Building SFIA-based skills profiles

Caution: Creating a skills profile requires a consistent and strong foundation of knowledge and understanding of SFIA. For details, see Foundation level.

NOTE: In this context, the term "skills profile" refers to set of SFIA skills and skill-levels mapped to a position, job or role (for example, “Software Developer”), not assessment of an individual's skills.

On this page

1. The value of skills profiles
2. 10 'Rules' for skills profiling
3. Responsibility for skills profiles
4. Skills profiles for job families
5. What is included in a skills profile
   
   • Role Purpose
   • Overall SFIA Level
   • Professional Skills
   • Generic attributes
6. Steps to completing a SFIA skills profile
7. Additional aspects of a full SFIA-based role profile
8. SFIA skills profiling - Do's and Don'ts

These guidelines are designed for use by those likely to be creating or leveraging skills profiles, ideally line managers (including Heads of functions, see below) who best understand the skills required in their teams.  Other stakeholders and professionals who may create or work with skills profiles are: resourcing and workforce planning specialists, HR business partners, recruiters, learning and development specialists as well as SFIA consultants providing support for these services.

Professional consultants must read and observe the Professional Standards for skills profiling published by the SFIA Foundation. Other stakeholders are recommended to review these standards and apply them as appropriate.

The value of skills profiles

Skills profiles (as described here) provide structured and consistent skills descriptions, which underpin recruitment, assessment, promotion and skills development.

• Recruitment – A SFIA skills profile clearly describe the activities carried out in a job/position. A SFIA based advertisement will attract suitable candidates. Subsequent assessment and selection criteria can be aligned to the SFIA skills and levels.
• Reward – Organisations can use SFIA levels of responsibility to support job evaluation and grading.
• Assessment – The skills profile describes the skills/activities at the level of responsibility for a role, which represent criteria for assessment of an individuals capability or 'fit'.
• Promotion – SFIA levels of responsibility are incremental in nature. Individuals can focus development on the attributes and skills required in more senior positions, while managers can reference skills profiles, both to offer promotions and to explain non-promotions.
• Skills development – Individuals and their line managers can reference the SFIA skills and skill-levels required in their current role (and any aspirational role), to focus personal development on skills that will benefit the business as well as the person's career.
• Workforce planning – SFIA provides a common language to proactively plan the skills supply with reference to SFIA skills profiles to meet organisational needs.
• Organisational design – SFIA can be used to design and validate proposed organisation structures and target operating models. 
• Career paths – through SFIA profiles, individuals can see the skills needed in other roles, which open up opportunities to progress within their specialism and across the wider organisation.

10 'Rules' for skills profiling

1. Start by summarising the responsibilities of the role – the Role purpose.
2. Ideally no-one should complete the skills profile for their own role.
3. Focus on the role in principle; ignore wider capabilities of individuals currently in the role.
4. Create the skills profiles together for all the roles in a job family.
5. Gauge the overall SFIA level of responsibility for a role – or the roles in a job family – before reviewing potential SFIA skills and skill-levels.
6. Consider future business needs, as well as current responsibilities, when selecting SFIA skills and levels for a role.
7. The skills in a role profile must support or align with the stated responsibilities. Limit the number of SFIA skills to 6/7 to stay focused on the role purpose and avoid 'scope creep'.
8. The skills in a profile may be at the same SFIA level as the overall SFIA level for the role, or no more than one level higher/lower.
9. AI tools can save effort but may not return genuine SFIA framework content. Review and validation are essential by a SFIA-experienced human.
10. Calibrate skills profiles across multiple teams to ensure consistency between roles of similar 'seniority' in different teams.

Responsibility for skills profiles

Generally, heads of functions and line managers have the business perspective to articulate what skills their teams need, and therefore to create and update the skills profiles for the roles that report to them.  In organisations that have 'matrix management' or a fluid team structure, the lead decision makers in each professional specialism or practice may be best placed to take ownership of the skills profiles for the roles in their respective practices.

If a third party carries out the actual work of building skills profiles (e.g., L&D specialist, HR business partner, workforce management or resourcing specialist, or an external consultant) it is essential that the profiles are validated by the relevant line manager and adjusted if necessary.

Use of AI

There is understandable temptation to automate skills-profiling with AI to save time and effort. Used responsibly, AI can help as long as

• genuine SFIA is referenced as a source
• the organisation-specific information is given to enable AI to select the skills that address the manager's vision for the role.

