantic technologies
enable the readability of these terms across various IT systems.

Semantic interoperability33 allows IT systems to use and integrate information from

different sources and databases. To achieve semantic interoperability, both sides must
use a common language for information exchange. This creates opportunities to reuse
existing data for new and diverse purposes. Additionally, it allows new insights and
knowledge to emerge from the integration of multiple data sources. The virtual space
where this data is linked and reused is known as the Semantic Web.

In the Semantic Web, data that is opened for re-use can be linked across applications,
organisations and community boundaries. This enables public administrations and
governments to publish their data.

The European policy framework

One of the Commission’s ten priorities put forward by President Juncker34 is to remove
barriers to a Digital Single Market in Europe. The public sector, which accounts for
over a quarter of total employment and contributes to approximately a fifth of the EU’s
GDP through public procurement, plays a key role in this market as a regulator,
services provider and employer.

The Communication on a Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe35 recognises

interoperability as a prerequisite for “efficient connections across borders, between

33
Semantic interoperability is the ability of organizations to process information from external sources in a
meaningful manner (European Interoperability Framework)

34
A New Start for Europe: My Agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change, Political Guidelines
for the next European Commission, Opening Statement during the European Parliament Plenary Session,
Strasbourg, 15 July 2014.

35 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/digital-single-market-strategy-europe-com2015-192-
final

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communities and between public services and authorities” and calls for the revision
and extension of the existing European Interoperability Framework.

This revision and extension was undertaken through the New European
Interoperability Framework (EIF)36, which is part of the Communication
(COM(2017)134) from the European Commission, adopted on 23 March 2017. The
framework gives specific guidance on how to set up interoperable digital public
services.

It offers 47 concrete recommendations to public administrations on how to improve

governance of their interoperability activities, establish cross-organisational
relationships, streamline processes supporting end-to-end digital services, and ensure
that both existing and new legislation do not compromise interoperability efforts.

Successful implementation of the EIF will improve the quality of European public
services and will create an environment where public administrations can collaborate
efficiently.

In addition to this, the Commission's work in the area of open data is focussing on
generating value through re-use of a specific type of data – public sector information,
sometimes also referred to as government data. That is all the information that public
bodies produce, collect or pay for. Examples are: geographical information, statistics,
weather data, data from publicly funded research projects, and digitised books from
libraries.

The Commission supports open data for four reasons:

1. Public data has significant potential for re-use in new products and services;

2. Addressing societal challenges – having more data openly available will help
discover new and innovative solutions;

3. Achieving efficiency gains through sharing data inside and between public
administrations;

4. Fostering participation of citizens in political and social life and increasing the
transparency of government.

The Directive on the reuse of public sector information37 sets out the general
legislative framework at European level for government data. Its revision in June
201338 further improved this framework by introducing the default rule that public
information will be available for free or at very low cost and it expands the scope to
other institutions (museums, archives and libraries). The reuse of public sector data,

36
https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/sites/isa/files/eif_brochure_final.pdf
37
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32013L0037

38
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32013L0037

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
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whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes, should fully respect EU and

national privacy legislation as well as the intellectual property rights of third parties.

The Commission has allowed the reuse of its own documents for commercial and non-
commercial purposes at no charge under Decision 2006/291/EC39 on the reuse of
Commission information.

Linked Open Data

Linked Open Data is a methodology used in the Semantic Web to literally ''link'' data
that is ''open''. This means that data needs to be ''opened up'' first – so that others
can use it – and then it can be ''linked'' to other data on the web. This methodology
requires that individuals and companies publish data using a model that ensures:

 there is no ambiguity in the semantics (and the meaning) thanks to the use of
dedicated ontologies and vocabularies;

 backwards compatibility through versioning schemes;

 data is uniquely identifiable in the whole world.

Linked Open Data is a methodology to publish data that helps users to:

 easily integrate data into existing IT systems;

 link to other data;

 ensure that the content (data) is well managed and quality-assured before
publication;

 ensure that continuous updates of the data do not lead to high administrative
overhead.

ESCO as Linked Open Data

ESCO is published as Linked Open Data, meaning that developers can use it as a
building block in applications providing services such as job matching, career guidance
and self-assessment tools to citizens.

The ESCO classification is available in different formats (SKOS-RDF, CSV) in order to

allow users to integrate it into their applications and services. Additionally, ESCO
provides a Local API and a Web Services API, so that applications and web services
can query the classification in real time40.

Following the Linked Open Data methodology, ESCO is developed and published using
a data model that complies with the following principles:

39
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32006D0291

40
See Part III.2. Implement ESCO within systems

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART I – WHAT IS ESCO?

Scope disambiguation

The scope of each occupation, knowledge, skill and competence in ESCO is clearly
established in its description. Any potential ambiguity is resolved in the scope notes,
which help to distinguish the concept from others in the classification (using an
inclusion or exclusion statement). Additionally, the occupations pillar is structured into
a mono-hierarchical tree: this means that each concept can only have one broader
concept. This provides consistency and avoids semantic ambiguity.

Uniqueness of concept identifiers

Each occupation, knowledge, skill and competence in ESCO is identified by a string of

characters that follows a specific syntax: the Unique Resource Identifier (URI). A URI
is a crucial component of the Semantic Web. Each URI:

 is unique over the web (universal);

 allows data from different sources to link to it;

 is persistent (see ‘backward compatibility’ below for more information).

In the same way as a web address link (URL), if a URI is inserted in a browser, it
points to the website where the resource is located. However, the difference between
them lies in the fact that the URI is machine-readable.

For example, the URI http://data.europa.eu/esco/occupation/528f90ed-e250-48bd-

aacc-ffb7b1de5654 identifies the occupational profile "Textile specialised seller".

Backward compatibility

According to W3C policy41, organisations that publish as Linked Open Data commit to
making their URIs persistent. The Commission will abide by this policy (i.e. the URIs in
ESCO will not change). As the data is made open and re-usable, third parties re-use it
in their applications and services. In the same way as an old book will remain on the
shelf of a public library or medical and legal documents are matters of record, a
certain level of confidence is needed that the resources (the URIs) will remain
available. This helps parties to link their data.

