Occupation Matcher API Guide
Occupation Matcher API identifies the best-matching occupations based on an input job title and optional skills, using Pearson’s Occupation Ontology as the standardized reference model.
It helps you map inconsistent job titles to a unified structure, support compensation alignment, and build more accurate workforce and talent planning strategies.
Who is this API for?
This API is designed for strategic workforce and organizational planning roles, particularly:
- People Strategist
To normalize job titles, align role structures, and ensure consistent occupation categorization across the organization. - Workforce Planner
To map ambiguous job titles to the correct occupations, enabling more accurate workforce analytics, organizational modeling, and salary benchmarking.
Goals this API helps you achieve
The Occupation Matcher API supports foundational, ontology-aligned workforce decisions such as:
- Map data to Pearson’s ontology
Standardize non-uniform job titles and role names to a consistent occupation framework for analytics and reporting. - Standardize roles and salaries
Align jobs to the correct occupation so compensation models, salary bands, and job architectures become comparable and consistent. - Improve strategic workforce planning
Run cleaner workforce datasets, enabling accurate modeling across hiring, mobility, restructuring, and capability planning. - Enable better skill-to-role alignment
Use optional skills input to refine matching and identify which occupations best fit an employee or applicant’s skill set.
What’s included in the response?
When queried with a job title and optional skills, this API returns a list of occupations ranked by match quality, each with a set of top associated skills.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| occupationId | Pearson Ontology ID for the matched occupation |
| occupationName | Standardized occupation name |
| occupationDescription | Summary of the occupation from the ontology |
| confidenceScore (if returned) | Indicates how strongly the input matches this occupation |
| topSkills | List of the most relevant skills for the matched occupation |
| inputSkillsUsed | Skills from the request that contributed to the match |
| inputSkillsMissing | Skills that did not match (useful for refinement) |
In the UI (as shown in your design file), each result card displays:
-
Occupation name + Ontology code
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Description
-
Interaction tools (thumbs up/down for feedback)
-
“Show skills for this occupation” expandable panel
API Detail Page
Input and Output
Input:
-
Job title (required)
-
Skills (optional)
-
Country (optional — supports region-specific matching)
Output:
A structured list of matched occupations, ranked by relevance.
Each occupation includes:
-
name
-
ID
-
description
-
top skills
-
relevance to input title + skills
Real-world applications
This API is a foundational tool widely used for role standardization and workforce structuring, such as:
- Job architecture teams
Normalizing thousands of inconsistent job titles into a clean, ontology-aligned structure. - Workforce planning teams
Building accurate headcount reports, staffing models, and org design scenarios grounded in standardized occupations. - Compensation & benefits teams
Mapping messy job titles to the correct occupations for consistent salary benchmarking and pay bands. - Internal mobility & reskilling programs
Evaluating which occupations best fit an employee’s skills to guide redeployment or development pathways.
API Bundle
The Occupation Matcher API is part of:
Foundational APIs - Ideal for building clean workforce datasets, enabling analytics at scale, and aligning disparate job titles to a single, structured occupation ontology.