Our Open Skills program gets you access to our Skills and Titles APIs. Learn more about the Skills API here. Please note the free API access does not show the most common skill for any given title.

Why Start with a Market‑Responsive Taxonomy?

A flat, well curated taxonomy is the quickest way to bring order to messy people data. Lightcast updates its Skills and Titles lists continuously, so your teams inherit a living reference library that:
Eliminates free text chaos – Employees, recruiters, or applicants pick from a single authoritative list instead of typing their own variants.

• Enforces data governance instantly – Every record now contains the same machine readable ID; downstream systems can sort, filter, and report with confidence.
• Speeds up search and discovery – Autocomplete and type ahead give users an intuitive way to find the right term without memorizing exact spellings.
• Lays a foundation for analytics – Once your data rows all reference the same IDs, rolling up by category, business unit, or location becomes trivial.

Bottom line: A clean taxonomy is the prerequisite for any future skills intelligence project. Without it, you can’t trust what your data is telling you.

Use Case #1 – Building a Skills Inventory

Challenge
A major defense contractor’s People Analytics team needed a clear, company‑wide picture of their workforce skill capabilities. Resumes lived in multiple formats, employees described expertise in wildly different terms, and leadership couldn’t answer basic questions such as “How many people know aircraft mainframe technology?”
They needed a better way to build an inventory of skills that their employees had!

Solution (using the free Skills API)

• Taxonomy Driven Tagging:
  The Lightcast skill hierarchy (Skill → Skill Sub-Category → Skill Category) provides the framework: Flight Safety → Air Transportation → Transportation, Supply Chain & Logistics
• Skills Inventory Dashboard:
  With each employee now tied to consistent Skill IDs and roll‑up groups, analysts can slice head‑count by individual skills (Pitot Static), by sub‑category (Air Transportation), or at the broad category level (Transportation, Supply Chain & Logistics).
• Resumes Skill Extraction (up to 50 per month):
  Whenever new or legacy resumes need tagging; the team runs them through the free Skills API to generate the standardized Skill IDs automatically

Use Case #2 – Standardizing Job Titles for Data Governance

Challenge
A multinational engineering company was drowning in title sprawl. Employees in its CRM listed everything from “Sr. HVAC Eng.” to “Hydraulics Guru,” creating thousands of duplicative or misspelled variants. The clutter broke head count reporting, hindered internal mobility searches, and made it impossible to benchmark talent across regions.
Solution (using the free Titles Taxonomy)

• Type Ahead Autocomplete:
  Lightcast’s 75 000 title library sits behind every title field in the HRIS and CRM. Employees now choose from a single authoritative list instead of entering free text.
• Historical Title Normalization:
  Up to 50 free title normalizations each month let HR run existing employee records through the Titles API, automatically mapping messy entries to the correct Lightcast Title IDs. A simple matching script cleaned years of legacy data in days rather than months.
• Governance & Reporting Dashboard:
  With every record tied to a unique Title ID, workforce planners can sort, filter, and roll up by discipline (e.g., Civil Engineer vs. Electrical Engineer) and location without manual intervention.

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Starter

Lightcast Titles Taxonomy

• 75,000+ standardized titles in the Lightcast Titles Taxonomy, including unique machine-readable IDs, and more.
• 50 free title normalizations per month
• Autocomplete search
• Limited access
• For personal use only
• Attribution required