This does not mean that the ESCO classification cannot itself be changed. When an
occupation or a skill concept becomes obsolete or changes, a history note explains
that the resource is obsolete or redirects to one or more resources that replace it. This
ensures backward compatibility of linked data sets (e.g. the national classifications
mapped to ESCO). The versioning scheme that the Commission adopted for ESCO is
further described in Part IV section 2.

41
https://www.w3.org/

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART II – DEVELOPING ESCO

PART II – DEVELOPING ESCO

The Commission has led the development of ESCO with the support of the European
Centre for Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop), and has counted on the
involvement of different stakeholders, to provide strategic and technical advice and to
directly contribute to the development of the content. Key stakeholders include:

 employment services;

 social partners;

 education and training organisations;

 statistical organisations, researchers and big data analysts;

 skills councils and networks.

Figure 7: ESCO contributors

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ESCO handbook: PART II – DEVELOPING ESCO

1. The governance framework

Five main bodies have provided either technical or strategic advice to the Commission
throughout the development process of ESCO v1.

ESCO Maintenance Committee

The ESCO Maintenance Committee provided advice on the technical and conceptual
development of ESCO. It formulated opinions on the approach for technical
implementation, on the tools and techniques used for content development and on
quality control principles. Additionally, the committee advised the Commission on the
usability of ESCO for concrete use cases. Members were appointed on the basis of
their technical expertise and included representatives from public employment
services, statistical organisations, chambers of commerce, the ILO and other key
stakeholders. The first ESCO Maintenance Committee was active from 2011-2013 and
the second one from 2014-2017. The Commission intends to establish a new expert
group that continues the work of the Maintenance Committee in the near future.

ESCO Board

The ESCO Board was composed of high-level experts that provided strategic guidance
to the Commission. In particular, it supported the Commission in the definition of the
strategic framework, overall concept and communication strategy for ESCO. Members
of the board were appointed on the basis of their personal expertise and did not
officially represent organisations or Member States. In the composition of the board,
the Commission aimed for a good geographical balance and a diverse stakeholder
representation including public and private employment services, social partners and
education and labour market experts. The first ESCO Board was active from 2011-
2013 and the second one from 2014-2016.

Member States Working Group on ESCO

The Member States Working Group on ESCO, created in 2015, is composed of

representatives from Member States. Each Member State appoints up to two national
experts in employment and education and training affairs as members of the group. In
addition, European Economic Area (EEA) and candidate countries, as well as European
social partners are invited to appoint one observer to the group. It advises and
supports the Commission on the implementation and development of ESCO and its
compliance with the EURES Regulation.

Sectoral Reference Groups

Sectoral Reference Groups consisted of experts for a specific sector of the economy.
They included representatives from social partners, employment services, employers,
professional associations, sector skills councils, education and training institutes,
statistical offices and others. They provided input into the development of ESCO v1
between 2011 and 2015. The full list of Sectoral Reference Groups is provided in
Annex I.

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Cross-sector Reference Group

The Cross-Sector Reference Group consisted of experts in employment and education,

related standards and classifications, and those with an up-to-date knowledge of
relations between education and training and the labour market. It dealt with cross-
sectoral skills and competences, the consistency of the skills pillar, and the links to the
qualifications pillar. It provided input between 2011 and 2015.

Others stakeholders

Other stakeholders (public employment services, social partners, education and

training organisations, etc.) were consulted online and provided feedback on
occupational profiles in 2015 and 2016.

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART II – DEVELOPING ESCO

2. ESCO content development process

Desk research

The development of the ESCO classification started from scratch. Together with the
stakeholders representing different sectors of economic activity, the Commission
developed the occupations and the skills pillars of ESCO from the angle of the labour
market. To this end, they analysed a wide variety of existing sources, such as studies,
national, regional and sectoral classifications, and relevant international classifications
and standards.

Types of sources

Sectoral classifications Regulations

National classifications International classifications

National observatories publications Scientific articles

Sector skills councils publications Job descriptions

Occupational standards Job vacancies

Qualification standards Other sources

Learning outcome descriptions

The most important sources used were national occupation classifications from
Member States (such as Berufenet, ROME, the Czech National System of Occupations
and the UK NOS), classifications with a European scope (such as NACE and
EurOccupations) and classifications with an international scope (such as ISCO). They
were selected following different criteria including typology (classification, qualification
standards, etc.), scope (European, national, etc.), quality and richness of the
information.

The rationale behind the use of existing sources was to build on the information of
existing national and sectoral classifications, to ensure a good geographical coverage,
reflect labour market reality and facilitate the mapping to national classifications.

To ensure that the ESCO terminology is fit for use in the education and training sector,
the Commission and the stakeholders involved complemented these sources with
information extracted from learning outcomes descriptions of qualifications.

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART II – DEVELOPING ESCO

Developing occupational profiles in five major steps

The classification was built in several major phases, which are detailed below.

1. Collecting the • Collect a broad list of occupations from the reference sources
occupations and through desk research.

• Clean-out the list by searching for similarities among concepts.

2. Refining the list of
• Initial attribution of preferred terms (PT) and the non-preferred
occupations terms (NPT).

3. Development of the • The flat list of occupations needed to be organised.ISCO and

sectoral breakdown NACE were used to structure the work.

4. Development of the • The occupational profiles were further developed with a

completed description and provisioning of the knowledge, skills
occupational profiles and competences.

• Review of the correspondence with existing classifications.

5. Coverage validation • Review of the job market reality through sample tests against
job vacancies on the European labour market.

Creating the content

The approach for developing occupational profiles varied depending on the sector. For
some sectors of economic activity, expert groups (the Sectoral Reference Groups)
developed the entire classification or, in some cases, they worked on the basis of a
draft provided by the Commission. For other sectors, the Commission developed a
draft classification and submitted it for an online consultation with different
stakeholders.

Between 2011 and 2015, Sectoral Reference Groups developed the draft content for
11 sectors. Their work resulted in a draft classification that was subsequently
submitted for clean-up and quality improvement steps.