Outputs should always be checked and validated by experienced people to ensure accuracy and build trust.  HR applications of AI are generally seen as high risk and require strong guardrails. Skills profiling should be guided by the same principles of care and oversight.

Skills profiles for job families

Create the Skills profiles together for all the roles in a job family.  In this context, a job-family or role-family means roles in one specialism at different levels of organisational responsibility, typically recognised through job titles such as Trainee Engineer, Engineer, Senior Engineer, Lead Engineer, Principal Engineer.

A job family may also refer to related roles within a specialism, such as Data Analyst, Data Scientist, Data Engineer, as well as graded levels of experience within each role.

SFIA levels of responsibility (via the generic attributes) and SFIA professional skill-levels are particularly important to differentiate levels within a job family.

What is included in a skills profile

A role may be profiled purely in respect of SFIA skills.  This SFIA skills profile is valuable for planning and positioning the role, and is highly transferable.  For recruitment and practical skills development, the SFIA skills profile is extended to include other aspects that fulfil or support the 'purpose' of the role.  A role-skills profile comprises:

SFIA Skills Profile		Value in profile
Role Purpose	A summary of the role's responsibilities aligned to the role's overall SFIA Level.	Sets out how the role contributes to the goals of the organisation/ function/team.
Overall SFIA Level	Based on the best-fit level descriptions of the SFIA generic attributes, particularly Autonomy, Influence and Complexity .	Positions the role in the organisational management and team structure.
Professional skills	Optimum set of skills selected from SFIA, described at the relevant SFIA level of responsibility.	SFIA skills in a profile describe the activities carried out in line with the role purpose.
SFIA Generic attributes	SFIA attributes that define and describe the role's SFIA Level.  Selected behavioural factors specific to the role.	Attributes and behavioural factors both support and complement the professional skills
Full SFIA-based role profile:		Non-SFIA aspects complete the skill set required in the role.
Knowledge	Context-specific knowledge (e.g., products, technologies) aligned to the role purpose.	Knowledge required in role, specifically for activities described in the professional skills.
Certifications	From professional bodies (accreditations) or vendor certifications.	May be included as prerequisite, or to indicate an equivalent level of capability.
Personal skills	Other role-specific behaviours and qualities.	Described using terms familiar to the business, to help in selection for the role.

Skills Profile sections

Role purpose

It's important to focus on the role's responsibilities, activities and deliverables.  Existing job descriptions may be a valuable source for this but are often over-lengthy and may be out-dated. Distil the responsibilities into a summary, using no more than 60 words, set out as up to 5-6 short statements. This summary ensures that the skills included in the profile are relevant to the role and the business.

Example Role Purpose:  Service Desk Analyst

• Process and coordinate appropriate responses to incidents and service desk requests
• Direct requests for further assistance to appropriate functions for resolution
• Monitor resolution activity and keep customers appraised of progress towards service restoration

Example Role Purpose: Software engineer

• Design, develop, maintain and deploy business application software using agile developments methods.
• Provide 3rd line support to investigate and resolve incidents
• Ensure software quality is embedded and maintained by adherence to standards and optimum use of automation tools.

 

Hints:
• Avoid listing operational tasks in the role purpose, such as writing reports, attending meetings or being on-call.
• The Role purpose is an important place to capture the distinct, incremental responsibilities in junior, middle and senior roles in a job family.
• Creating a role profile may act as the catalyst for reviewing the definition of positions that have inherited, been given or taken on a range of disparate responsibilities. Often this issue is identified when the drafting the summary "purpose" for the role profile.

Overall SFIA Level

Before getting into skills details, take a judgement as to the overall SFIA Level for the role.  Five SFIA Generic attributes are described at each level: three attributes define each SFIA level (Autonomy, Influence, Complexity) and two (Business skills and Knowledge) describe each level's supporting attributes.

The skills profile should include level-descriptions for at least the three defining attributes. Attributes may be the same SFIA level; or may be at different SFIA levels, plus or minus one level only.  It is a profiling error to have attributes (or skills) described at widely different SFIA levels.

Example:  In the following example scenario, we are supposing that the "Tech Support Manager" is responsible for all communications on behalf of their engineers, which pushes down the 'Influence' attribute level for the Engineer roles in this team.

