Skills gap analysis for every role and team
Compare the proficiency each role requires with survey results from employees and their managers.
Run a skills gap analysis in four steps
Career Bird suggests the skills and levels. Your team customizes them.
Skills gaps are hard to see without a baseline.
How skills are generated and managed
- Career Bird suggests skills based on your job-description responsibilities and its library of industry-specific roles.
- It reuses existing skills before creating new ones, so duplicates stay out of the library.
- Each skill includes a definition, description of demonstrated behaviors, and defined proficiency levels.
- Admins review new skills, set skill types, and import existing skill lists.
A clear proficiency target for every skill
- Career Bird suggests the required level for every skill at each role level.
- Four levels, from Foundational to Expert, each with a role-specific definition.
- Your team adjusts any level before publishing.
Self-assessment and manager calibration
- Employees rate only the skills their role requires.
- Managers rate the same skills against the same definitions.
- A skills report shows both ratings next to the level the role requires, so employees and managers can calibrate together.
Skill gaps by person, team and job family
- Managers see their whole team’s skills in one matrix.
- Employees see which skills are on target and where they can grow.
- The Proficiency report shows gaps across the organization by job family.
Close gaps with development plans
- Gaps feed individual and group development plans.
- Career Bird suggests a work project, a mentor and learning resources for each skill.
- Re-survey when a plan is complete to see what changed.
“I’ve followed Career Bird’s evolution from the start, and it’s clear this platform was built by people who truly understand how organizations and talent grow. What stands out most is how Career Bird makes skills the common language across job design, learning, and mobility.”
Don CarterEVP of People & Culture, Kiva“What impressed me most is the depth. It’s not just a checklist of features — there’s a real understanding of how organizations evolve, how skills shift, and how people learn and grow in their careers.”
Heather VeldmanVP of Total Rewards, Go Health“You can tell Career Bird wasn’t just thrown together by software engineers. It’s clear that IO psychologists and HR leaders played a significant role in developing it — the frameworks are thoughtful, practical, and grounded in science.”
Kira MeinzerChief People Officer, Envoy Global“Career Bird connects the dots between job design, skills, learning, and mobility. Instead of separate systems and spreadsheets, we now have a single platform that ties everything together.”
Gail RodmanVP Talent Strategy & People Experience, Unite Us“So many platforms claim to be skills-focused, but Career Bird is actually built that way. It treats skills as the foundation for job design, learning, and career paths. That matters right now because AI is rewriting roles faster than most companies can respond.”
Ted EmersonVP, Head of People“Career Bird is one of the few HR platforms that feels like it was built for the end-user. Teams won’t need a lengthy rollout or training — it’s intuitive, clear, and something managers and employees actually want to use.”
Maureen CalabreseFormer Chief People Officer, Sprout Social and Modern Health“Career Bird helps companies prepare for the future by turning skills data into human growth, organizational agility, and real impact.”
Rishad TobaccowalaFormer Chief Strategist and Growth Officer, Publicis Groupe“Career Bird was selected to participate in the competitive PeopleTech Partners Growth Program as they are building meaningful solutions for Talent and People Leaders aligned with what’s next in work.”
Cara Brennan AllamanoFounding Partner, PeopleTech PartnersFits the HR stack you already run
Career Bird pulls employee data from your HRIS and sends skills data to your LMS. Your HRIS stays the system of record for people; Career Bird for roles and skills.
+150 moreBuilt for employee data
SOC 2 Type II audited, with a GDPR-aligned data processing agreement and role-based access for every user. Your data is never used to train AI models.
Questions buyers ask
What if not everyone completes the survey?
If not everyone completes the proficiency survey, the skills gap analysis tracks completion by employee and shows the completion rate alongside the results, so you always know how complete the picture is. Managers and HR can see who hasn't responded yet and follow up directly. Partial results still help you spot the biggest gaps, but full results make the baseline reliable when you re-survey later.
How often should we re-run the analysis?
Re-run the skills gap analysis after development plans have time to take effect, so the second survey measures movement from the first rather than producing another snapshot. Re-run it sooner after a reorganization, an acquisition, or a significant hiring push, because each one changes what roles require and who holds them. The first analysis is your baseline. Every analysis after it answers the question executives care about, which is whether skill development is working and where proficiency has moved.
What can we break the gap down by?
You can break the skills gap down by role, job family, team, department and skill category, and compare the proficiency level each role requires with the level measured. Categories that cut across functions, such as core, leadership and AI skills, can be viewed organization-wide, so you can see whether a gap belongs to one team or is shared across the company. Every view uses the skill categories your own team defined, not a vendor's taxonomy, so the results read in your organization's own language.
Does the analysis lead anywhere?
Yes, the skills gap analysis is the starting point for development plans, not a report that sits on its own. Each employee's measured gap feeds their individual development plan, and a gap shared across a team or job family feeds a group development plan. Managers and HR can see which gaps have a plan and which don't. After the plans run, a re-survey shows movement from the baseline, so you know whether the development worked.
What is a skills gap analysis?
A skills gap analysis compares the skills and proficiency each role requires with the proficiency people have today. Career Bird sets the requirements from your roles and measures proficiency with surveys calibrated by managers.
How do you conduct a skills gap analysis?
Define the skills each role requires and the level expected, survey employees and managers against the same definitions, then review the gaps by person, team and job family. Career Bird suggests the skills and levels and runs the surveys.
See a skills gap analysis for one team.
Choose a team. Career Bird suggests the skills and levels each role requires, then a survey shows where people stand.