Example of content creation by a Sector Reference Group: developing ESCO in

the wholesale, retail trade and rental and leasing sector

Employment in the wholesale and retail trade sector accounts for about 13% of the
total rate of employment42. This sector represents a wide range of occupations,
encompasses both retail and distribution of goods, and provides an important link
between manufacturers and consumers.

The relative importance of this sector in the economy had to be captured when
developing the classification. This is why a group of approximately 10 sectoral experts
coming from different organisations (government administrations, national training
institutes, national industrial associations and private companies) met for the first

42
Source: Eurostat.

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
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time in June 2012 with the main assignment of developing a detailed list of
occupational profiles for the sector. The members had the opportunity to work closely
with the European Skills Council for Commerce to refine some of the occupational
profiles.

A core project team of 6 experts developed the occupational profiles and provided
continuous and permanent contributions either in face-to-face meetings or by virtual
discussions during the complete project period.

The group of experts finished their work in June 2015. It resulted in a list of 57
occupational profiles and a conceptual representation of the economic sector under
three main sub-sectors: wholesale trade, retail trade, and rental and leasing activities.

When reviewing the occupational profiles, the group of experts had to overcome
multiple challenges and take into account diverse sector trends. As a matter of fact,
the skills requirements are constantly evolving across the sector: employers require
more refined strategic methods, which include new skills in marketing, merchandising
and human resources, as well as more expertise in ICT and skills related to effective
communication. Aspects such as internationalisation, e-commerce, the greening of
economies and multi-channel retailing not only provoke the appearance of new
emerging occupations in the sector, but also the demand for new skills. In the case of
e-commerce for example, emerging trends lead to the increasing integration of the
retail sector and distribution services sector, and point out the importance of
occupations such as e-merchandisers, IT developers or web analysts.

Between October 2015 and April 2016, the Commission developed the content of a
draft classification for the 16 remaining sectors and consulted experts through an
online platform that allowed them to review the different concepts, either by rating
them or by suggesting improvements.

1130 stakeholders registered in the consultation and 500 participated actively. These
stakeholders represented professional associations, education and training institutes,
private companies, industrial associations, trade unions, etc. Participants from all EU
Member States were involved, ensuring a good geographical and sectoral coverage.

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The Commission received around 3 900 comments. The experts’ comments were
mainly suggestions about adding more skills or occupations, completing or improving
the descriptions and merging concepts that were considered duplicates. The
Commission took the comments and suggestions into consideration, assessed them in
light of the guidelines and compared the content with the existent national
classifications.

Example of content creation by the Commission and submitted to the online

consultation: developing ESCO in the construction sector.

The list of 89 occupational profiles for the construction sector developed by the
Commission was submitted to the online consultation together with 15 other sectors.
55 experts provided 247 comments on the draft classification for the construction
sector.

The draft classification reflected the current trends in the construction sector, where
new jobs are emerging, mainly in management and associated technical occupations.
There is an increasing demand for project management skills, new technologies and
sustainable construction processes. The general focus on energy and environmental
awareness skills in construction is evident in many countries.

The trend towards constructing ‘green’ buildings requires construction workers to have
a better grasp of environmentally-friendly materials and technologies that are energy-
efficient or greener.

A crucial challenge for the construction sector in the future relates to the increasing
implementation of ICT in the general construction process. The current trend towards
the intensified use of ICT systems has implications for project management, creating
potential efficiencies for managing the construction process, including logistics,
monitoring of materials, design and construction.

Gap analysis

In order to identify potential gaps and to ensure the completeness of the classification,
the Commission followed the advice of the ESCO Maintenance Committee and, as the
final step of the content development process, compared ESCO to eight national
occupational classifications. This analysis also aimed to identify discrepancies in the
level of detail between ESCO and the national classifications, and complete the ESCO
classification where possible.

The Commission carried out this work with the following classifications:

 Répertoire Opérationnel des Métiers et des Emplois (France) ;

 Klassifikation der Berufe 2010 (Germany);

 Beroepen, Opleidingen en Competentieregister (the Netherlands);

 Standard för Svensk Yrkeklassificering (Sweden);

 Clasificación de Ocupaciones del Sistema de Información de los Servicios Públicos

de Empleo (Spain) ;

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
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 Clasificarea ocupațiilor din România (Romania);

 Berufsinformationssystem (Austria);

 Klasifikace zaměstnání and Národní soustava povolání (Czech Republic).

As a result of the comparison, the Commission created 249 new occupations. In many
cases, a gap was not resolved by adding a new occupation, but rather by adapting the
scope of an existing one (e.g. by adding skills or extending the description). This work
increased the overall quality of ESCO by ensuring that all occupations in the eight
national classifications analysed could be mapped to ESCO and that ESCO occupations
were well structured under the ISCO-08 hierarchy.

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3. Formulation of terms in ESCO languages

The Commission has made ESCO available in 26 languages, including all EU official
languages as well as Icelandic and Norwegian, in order to facilitate increased
international transparency and cooperation in the area of skills and qualifications.

ESCO is therefore bridging language barriers by providing terms for each concept in all
languages covered by the classification. ESCO categorises and uses different types of
terms such as: preferred terms, non-preferred terms and hidden terms43. ESCO
collects terms used in the labour market to refer to occupations and skills in the
different ESCO languages.

ESCO terms were first formulated in English, which is the ESCO reference language.
The process of term formulation started with attempts to achieve the best wording for
ESCO concepts – separately for the occupations and skills pillars. The aim was to find
formulations that would best convey the original idea in the clearest, most concise and
self-explanatory manner possible. The process of the formulation of terms involved
using vocabulary commonly present in job vacancies, curricula, and national and
international occupational classifications from across Europe.

Once the terms were formulated in English, terminologists and market experts
ensured that the formulated terms properly reflected the meaning of the concept as
captured by the description and the scope note (if available).

The English term validation process consisted of two steps:

 a linguistic (vocabulary and grammar) check by terminologists;

 a labour market reality check by market experts.

A similar process for term formulation and validation took place for all ESCO
languages other than English. As opposed to the regular translation practice,
translators did not simply translate the terms from English into the target languages of
ESCO, but selected the most common expressions from among the existing terms in
the given language and the given labour market. This process followed a similarly
structured approach as term formulation in English, which consisted of:

 formulation of terms in the target languages followed by terminological checks;

 labour market checks to ensure the concepts reflect the reality at European level.