Example:	Technical Support Engineer	Senior Technical Support Engineer	Technical Support Manager
Overall SFIA Level	3	4	5
SFIA Attributes:                                                         Autonomy	3	4	5
Influence	2	3	5
Complexity	3	4	4

Hint: To avoid 'level-inflation', consider the SFIA level for an Exec-level role, likely Level 7, as other roles will be aligned to progressively lower SFIA levels.
Hint: Where a role has attributes or skills at different levels, the overall level may be either the role's level in effect (as in Manager example above); or said to be between adjacent levels, "Level 4-5".

Professional skills

SFIA skills in a profile describe the activities carried out that fulfil the role purpose and defined responsibilities. To focus on these, the number of SFIA skills should be limited to 6/7.  Many role-skills profiles are complete with fewer skills as long as the SFIA descriptions fully capture the activities carried out in the role. 

Hint When a large number of skills appear to be required for a role, one useful approach is to prioritise skills, either by numeric ranking or by separating Primary and Secondary skills (up to 3-4 of each).
A large number of skills (10 or more) indicates the purpose is not focused and the profile is less useful for recruitment or driving skills development.
Hint: Aim to capture the optimum or desired capability for a role in the skills profile ("What 'good' looks like").  For recruitment to the role, subset of attributes and skills may be identified as the minimum required skill-set. 

Finding the SFIA skills for a role

With 147 skills in SFIA 9, locating the relevant SFIA skill(s) for a role profile can be a challenge.

The SFIA web-site offers assistance to help locate the skills that are relevant:

• Standard skills profiles
• Skills categories/subcategories – as presented in the SFIA Full framework view
• SFIA views

Look at the Standard skills profiles on the SFIA web-site, to see if the role is included.  Use this as a start point, review the skills and skill-level descriptions and modify the skill-set to align with your role's specific context.

SFIA skills are presented in categories and subcategories, as an aid to finding skills that relate to the role's business function.  The following examples may be useful:

Business function	SFIA skills category
Architecture, planning	Strategy and architecture
Comms and networks	Delivery and operation
Data analytics, Data science, Machine Learning	Development and implementation
Finance, financial management, value management	Strategy and architecture
Governance, risk and compliance	Strategy and architecture
Learning and development (L&D)	People and skills
Marketing, digital marketing, selling, sales support	Relationships and engagement
People management, resource management	People and skills
Project/programme management	Change and transformation
Requirements definition/analysis, Business Analysis	Change and transformation
Service management, service desk, incident management, security operations	Delivery and operation
Software design, network design, User centred design	Development and implementation
Software development (of any kind)	Development and implementation
Stakeholder management, customer support	Relationships and engagement
Supplier management, contracts, sourcing	Relationships and engagement
Technology infrastructure (cloud or physical)	Delivery and operation

For cyber security roles, see the SFIA web-site's focused Information and cyber security skills view, which uses tailored skills categories to guide you to the relevant skills. 

Other SFIA views provide focused lists of the SFIA skills most relevant to:

• Digital transformation
• DevOps
• Big data / Data Science
• Software Engineering
• Information and cyber security
• Agile skills

Line management skills

The SFIA category ‘People and skills’ includes skills relevant to line management. Where a role has line management responsibilities, the skills-profile should include skills from this category.

SFIA Skill-levels

Once a SFIA skill is confirmed as relevant to a role, the best-fit SFIA skill-level description will be included in the profile.  The SFIA skill-levels are key to distinguishing roles that increase in 'seniority' in a job family.

The skills in a profile may be the same SFIA level; or may be at different SFIA levels, plus or minus one level only, consistent with the overall SFIA level for the role.  It is a profiling error to have widely different SFIA skill-levels.

Continuing the example above:

Example:	Technical Support Engineer	Senior Technical Support Engineer	Technical Support Manager
Overall SFIA Level	3	4	5
SFIA Attributes:                                             Autonomy	3	4	5
Influence	2	3	5
Complexity	3	4	4
SFIA Skills:            Technology infrastructure ITOP	3	4	5
System software administration SYSP	3	4	4
Software Configuration PORT	3	4	5

Reminder: SFIA levels are levels of responsibility in the organisation, not levels of expertise.  (There are no 'Awareness' or 'Expert' levels in SFIA!)

