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Top Skills by Occupation API Guide

Top Skills by Occupation API gives you a fast, structured way to identify the most relevant skills for any role in Pearson’s occupation ontology.

Whether you're designing learning pathways, writing job descriptions, or comparing roles, this API surfaces the skills that matter most — based on real-world frequency and occupation specificity.

It empowers talent, workforce, and learning teams to align their initiatives to high-impact, role-specific capabilities.

Who is this API for?

This API is ideal for strategy and workforce teams focused on building capability frameworks, upskilling programs, and talent pipelines. In particular:

  • Learning Manager – designing training programs that match industry skill expectations

  • People Strategist – analyzing skill profiles as part of broader workforce planning or capability frameworks

  • Workforce Planner – understanding high-impact skills needed for future-ready roles

  • Talent Recruiter – improving sourcing criteria and role clarity by focusing on essential skills

Goals this API helps you achieve

The Top Skills by Occupation API directly supports business objectives such as:

  • Analyze role-specific skills to align training, hiring, or workforce initiatives

  • Identify frequently mentioned skills in job postings to inform talent attraction strategies

  • Highlight occupation-specific skills that differentiate roles and improve workforce segmentation

What’s included in the API?

The API returns two distinct but complementary skill views for any selected occupation:

Section Description
Top Mentioned Skills The most commonly appearing skills across job postings for this occupation.
Top Specific Skills Skills that are uniquely or disproportionately associated with this occupation.

These lists help you balance general popularity with strategic specificity, making it easier to tailor your planning, L&D, or recruitment.

Input and Output

Input required:

  • An Occupation — can be selected by name or by ontology code.

  • Optional: Country and Occupation Level for market-specific results.

Output includes:

  • A list of Top Mentioned Skills, ranked by frequency.

  • A list of Top Specific Skills, ranked by relevance.

  • Metadata for each skill (e.g. description, unique ID).

  • Direct links to explore each skill via other APIs (e.g., Skill Trends, Related Occupations).

Real-world applications

Here’s how teams use the Top Skills by Occupation API in strategic initiatives:

  • Design future-fit job descriptions by incorporating relevant and in-demand skills.

  • Target L&D investments by prioritizing occupation-specific skills.

  • Compare occupations to spot opportunities for mobility or upskilling.

  • Identify overlapping skills across roles to simplify org design or transitions.

API Bundle

This API is available in the following bundles:

  • Skill Analysis & Development

    • Ideal for teams focused on L&D, job profiling, or mobility planning