The whole process required compliance with terminological rules that took into
consideration the grammatical and linguistic characteristics of each language. A
number of national sources were used to facilitate this task, such as national
classifications, websites of public employment services, etc.

Moreover, translators consulted designated national experts in order to ensure that

the terms reflected the characteristics of the national employment structure. The
Commission consulted Member States through the Member States Working Group on

43
See Part I.1. The structure of ESCO

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ESCO44. The feedback received was then integrated by the translators and served to
improve and adjust the terms, based on the expertise of the Member States.

44
See Part II.1. The governance framework

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4. Quality management of ESCO

During the development of ESCO and until its release, the Commission used quality
criteria to ensure the consistency and correctness of the structure and content of the
ESCO classification. The Commission also focused its efforts to ensure that the
requirements of EURES were met (see table below).

Quality assurance criteria

Data consistency The extent to which concepts are described using a

standard syntax.

Linguistic quality The extent to which the language used in the terms is
correct.

Use of relevant The extent to which the terminology used by employers and
language jobseekers is used.

Main national The fact that all occupations in the national classifications
classifications can be mapped to ESCO concepts.
coverage verified

ISCO-08 alignment The fact that all ESCO occupations are correctly assigned to
an ISCO-08 unit group.

Completeness The extent to which all occupations that are relevant in the
European labour market are covered.

The table below provides an in-depth view of the elements that were taken into
account to ensure the quality of the classification.

Ensuring the quality of ESCO

Data model Define the data model and the business rules allowing ESCO
users and developers to work efficiently with the
vocabulary.

ESCO guidelines Define guidelines for the development of ESCO and make
them available to all experts involved.

Experts’ involvement Involve experts from all over Europe and from all sectors of
economic activity to develop and/or evaluate the draft
occupations, knowledge, skills and competences.

Quality assurance Define quality assurance steps, checklists, reporting

steps and supporting templates, and tools for the Commission and the ESCO
tools Maintenance Committee to monitor the work done and
validate the deliverables.

Mapping to ISCO-08 Quality assure the mapping to ISCO-08 with the support of
an expert suggested by the ILO.

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Completeness Complete a gap analysis between the ESCO classification,

ISCO-08 and eight national classifications to:
 ensure the completeness of ESCO;
 identify discrepancies in the level of detail between
ESCO, ISCO-08 and the national classifications;
 enrich the ESCO classification with additional non-
preferred terms.

Avoid ambiguities in Check the scope alignment between the ESCO English terms
the occupation used in the ESCO occupations and ISCO-08.
structure

Terminological Involve linguists to develop general and language-specific

guidelines guidelines for the formulation of terms in the various
languages.

Involve professional Have translators formulate the terms for the various
translators languages

Provide the Provide the translators involved in the formulation of terms

translators with with access to labour market experts in a given language, to
access to labour assist them in identifying the terms really used in the labour
market experts market.

Feasibility check with Consult the Member States on the feasibility of mapping
the Member States national classifications to ESCO.

Language check with Consult the Member States on the accuracy of the ESCO
the Member States terms in its 26 language variants.

After the publication of ESCO v1, the Commission will assess how it performs in the
context of EURES and gather feedback from companies and organisations that will
implement the classification in their services. This information will feed into the
continuous improvement process of ESCO45.

45
See Part IV.1. Continuous improving and updating

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 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
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PART III – USING ESCO

ESCO can only achieve its goal if it is integrated into applications, tools and services.
It can be used in several different areas including job matching, education, statistics,
etc. The ambition is that ESCO becomes a de facto standard.

1. ESCO and the support of specific use cases

1.1 Connecting people and jobs

Job matching based on skills and competences

Job matching is increasingly carried out online, allowing for a more efficient approach.
Not only does job matching provide jobseekers with a wide range of relevant
opportunities, but it also helps employees to identify new career paths and understand
which transferable skills they have between occupations.

For successful job matching based on knowledge, skills and competences, it is

necessary not only to extract the relevant information from online job vacancies and
CVs, but also to interpret this information in a correct way. ESCO’s structure of three
interlinked pillars helps IT systems to achieve this.

ESCO contains a skill and competence set for each occupation and information on
relevant qualifications. It enables IT systems to better understand a jobseeker’s
knowledge, skills and competences based on work experience and education. In this
way, ESCO helps create a more precise picture of the skills and competences of an
individual. Recruiters can use ESCO to specify the knowledge, skills and competences
they expect from a successful candidate. Information on both the candidate and the
expectations of the employer can be compared in job matching algorithms. As a
result, people can find the job that best matches their skills and employers can find
the talent they need.

The Commission tested the added value of ESCO for competence-based job matching
in several pilot projects, including a pilot project in the framework of the
Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA)46 programme. The aim of
this pilot was to demonstrate how ESCO can be used i) to exchange data on job
vacancies and CVs between multiple organisations (public and private), ii) for
matching between job vacancies and CVs and iii) for skills intelligence. The results of
this pilot showed that skills-based matching between the supply side (CVs) and the
demand side (job vacancies) can be automated by annotating them with ESCO skills
and occupations.

The e-learning and recruitment platform Academy Cube constitutes another concrete
example of ESCO pilots. The platform plans to use ESCO to i) improve the matching
between jobseekers’ skills profiles and vacancies available at companies that are
partners of Academy Cube in the ICT sector and ii) identify the candidates’ skills gaps

46
https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/home_en

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in order to suggest courses that address them. Academy Cube has been developed by
leading global companies to strengthen tomorrow’s workforce and to open the door to
new opportunities in the international labour market for motivated individuals.

ESCO in EURES

The EURES Job Mobility Portal47 and Network is a key system in enabling mobility. It
hosts 1 310 554 job vacancies, 340 768 CVs, and 10 025 registered employers48. It
helps those who wish to find a job abroad and offers European employers and other
stakeholders a variety of services and information covering every aspect of recruiting
from other European countries.

