CompTIA TechCareer Compass Adds Skill Gap Assessment

The Computing Technology Industry Association, CompTIA, today added a new Skill Gap Assessment to the CompTIA TechCareer Compass, the comprehensive Information and Communication Technology (ICT) free career guidance web tool. The compass is the leading industry-designed resource to identify ICT job roles, detail the unique knowledge and skills required for these job roles and map them to industry certifications.

The newest feature of the CompTIA TechCareer Compass enables employers and ICT professionals to measure skills and certifications against industry-defined benchmarks for job roles. The Skill Gap Assessment defines areas in which an employee or candidate requires additional training and those in which the employee is already skilled to the appropriate level.

"Based on feedback from users, we believe the Skill Gap Assessment is a valuable edition to an already robust tool that has an extremely high level of detail for IT specific career information," said Neill Hopkins, vice president of workforce development and training at CompTIA. "This will even further simplify the processes of hiring, evaluating, and promoting employees. The CompTIA TechCareer Compass and the new Skill Gap Assessment Tool provide skill standards and evaluation tools in a central and easily accessible location."

Employers can use the assessment to measure their workforce against industry standards to evaluate potential new hires, as well as reduce training costs and develop career paths for existing personnel. Individuals can use the results to identify the appropriate training and certifications needed to fill their skill gaps by using the certification mapping presented in the TCC.

"The Skill Gap Assessment saves human resources professionals and hiring managers time and money by taking the guesswork out of skill evaluation," said Hopkins. "Also, it enables professionals to develop tactical plans to go out and get the appropriate training and certification to land the jobs they want."

The TCC Skill Gap Assessment was developed with Benchmark Learning using their SMART (Skills, Measurement, Assessment, and Readiness Tool) tool technology. The back-end and browser front-end system are hosted by Benchmark Learning's central site.

The CompTIA TechCareer Compass with the new Skill Gap Assessment is globally available free of charge at http://tcc.comptia.org. The CompTIA TechCareer Compass was launched in May 2002. In October 2003, the site was updated to incorporate ICT Skills Standards in the definition of seven major job categories. The new Skill Gap Assessment is the first of many additional features being added to the newest site.