Individual Overview
If you've made it to this page, then we can guess that you're slightly interested in what we have to say. That's handy, as we say a lot on this page. Please try to have a read if you've got the time, you may pick up some lovel hints and tips to get most out of the site. There is a lot in here, and we don't want you to miss some of the smashing bits.
If you decide though to read no further, then it'd be great if you leave with this piece of advice... Please register: it's free and you will get so much more from UKSP if you sign up and participate. And once you've signed up, for free, the vast majority of the site is read-only - you can stay at that level forever.
Eventually you may want to start to interact with the site - set a current job, perform an assessment, or fetch a job vacancy. When you get to this stage, it's very easy to upgrade to our UKSP+. Here's a section on the benefits.
Once you've registered, you'll be able to visit MyPage, where you can enter and compare against your qualifications, interrogate our jobs database to find a job to suit you, look at the career map and work out where you want to be , find a path to take you to your target job, and see what skills you need to get to where you want to go. And that's just the tip of the UK SKlls Passport iceberg.
It's a big site, and there's a slight learning curve to it, but we have tried to make this as simple as possible. Firstly you can always get back to your 'My Page' via the [Go to My Page] link at the top of each page, or by clicking on your name way up on the top-right.
So, go make yourself a cup of coffee (or similar drink), sign up and have a good look around. We're sure that you'll learn something tha tyou didn't know already. And if you don't, our details are on the left should you be after a job!.
UKSP wishes you all the best, please let us know how you get on.
My Page
When you are signed up and registered, this is your home page. If you are on the free account then you can play with this page, but you can't save any stuff that you enter. Fully paid up Passport+ members can save this information on the site and come back and use it again and again.
Setting Jobs
Tell us what job you have. It's easy, once you are logged in, browse to a job and look on the top right for a link that says, "Set as Current Job". Then tell us what type of industry you work in. For instance, you may be a chef - but whether you work in a hotel or at a visitor attraction will influence the kind of pointers that we give you.
Qualifications
You wouldn't believe how long we've spent looking through all of the qualifications out there for you. We'd tell you in this sentence but, as we said, you wouldn't believe it. Regardless, we've located them, diced them up, and joined them to specific job skills so that we can point you in the proper way to find the qualifications that you need to grow your skills. You can save your existing qualifcations that you have as part of your passport, and if you tell us what you thought about the course provider, we'll pass that feedback onto everyone else.
Assessments
With assessments, you can find out how you rate against the benchmark for your job, find qualifications, find other jobs that you may be good at.... tell you what, there's so much fantastic stuff to do with assessments that we'd be best taking you to another page.
Tell my Manager
If you are linked to an employer, you can allow them access to your page. They will not see your target job, that's safe. But they could set you their own target job to work out what skills and qualifications they need to progress you.
Funding
What will my course cost? The 'learning gurus' have cut through all the legalise and mumbo jumbo and come up with a questionnaire that may help you get funding for your courses. Once you have got to a point where there are no more Yes / No questions it will let you know what you can do next. That will involve you perhaps following it up and that's just a phone (or an email) away.
Extras
UKSP couldn't resist giving you those little extra wee bits that are needed to make your life easy – they are found under 'What now?'. Its at the bottom of your My Page and has some cheeky suggestions for more activities that you can do in the site.
Assessments
We love assessments, we really do. And we hope that you will too.
You can "Assess" your current job; sounds scary, but it's very easy. I could write many lovely words here, but I'm guessing that you are just scanning through these and looking at the pictures. So I'll get straight to those.
Start an assessment
Once signed in, you can start an assessment by viewing any job description page. On the right, there is a little box called, "Assess Yourself," and inside that box is a link named, "Start Assessment." Click on that link to start things off.
Peform your assessment
Now you're at the cool assessent page.
The assessment page is very easy and simple to use, all that you have to do is tick the competences that you think you possess. To make it quicker for you, we have arranged similar items in groups, and to check all of the boxes in one group, just click on the main box for the group. Once you are done, press the save button at the bottom to keep track of your changes. That's it - assessment over.