In 2016, the Commission adopted a new EURES Regulation aimed at providing better
job search and recruitment services across Europe and at boosting intra-EU labour
mobility. Among other elements, the new rules are expected to:

 modernise the EURES system, which will become an up-to-date mobility tool that
uses the latest IT technologies and is accessible by all;

 lead to an increase in the number of job vacancies and jobseekers' CVs available
through EURES;

 introduce automated matching of jobseekers' skills and job openings;

 develop a European classification of occupations and skills and competences to

support interoperability49.

The Commission developed ESCO so that it can be integrated into the EURES service
platform and support the automated matching of jobseekers' skills and job openings.
Using ESCO to improve semantic interoperability aims at making the EURES services
more relevant to the current demands of the labour market. By highlighting
mismatches between CVs and vacancies, ESCO will help identify skill gaps and
learning opportunities.

Once national systems adopt ESCO v1 or are mapped to it50, information that is
transmitted to EURES will be based on ESCO v1. This way, EURES provides an
exchange platform for CVs and job vacancies across Europe. Thanks to ESCO, these
CVs and vacancies will contain more standardised and detailed information covering
knowledge, skills and competences and qualifications. Jobseekers all over Europe will
be able to better understand job posts as they will be described more precisely,
including multilingual information on the knowledge, skills and competences the
employer expects. In the same manner, employers will be able to better understand

47 https://ec.europa.eu/eures/public/es/homepage

48 Data from 25 September 2017.

49
Article 19 (2) of the EURES Regulation.

50
See Part III.3. Mapping classifications to ESCO

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job applications and the work experience, skills and competences that candidates from
other European countries can bring to their business.

As ESCO has a broader purpose than the European classification referred to in the
EURES Regulation, the implementing act of Article 19(6) will only apply to the
procedures and methods relevant for the application of the EURES portal. It may
therefore be that the EURES Portal will "freeze" a version of ESCO for a particular
interval, taking into account the time necessary to develop and release IT changes
resulting from an update.

1.2 Connecting employment and education

Career guidance

Individuals seek career guidance across different levels of education during their
working life. ESCO will improve career guidance services in the following ways:

 Competence assessment: The skills and competences provided by ESCO

facilitate the description of existing capabilities and the identification of missing
skills, including transversal skills. Coupled with proficiency levels, applications
using ESCO allow individuals to assess their skills and identify those that need
improvement.

 Matching skill profiles to learning opportunities: Based on their skill profiles,

users can identify their skill gaps in relation to their desired job and select learning
opportunities that will address them.

Another pilot implementation, the Open European Skill Match Maker (OPESKIMR)51
uses the ESCO classification to create an algorithm for matching individuals’ skills sets
to learning opportunities in the STEM area. This will improve their skills and enhance
their chances of getting their desired job. The open source nature of ESCO, its
compatibility with other systems and its common vocabulary for skills and
qualifications enhances OPESKIMR’s functionality and allows it to collect real-time data
about new skills requirements. It therefore presents users with attractive career
options and the tools to successfully pursue them.

Enhancing the dialogue between employment and education

ESCO developments reflect the on-going shift to learning outcomes currently taking
place across Europe. The learning outcomes approach states what a jobseeker knows,
understands and is able to do on completion of a learning process. It offers an
alternative to the traditionally strong emphasis on learning inputs where a qualification
is judged according to time spent in education, subjects studied and the location of the
learning.

Learning outcomes are commonly defined in terms of knowledge, skills and

competences and therefore share the basic terminological principles underpinning

51
https://ec.europa.eu/esco/portal/news/ec030840-4ebd-4a0c-83c3-b390e19ce25b

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ESCO. This shared terminology will facilitate dialogue between labour market and
education and training stakeholders within and across sectors and borders. By
annotating the learning outcomes of qualifications with the knowledge, skills and
competences of ESCO52, labour market and education actors will share a common
language. In particular:

 employers will be able to better understand the suitability of a candidate for a

position on the basis of their qualifications;

 education systems will be able to get feedback on the labour market needs,
identify the skills gaps and adapt their qualifications accordingly;

 candidates will be able get advice on which qualifications can increase their
employability.

1.3 Understanding skills supply and demand

Supporting skills intelligence and statistics

Labour market statistics are an important instrument for all stakeholders in the
domains of employment and education:

 policy makers can use them to better understand labour market dynamics and
react to them;

 employers can use them to optimise their recruitment activities;

 jobseekers can use them to make better career decisions;

 education and training institutions can use them to adapt curricula to the needs of
the labour market;

 career guidance counsellors and employment advisers can use them to inform
students and jobseekers on the best career opportunities.

Classification systems are important for the collection, compilation and dissemination
of labour market statistics. They provide standardised concepts (e.g. occupations and
skills) that allow the aggregation of data (e.g. people employed in an occupation) and
the measuring of trends (e.g. skills in growing demand) across countries and regions.
In databases across Europe, there is a vast amount of labour market data available.
However, in most cases this data is collected using different classifications systems.

International reference classifications set standards for internationally comparable

classifications, which serve as models for the development of corresponding national,
multinational and regional statistical classifications and form the basis for
internationally comparable data53. The ILO developed the ISCO-08 classification

52
See Part I-1.3. The qualifications pillar

53
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ramon/miscellaneous/index.cfm?TargetUrl=DSP_GENINFO_CLASS_1

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primarily to support international reporting, and the comparison and exchange of

statistical and administrative data about occupations.

Statisticians in most Member States use the ISCO-08 classification. The mapping
between ESCO and ISCO-08 is of significant value for them, since it implies that more
data and knowledge becomes available for ISCO-08-based reporting. Since the
terminology used in ESCO is more detailed than ISCO-08 and closer to the language
used on the labour market, it can help statisticians identify the correct association of
occupation terms in their national language to the appropriate ISCO-08 category54.

ESCO also allows statisticians to collect, compile and disseminate data at a more
detailed level if needed. Since ESCO classifies the occupations under the appropriate
ISCO-08 group, this added precision still supports the ISCO-08 comparability.

