Taxonomies and Standardisation

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The following applies to Affinda's legacy resume parser.

See Getting Started with the NextGen Resume Parser for more information on our latest version

Some of the data extracted using Affinda's Resume and Job Description Parser is standardised and mapped to taxonomies in order to provide better searching and comparison of candidates.

Skills

Affinda maps skills found in resumes and job descriptions to the Lightcast Open Skills Taxonomy. This taxonomy is an open-source library of 32,000+ skills gathered from hundreds of millions of online job postings, profiles, and resumes that is updated every two weeks.

Education Level

Affinda standardises any education obtained by a candidate into the following levels:

  • School
  • Certificate
  • Bachelors
  • Masters
  • Doctoral

Occupation

Affinda uses the UK Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) to classify job titles into standard occupation groupings that can be more easily compared across candidates and roles. The UK classification has been recently updated (in 2020) and provides rich data on the job titles that map into each occupation group to ensure relevant and accurate data for Affinda customers. 

The classification system is structured into a four-level hierarchy of increasing granularity. 

  • Major Group (9 groups)
  • Sub-Major Group (26 groups)
  • Minor Group (104 groups)
  • Unit Group (412 groups)

Each group has a code associated with it. For example:

  • 8 = Major Group: Process, Plant and Machine Operators
  • 82 = Sub-Major Group: Transport and Mobile Machine Drivers and Operatives
  • 821 = Minor Group: Road Transport Drivers
  • 8212 = Unit Group: Bus and Coach Drivers

For more information on the Standard Occupation Classification system used, see here.