View recommendations
Behind the scenes, our vocation and learning gurus are mapping qualifications to jobs, they are looking at what skills are learned with each qualification. There is a huge number of qualifications in our sector, and we haven't managed to map them all yet, but what we have managed makes for an exciting tool. Now that you've shared your skills, we'll have a go at doing two things.
Firstly, we will look at the qualifications that you have told us you have, and we'll look at your skills. If we can find that you have all of the skills mapped against a qualification, but don't have that qualificaiton, then we will tell you so that you can go and be assessed on a course.
Secondly, we will look at the skills that you don't have and suggest a course, relevant to your job, that you may want to go on to fill in the gaps.
Similar Jobs
Now that we know exactly what you're good at, we can look at other jobs in our sector and work out which ones you may be suited to. You'll find a fantastic chart near the bottom of your My Page. How does this work? Well, if you've tol us that you are good at meeting and greeting customers, then you're likely to see jobs with the same skill appear at the top of that list.
Other jobs you may have had
You can assess yourself against as many jobs as you like, there is no limit. And you will find that the more jobs you assess against, the more accurate your recommendations and similar jobs will be. Also remember that if you have assessed against a senior job (Head Chef), then you won't automatically get the skills that are associated to a lower job. But a quick 3-minute assesment against that job will get you up-to-date.
Careers
We started this website with a bit of a headache... how could we manage to show 125+ jobs across fifteen industries in our sector? We played around with individual maps of each industry (one for hotels, one for visitor attractions, and so on), and then it hit us: "Why don't we just just show our entire sector in a single diagram?"
Sectorgram
And so the sectorgram was born. It's a clickable, dragable, zoomable, playable, filterable careers version of Google Maps. You can even overlay job vacancy numbers onto the job titles, and you can find it over here. Like most items on the site, you have to take a second to register to see the sectorgram. Here is a guide on why we ask you to do this and what you get.
Jobs
There's lots of them. They all go by different names and in a fair number of them, they can be grouped together
So if you don' see your job try looking it under another name. Now, there's a lot of information on the job page – don't let that put you off. Its designed to give both a high and a detailed view about what is expected of you.
Courses
Have you worked out that you need a qualification? Where do you get it from? Via a course. Using the search you can find a course that meets that qualification near you. You can then read the comments about the qualification, the course itself and the people that provide it. The funding questions you answered on MyPage will give you and indication to how this course can be paid. You can use the providers details you can contact them and learn more about the course.
Pathway
When you have set you current and target job, the site can work out a route you could take to get to your destination. Then you are shown the jobs that you can take and the qualifications that you need to move to the next job.
Search for job vacancies
Once you've upgraded to UKSP+, then you can start to apply for the job vacancies on the site.
Why is this a big deal?
We only accept job vacancy posts from employers who have signed up to our Good Employer Guide. That means that only employers who are willing to rate themselves, and let their employees rate them, are allowed to recruit through UKSP. In a nutshel, all of the jobs on here are with good employers. Some are with great employers.
Finding a job and applying
There are two different areas where you can find job vacancies. The first is on the career map, look at the numbers in the job circles to see how many vacancies there are for that job. Secondly, you can find the jobs in the job vacancies section, funnily enough.
And if you have performed a job assessment, we'll even match up the job vacancies with the skills that you've told us you have! We think that's such a big deal that we've given it it's own line. And a picture - over there on the right.
Regardless of how you get to the job advert, each post has instructions at the bottom on how to apply. Just remember to tell the employer what job you are referring to, and that you found their details on UKSP
Employer Overview
People are literally the life blood of your business. People with the right skills doing the right job and enjoying that job in the right atmosphere are literally the life blood of your business. If this is your aim, (surely it can't be anything else) then to use UKSP you relish the chance to sign up to the good employers guide, which gives you access to create jobs like the PLCs, to manage your people's skills and develop them, to find courses that will assist in the development of these skills and to place vacancies against these jobs where you have a skills shortage.
You also have a opportunity to rate the qualifications (only you as an employer) that you have sent your people on. You are encouraged to ask your people who have been on courses to rate these courses and those that give these courses. You want to know that you are going to get value for the money and time you invested.