ESCO and big data

The digitisation of the economy, the increased accessibility of the World Wide Web,
and technological innovations in ICT have produced:

 the increased online availability of user-generated data (e.g. CVs and job
vacancies);

 more powerful computer processors and more efficient ways of data mining;

 the possibility of processing large amounts of data digitally in real-time using

machine learning through cloud services.

The analysis of large amounts of data, also referred to as big data, allows real-time
reporting, more accurate and precise data on labour market trends.

ESCO’s terminology base is well-suited to create repositories in the domains of labour

and education that are accessible for big data research. Since ESCO includes a rich
vocabulary of terms (including synonyms, alternative terms, acronyms, etc.) in 26
languages (356 428 occupation terms and 541 745 skills and competences terms),
analysts can use Natural Language Processing more effectively. This allows them to
identify relevant concepts in available repositories or on the Internet and classify them
regardless of their language. For instance, they can collect information on occupations
and skills (through the terms defined in ESCO) in job vacancies and CV repositories.
This would provide new insights on the dynamics of the labour market.

Additionally, once ESCO is mapped to many other classifications it can become a

reference point when using data encoded with different classifications.

The Cedefop study Real-time labour market information on skill requirements provides
a clear example of this use case. Cedefop developed a prototype multilingual system
to collect and analyse data on the demand for skills using job postings. The tool has
already been tested in five countries and is now being refined and expanded to more

54
Additionally, Member States can use the ESCO to ISCO mappings to simplify the direct mapping of
national occupation classifications to ESCO.

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countries. This experience demonstrated that ESCO was very useful for both the
extraction and classification of the skills requested in the job vacancies.

Big data research can also be useful to improve the ESCO classification. The
Commission can monitor the terms used in CV and job vacancies repositories as a
useful source of information to understand which terms are missing in ESCO and
identify a need to update the classification.

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2. Implementing ESCO within systems

ESCO architecture

The architecture of ESCO is composed of different functional blocks, as shown in the

figure below.

Figure 11. ESCO functional architecture

Three basic layers are distinguished:

The core functions layer

The ESCO core functions layer is the “heart” of the system, as it includes the
fundamental component of the taxonomy development and maintenance:

 The Taxonomy Management System, which is responsible for the editorial work
needed to maintain the taxonomy and the ESCO Store, which stores the
SKOS/RDF55 ESCO dataset.

55
Symple Knowledge Organisation System: a standard way to represent knowledge organisation systems
using the Resource Description Framework (RDF). Encoding this information in RDF allows it to be passed
between computer applications in an interoperable way (W3C).

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The contributor layer

 The Translation Management platform, which provides all the functionalities

needed to translate ESCO into the other 25 languages (and store the translated
datasets);

 The Mapping Management platform, the environment through which mappings

between National Occupation Classifications and ESCO can be created;

 The Qualifications Dataset Register (QDR), which is the platform that stores
metadata about qualifications, based on a common schema, the Qualifications
Metadata Schema56;

 The Online Consultation Platform (OCP), which allows contributors to browse

through the classification and to provide feedback directly on the specific concepts
(occupations, knowledge, skills or competences) that are displayed in the platform.

The publication layer

This layer is the ESCO gateway that makes the classification available to the end
users. It includes:

 The ESCO Service Platform, which is the access point to the classification and all
the supporting documents and tools for the end users.

 The Application Programming Interface (API), which is a software component

facilitating the interaction with other software components. ESCO offers access to
the classification through APIs, accessible through the ESCO Service Platform. The
ESCO APIs represent a set of services and functionalities published in the Web that
allow other applications to access the ESCO classification. ESCO offers two
different types of APIs: the ESCO Web Services API, already available, and the
ESCO Local API (to be released in winter 2017/2018).

 Data Catalogue Vocabulary (DCAT), which allows ESCO users and systems to
explore, find, identify and select ESCO datasets of different versions. This register
maintains a catalogue of all published datasets (including their metadata) and their
different versions.

ESCO data files

The ESCO classification is composed of several building blocks, each one of them
containing specific content such as occupations, knowledge, skills and competences,
qualifications, regulatory aspects, transversal skills, the ISCO hierarchy, etc. They
contain concepts in the reference language (English) and, when combined and
interrelated, they create the whole classification.

Modules are divided into three types:

56
See Part I-1.3. The qualifications pillar

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 Core modules: Core modules are the files that hold ESCO concepts along with
their URIs: occupations and skills. They are the reference datasets, the “heart” of
the ESCO classification. The data is compliant with the ESCO model.

 Linking modules: Linking modules enrich core datasets by providing links

between two or more different modules, at least one of which is a core native
dataset. For instance, relationships between occupations and skills or taxonomies
within the ESCO model constitute linking modules.

 Supporting modules: Supporting modules define concepts that can be used to

enrich core datasets. Examples are controlled vocabularies such as ISCO-08.

For each concept, ESCO provides the corresponding terms in the 24 official EU
languages and in Icelandic and Norwegian. This is referred to as the ESCO language
packs.

The full list of languages covered by ESCO is:

 Bulgarian (bg)  Lithuanian (lt)

 Spanish (es)  Hungarian (hu)

 Czech (cs)  Maltese (mt)

 Danish (da)  Dutch (nl)

 German (de)  Polish (pl)

 Estonian (et)  Portuguese (pt)

 Greek (el)  Romanian (ro)

 English (en)  Slovak (sk)

 French (fr)  Slovenian (sl)

 Irish (ga)  Finnish (fi)

 Croatian (hr)  Swedish (sv)

 Italian (it)  Icelandic (is)

 Latvian (lv)  Norwegian (no)

A user might only want to use a singular ESCO language pack, depending on the
language s/he speaks or the purpose for which s/he is using ESCO (i.e. s/he can
choose to use the occupations, knowledge, skills and competences in one language
only).

The following table defines ESCO modules that are published in v1.

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Type Name Description

Core Occupation concepts The occupation concepts and their

metadata.

Core Skills concepts The knowledge, skills and competences

concepts and their metadata.

Core Qualification concepts The qualification concepts and their

metadata.

Linking Relationships between The skills, competences and knowledge

occupations and skills concepts that are essential or optional for
an occupation.

Linking Occupations primary The relationships between ESCO

hierarchy occupations and ISCO, organising the
occupations in the ISCO hierarchy.

