Published
September 16, 2020
Preparing educators, employers and job seekers for the future will require modernizing how we match needs with in-demand skills and competencies. As training and skills evolve, educators and employers will need to update how they prepare people to meet the needs of the workforce. This is an important step in better communicating what’s inside a job.
The Job Data Exchange (JDX) is a business-led initiative to refine a data standard for job descriptions and to promote its adoption across the talent marketplace.
Our journey began back in October 2018 when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation—with the support of Google.org, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Walmart, Lumina Foundation, Microsoft, Schmidt Futures and The Annie E. Casey Foundation—led a team to update the job data standard (i.e., the JDX JobSchema+, a standardized way of organizing structured data on jobs) and pilot test it in the field with the support of open data tools.
Our objective has been to improve the quality of jobs data and to provide better signals to learners and workers so they can better match their skills and career pathway choices to career opportunities.
The pilot provided a few key findings:
- 75 percent of talent sourcing providers
- 62 percent of employers
We are now taking action to move from the pilot to real-world implementation. This begins by making sure the job data standard has a permanent home so it can be maintained, upgraded, and integrated into a wider variety of Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) and Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) products and solutions. To this end, the Foundation has launched a new partnership with HR Open Data Standards Consortium to migrate the data standard and to promote its adoption and use.
"The JDX is an incredibly important step forward in data collaboration in the HR Industry,” said Jason Sole, HR Open president and director of sales engineering at DirectEmployers Association. “HR Open Standards Consortium has long stood for easy and open sharing of data, and we have found like, and very capable, minds in the Chamber Foundation and other members of this endeavor. The JDX will well serve employers in finding, and more importantly, hiring quality talent."
The Foundation is integrating JDX open data tools and resources into the T3 Innovation Network’s newly launched LER Resource Hub to support the next generation of learner and worker records and their ability to be matched with jobs. In addition, we are incorporating these JDX tools into our Talent Pipeline Management (TPM) initiative where hundreds of employer collaboratives across 33 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada, will have access to them in order to support the alignment of education and training pathways to jobs and to enable skill-based hiring at scale.
To fill the millions of vacant jobs in America, employers, educators, and workforce providers require tools and resources that allow them to effectively communicate changing workforce needs with what is being taught in classrooms and training facilities. Employers need a new way to find and hire talent. This means moving to structured data for in-demand jobs, skills, and credentials. Connecting the right person to the right job has never been more important in today’s labor market and economy. The JDX is a critical tool to help make this possible.
About the authors
Joshua Westfall