You also have a opportunity to rate the qualifications that you send your people on. You are encouraged to ask your people who have been on courses to rate these courses and those who deliver these courses.
Finally, you can promote your business in our Good Employer Guide. Shout about the awards that you have attained – then enter them into the site.
Further information on the benefits that this site offers is in our Employers section, but if there is anything that you feel is missing, then please contact us – we'd love to discuss it with you.
Registration
Its free to access this site, just register. If you have a large number of employees that you would like to load then it may be best to contact us first as we have tools available to help move your data onto the site. Simply registering doesn't automatically get you onto the Good Employer Guide. First you must answer the Good Employer Guide questions, and allow other users to rate your company against the same set. Once done, you can then load up employees and give them access to UK Skils Passport - but remember that they will not be able to save some of their information until you have upgraded to a full account.
Once you have upgraded you can purchase licences either on line or in bulk by contacting us. Then you can invite your people to the site and start to work with their data. You can set their current and target jobs, load up their qualifications and work out what qualifications and courses they need next for their development.
Remember that once you have upgraded and answered the questions on the good guide, worked out what skills you require you can then generate job descriptions that you can then start to advertise job vacancies.
And what does it cost?
Just £50 (+VAT)
This gives you 5 paid up employee license and access to generate job descriptions and post vacancies.
"Your Company" Page
This is where all the action takes place. From here you can set up employees (registered and UKSP+), assign them current and target jobs, give them email address and managers, create new job descriptions, and attach vacancies to them.
Setting your industry
When you first visit the site, it is important that you tell us which of our industries you mainly operate in. This will help us ensure that throughout the management pages, we give you appropriate jobs and job descriptions. Please click on the visible link and select the appropriate ones.
Adding users
This is the same as a user registering on the site and then setting them employer to you on their My Page. You can turn them into UKSP+ holders later.
Adding users – paid
You purchase licenses that you can then assign to your employees giving them full access.
Whether paid, or unpaid, you will find your employees in the employee list section
Employees
Once you have loaded them into the site, you can start to compare employees. To view an employee record, simply expand the section with their job title, and choose their name from the list.
The neat thing here is the qualifications tab that lets you compare one individual qualifications to a job to see the gaps. Clicking on a qualification will take you to the qualification details and then let you find an appropriate course.
Setting up job descriptions
You may have seen the job descriptions throughout the site, and you can also create your own. To do this, choose the link in the "Job Descriptions" box on the right. Now pick either one or two jobs from your industries as base jobs. Press 'Go' and you'll see that a job has been created based on your base jobs. You can now remove unwanted items from the lists. Next enter your concise job synopsis, salary range and create the job description. If you want to add other items, simply click on the job under 'Job Description', select the job and add them using the Add and Search buttons for the appropriate section. If the skills are not there then either use the one nearest to it or contact us.
Their Page and Assessments
Its called 'Their Page' – where you set up an employees current, target, and qualifications. Note that an employee can have a different target job to the one that you set so that they can manage their future as well. And from this page you can perform an assessment on that employee, comparing them to the job standard.
Good Employer Guide
Setting your rating
You can't enter vacancies until you have answered your good employers guide questions. Follow the link to answer these ratings.
Please read the Employers Documentation when you sign up if you are unsure about how to answer this.
Setting up vacancies
Like job descriptions, you can create your own job vacancies. And the way to do it is almost identical.
If you would like to give the vacancy a location then click on your company name (top right is one way), select locations from the drop down. After pressing 'Go' select 'Add New' and enter the details.
The key to this is to make sure that you have the dates of the vacancy within the current time frame when you want people to see them, and to have set up a job (or use a standard one if this has all the information that you want).
The vacancy title doesn't have to be the same as the job title if you don't want it to. Enter the appropriate information. When you come to step 7 you can get the enter the email of any person (and their name) that you want the applicant to send their details to. The start and closing dates defaults are the date you created the vacancy and 4 week on.
If you want to change any of the details later select the vacancy and then edit the appropriate information.
One job can have many vacancies, so you don't have to create the same job description for each.