Supporting Occupation terms The terms of occupations in a specific

language, including information on gender.

Supporting Skill terms The terms of skills in a specific language.

Supporting Supporting taxonomies All supporting taxonomies integrated in

such as: ESCO and republished as Linked Open
Data.
 ISCO-08 (and ISCO-
08 translations);
 Common European
framework of
reference languages
(CEFR);
 EQF;
 ISCED-F 2013 and
ISCED-F 2013
translations;
 NUTS.

57
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART III – USING ESCO

3. Connecting national, regional and sectoral

standards: Mapping classifications to ESCO
ESCO will help employers, jobseekers and labour market brokers such as public and
private employment services to reach out to a larger number of CVs or job vacancies.
This will be achieved by improving semantic interoperability57, which increases the
ability to exchange relevant documents or data throughout Europe.

According to art. 19 of the new EURES Regulation, Member States will either create
links between the concepts in their national, regional or sectoral occupational/skill
classifications and the European classification (“mapping”) or adopt the European
classification at national level. In addition, private employment services, profit-making
organisations, non-profit organisations, trade unions and employers’ organisations can
map their own classifications to ESCO.

ESCO as a hub for the creation of mapping relationships

After mapping several classifications to ESCO, these classifications are also indirectly
mapped to each other. Therefore, ESCO will serve as a reference classification or
"hub". The following chart illustrates how ESCO will reduce the number of mappings
required when exchanging data between classification systems:

Mapping classifications without ESCO Mapping classifications with ESCO

Classification A Classification A

Classification F Classification B Classification F Classification B

ESCO
Classification E Classification C Classification E Classification C

Classification D Classification D

Figure 12. Mapping classifications without and with ESCO

This will help to overcome the main obstacles in the cross-border exchange of data:
the use of different IT and classification systems and different languages. As a hub,
ESCO can be used to transcode information encoded in different classifications and IT
systems. This enables employment services from all European countries to exchange
job vacancies and/or CVs. The advantage of this solution is that employment services
do not need to change their way of working and can maintain their own classification
and IT systems. Nonetheless, they will be able to exchange data using ESCO.

57
See Part I-3. Publishing ESCO as Linked Open Data

58
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART III – USING ESCO

Since ESCO is available in 26 languages, it will be possible to overcome the language

barrier as well.

Example: Once the national classification systems are mapped to ESCO, the Irish
public employment service could search for an "electrical engineer" job vacancy in the
German database. It will be possible to find the "Elektroingenieur" job vacancy, if the
vacancy is identified with the name of the occupation in German language or with the
code according to the German classification system.

Developing a methodology for the creation of mapping relationships

The Commission coordinated the following mapping pilots both with the public and
private sectors:

 a pilot in the field of occupations between ESCO and national occupational

classifications;

 a pilot in the field of skills between ESCO and LinkedIn.

Throughout these pilots, the Commission:

 learned more about the process and the resources required for the creation and
maintenance of the correspondence tables of occupations and skills;

 understood better the requirements of the tools and/or services facilitating the
mapping process;

 identified the level of interoperability that can be achieved between ESCO and
national skill classifications.

Building on these findings, the Commission is currently developing a toolbox to help

Member States to carry out mappings. The toolbox is composed of the following parts:

1. A mapping management platform (including documentation on how to use it):

The platform allows users to map concepts from other classifications to ESCO. It is
supported by advanced search options, automatic mapping suggestions and a
user-friendly interface.

2. A mapping manual: a step-by-step guide for mapping occupational and skill

classifications to ESCO.

3. A dedicated helpdesk: a team of experts who reply to queries received from the
mappers;

4. A series of training sessions: a team of taxonomists and IT specialists who will

provide training to the mappers.

The Commission will coordinate in 2017/18 one further pilot in the field of knowledge,
skills and competences between ESCO and national skill classifications.

59
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART III – USING ESCO

Mapping ESCO to other classifications

Within the course of the creation of the mappings, employment services can follow the
process described below to create mapping relationships between ESCO and their own
classification systems:

1. Transform the data in their classifications into a Simple Knowledge Organisation

System (SKOS)58. This is the standard, which is well-suited to create
correspondences between classifications.

2. Import the data into a software tool that can make suggestions for mapping
occupations and/or skills (the mapping management platform).

3. Taxonomy experts create mapping relationships between concepts (occupations or

knowledge, skills and competences) in their own classifications and the concepts in
ESCO, while consulting the suggestions made by the tool.

Mapping relationships can be published on the ESCO Service Platform as Linked Open
Data to enable re-use by interested stakeholders. In addition, mapping relations
should be updated, for instance, upon release of a new version of ESCO. More
information on the creation of mapping relationships will be available in the mapping
manual, which will be published at a later stage.

58
https://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/

60
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART III – USING ESCO

4. Extend ESCO
In order to achieve a deeper level of detail, the occupations and skills pillars of ESCO
can be extended. This can be achieved by adding more detailed concepts to ESCO and
is useful for building sector-specific applications of a higher accuracy, e.g. job
matching, workforce planning or career guidance tools for a specific economic sector.
In addition, those Member States that opt to use ESCO at national level can create
their own national classifications by extending ESCO.

Occupations in ESCO are linked to ISCO unit groups. When compared to ISCO
occupations, ESCO occupations are either at the same level of detail or more detailed.
When compared to occupations in other classifications, they may be less detailed.

Every occupation in ESCO includes a set of knowledge, skills and competences which
are essential and optional for that specific occupation. Other classifications may list
additional skills for the same or similar occupations. For instance, the European
Broadcasting Union (EBU), the world’s leading alliance of public service media, carried
out a pilot project in 2016. The ESCO classification was used to reference the jobs, by
matching their job descriptions with the ESCO occupations and skills in the media
sector. The findings showed that several ESCO occupational profiles could be enriched
with additional skills stemming from the job profiles of EBU and vice versa. For
example, EBU could extend the ESCO occupation "radio producer" with additional skills
for a more detailed EBU job profile "radio news producer".

