The partnership aims to overcome the subjectivity and guesswork encountered when matching job requirements with candidate skills, helping both recruiters to shortlist candidates more easily, and providing better-matched opportunities for jobseekers.

CV's and resumes, by their very nature, are imprecise. Two competing candidates may state they are proficient in data analytics, for example, yet without a common language to both describe and quantify what "proficient" and "data analytics" mean, there is no clear way to differentiate the candidates.

The LPI's Capability Map solves this problem by using a common language to explicitly define the 25 critical skills areas for modern, effective, and future-ready L&D professionals and teams. Competencies in each skill area are quantified by a self-assessment, the results of which can be downloaded as a report.

First launched in 2012 as a tool for individuals and teams to identify skills gaps, the Capability Map self-assessment has since been undertaken by thousands of learning professionals from over 90 countries, resulting in a data-set that quantifies individual L&D strengths and weaknesses worldwide - a global lingua franca for L&D skills.

Now, jobseekers and recruiters can leverage this framework by matching, more accurately than ever before, Capability Map self-assessments with job specifications. Candidates complete the self-assessment in the LPI Capability Map and upload their report, along with their CV, to their private user profile on the Blue Eskimo website, allowing more accurate matching of vacancies to specific skill sets and competency levels.

Nick Bate, co-founder of Blue Eskimo, said, "For L&D professionals there is a better way to demonstrate their professional skills and for potential employers to gauge them: the LPI's Capability Map. Blue Eskimo is taking the Capability Map to the next level, enabling L&D jobseekers to add their Capability Map scores to their private Blue Eskimo profile, helping us to find them the best-matched jobs. We align our client's vacancies to the Capability Map's competencies, enabling us to match up their requirements with the most suitably skilled candidates more accurately.

"As L&D professionals improve their existing skills or learn new ones, they can quickly and easily update their competencies, enabling us to keep track of their improvements and the best-suited job opportunities out there. Results are stored securely, along with other details, such as preferred roles, salary expectations, and of course, their CV.

"The LPI Capability Map is used worldwide and regularly updated, so we would encourage all L&D professionals to keep a current record of their skills profile, whether or not they are actively seeking a new job."

Ed Monk, CEO, LPI, said, "The LPI Capability Map is firmly established as the leading global skills-mapping framework. Not only does it provide a rich source of insight into the state of L&D skills worldwide, but now, with Blue Eskimo's integration as a recruitment partner, it will help L&D professionals and recruiters find each other more easily, by providing a common language to describe L&D skills and competencies.
"In this rapidly changing business world, quickly matching the strongest candidates to available roles can help to maintain competitive advantage, and I am excited to see Blue Eskimo and the LPI Capability Map leading the way for organisations who want to build modern, effective, and future-ready L&D teams."