Figure 13. Enriching ESCO occupational profiles with those from EBU

61
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART III – USING ESCO

5. Legal conditions applying to the ESCO service

Use of ESCO

When using ESCO, end users need to acknowledge its use by publishing the statement
below, in accordance with the Commission Decision of 12 December 2011 on the
reuse of Commission documents59.

 For services, tools and applications totally or partially integrating ESCO: "This
service uses the ESCO classification of the European Commission."

 For other documents such as studies, analysis or reports making use of ESCO:
"This publication uses the ESCO classification of the European
Commission”.

Any modified or adapted version of ESCO must be clearly indicated as such.

Use of ISCO in ESCO

Information and data in ESCO is based on an original work published by the ILO under
the title International Standard Classification of Occupations, ISCO-08. Structure,
Group Definitions and Correspondence Tables (© International Labour Organization
2012). It can be adapted and reproduced with permission.

Use of ISCED in ESCO

The translations provided by ISCED are not official UNESCO Institute for Statistics
translations (UIS). They are published with its permission, but their quality and
coherence with the original language text are the responsibility of the authors of the
translation. The original classification is published by the UIS in English under the title:
International Standard Classification of Education: Fields of Education and Training
2013 (ISCED-F2013) (© UNESCO-UIS 2014).

59
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2011:330:0039:0042:EN:PDF

62
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART IV – KEEPING ESCO UP-TO-DATE

PART IV – KEEPING ESCO UP-TO-DATE

1. Continuous improvement and updating

ESCO will only remain fit-for-purpose and able to deliver a high-quality service to end-
users if it is continuously updated. The labour market and the education and training
sector are constantly evolving and these changes need to be reflected in new versions
of the ESCO classification. The changes include:

 Changes in the labour market: new occupations emerge; occupations become

obsolete; the nature of occupations changes and with it the knowledge, skills and
competences requested by employers;

 Changes in curricula: new knowledge, skills and competences appear in

education and training curricula, while others disappear;

 Changes in terminology: terms to refer to specific occupations, knowledge, skills

and competences change; rules of the entire language change (e.g. spelling
reforms, female forms of occupation names become more common);

 Changes in the requirements of IT applications: technological developments

or new expectations by end users change the way of service provision and
therefore the requirements of the ESCO classification as a building block for the
system.

Updates to ESCO are also occasions to correct any identified mistakes in the
classification such as the misspellings of the terms, wrong metadata or relationships.

For this purpose, the Commission has set up a process to continuously improve and
keep the classification up-to-date according to the new requirements of the education
and labour market. Through this process, the Commission will learn how the
classification behaves in different business cases – in job matching, in big data
analysis, in CV creation – and what needs to be improved, and be able to remediate
any identified issues in the classification.

The continuous improvement process of ESCO60 is structured in four phases, each one
of them including various steps (see the following figure).

60
See full document on continuous improvement:
https://ec.europa.eu/esco/portal/document/en/f834e202-0ebf-461a-9249-a00e91d86e94

63
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART IV – KEEPING ESCO UP-TO-DATE

Figure 14. Continuous updating process

In order to understand how the classification needs to be improved, the Commission

will analyse the feedback from various sources (national and international
classifications, studies, stakeholders, etc.). Different actors will take part in each step
of the continuous improvement process (ESCO domain experts, implementers,
Maintenance Committee, etc.) by using various tools and techniques such as online
forums, interviews or big data analyses. The scope of each release will be decided
depending on the type of changes that need to be implemented (major or minor).

For the development of a new version, the Commission, with the support of knowledge
engineers, will ensure continuous discussions with experts from different classification
systems and stakeholders from the education and labour market. After this step, the
Commission will organise the translation into all ESCO languages. Throughout the
knowledge engineering and translation process the Commission will put a quality
assurance process in place.

The classification will then be ready for the new release after consultation with
Member States experts, classification experts and stakeholders from the employment
and education and training sectors. The Commission will decide when the new release
of ESCO is ready to be published.

64
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: PART IV – KEEPING ESCO UP-TO-DATE

2. ESCO versions
The changes that result from the continuous updating process are reflected in different
ESCO versions. Version numbers starting with 0 (zero) refer to early ESCO versions
that are used for piloting and testing only:

 ESCO v0: Released 23 October 2013;

 ESCO v0.1: Used for piloting as of early 2015;

 ESCO v0.2: Used for piloting as of late 2015;

 ESCO v0.8: Used for piloting as of mid-2017.

The first fully-fledged ESCO version is ESCO v1, which was published in July 2017. As
of this version, a versioning mechanism will keep track of changes in ESCO throughout
its lifecycle. As the content of the ESCO classification will evolve with future releases,
versioning is very relevant. It will apply to the publication (every new release of ESCO
will be identified with a new release number), the taxonomy itself (keeping track of
the history of each concept), and the data model (keeping track of changes to the
properties, business rules, etc.). A more comprehensive document on versioning will
be published at a later stage.

65
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: ANNEXES

ANNEXES
ANNEX I

Sectoral Reference Groups:

 Agriculture, forestry, fishery;

 Hospitality and tourism;

 Manufacturing of textile, apparel, leather, footwear and related products;

 Wholesale and retail trade, renting and leasing;

 Human health and social services activities;

 Veterinary activities;

 ICT service activities;

 Transportation and storage;

 Arts, entertainment and recreation;

 Mining and heavy industry;

 Manufacturing of food, beverages and tobacco.

Online consultation of experts:

 Manufacturing of electrical equipment;

 Manufacturing of transport equipment;

 Business administration;

 Construction;

 Energy and water supply, sewerage and waste management;

 Education;

 Personal services, administrative support services and security and investigation

activities;

 Scientific and technical activities;

 Manufacturing of consumer goods except food, beverages, tobacco, textile,

apparel, leather;

 Wood processing, paper and printing;

 Chemical industry;

66
 European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations
ESCO handbook: ANNEXES

 Fabricated metal products except machinery and equipment;

 Media;

 Machinery and equipment except electrical equipment;

 Finance, insurance and real estate;

 Public administration and defence and membership organisations.

67
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 KE-04-17-755-EN-N
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You can send us your comments, remarks or suggestions via the ESCO Service
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