SFIA Generic Attributes

Often referred to as ‘soft skills’ these are the attributes and behaviours that support and complement the professional skills required in the role.  The SFIA Generic attributes Autonomy, Influence and Complexity serve to define the overall SFIA level for the role (see above).  The SFIA Generic attribute ‘Business skills’ describes a number of activities and behavioural factors aligned to each level of responsibility:

Collaboration	Communication	Improvement mindset	Creativity
Decision-making	Digital mindset	Leadership	Learning and development
Planning	Problem-solving	Adaptability	Security, privacy and ethics

The skills profile may show 'Business skills' as a single broad attribute (covering all activities & behavioural factors), aligned to the required SFIA level. 

A more granular profile will show the required SFIA level for specific activities and behavioural factors that are most important or relevant to the role's needs.

Descriptions for each of the SFIA Behavioural factors may be viewed here.

Steps to completing a SFIA skills profile

With the ever-growing SFIA framework, a step by step approach to building SFIA skills profiles is recommended. 

Preparation

• Familiarise yourself with the SFIA Levels of Responsibility to understand the progression of attributes from Level 1 (lowest) to Level 7 (highest). Levels of responsibility can be viewed here
• Use a list of SFIA skills for reference, either the full framework or a subset using a 'SFIA View' (see above). The list should show the SFIA levels defined for each skill. A flexible and interactive view of SFIA Skills can be found in the 'multi-view' page here. 

1. Estimate the overall SFIA level for the role.  Study the SFIA generic attribute-level descriptions.  Analyse the context of team and organisation (optionally with reference to job grades) and select the level(s) that best fit.  Work on related roles together, e.g., Job-families. 
2. Write the Role Purpose. A summary of responsibilities, up to 60 words / 5 'bullets' that states what the role does and differentiates this role from related roles.
3. Select an initial set of SFIA skills.  Working from the statements in the 'Role purpose, identify 'candidate' SFIA skills by skill-name (max 12) that appear to support the responsibilities.
4. Drill-down & refine.  Read the skill descriptions (Overall; target level; 1 level below; 1 level above).  Review the initial selection for relevance, overlapping skills or specific skills that are covered by wider skills.  Confirm or revise skill-level or discard skill.
5. Verify that SFIA skills fulfil the role's purpose.  If a skill doesn't map to the summary of responsibilities, revise the Role purpose/responsibilities or remove the skill.
6. Review.  Confirm that each of the responsibilities set out for the role are fully supported by the SFIA skills and generic attributes.

Additional aspects of a full SFIA-based role profile

Context-specific knowledge

SFIA professional skills descriptions are technology- and vendor- neutral and do not refer to specific products or software platforms.  The complete role-skills profile needs to identify the knowledge required in the role, for example: products, technologies/languages, methodologies, in-house systems and the wider business/industry.

The 'knowledge' items in a skills profile should align with the role's purpose and professional skills; but may include wider (e.g., business) knowledge required across many roles.

Knowledge of products and technologies, may be graded to indicate the 'capability' required in the role. For example, a role may require in-depth expertise in a particular software product; or basic familiarity with a coding language; or 'awareness' of a methodology.

Technical certifications

Knowledge may be aligned to certifications offered by software vendors and service providers. Certifications are usually included only as indicators of the level of knowledge/capability needed in relation to a particular tool, not an absolute requirement, but may be mandated for the role.

Certifications

(Certifications in relation to software products, methodologies and tools are included in the "Context-specific knowledge" section, above.) 

Professional certifications or accreditations are important and widely recognised in certain fields, such as Business Analysis, Project Management, Risk management, Cyber security and Service Management.  Many credentials are aligned to SFIA skills and levels.

Indicate whether a credential is mandatory for the role or desirable; or if the credential is a target to be gained while in the role.

Personal skills

Complementary to SFIA attributes, personal skills and qualities required in the role may be included using language and terminology familiar to the business, such as ‘customer-facing skills’, 'negotiating skills', 'coaching skills', 'strategic thinking' or ‘attention to detail'.

Skills profiling Do's and Don'ts

Do:

✔       Ensure the role responsibilities are summarised and agreed. Every other part of the skills profile will align to this.

✔       Capture the distinct, incremental responsibilities in junior, middle and senior roles in a job family.

✔       Calibrate skills profiles across different and related teams to ensure consistency of skills and SFIA levels.

✔       Use skills profiles for recruitment and selection. The complete skills profile: role purpose, generic attributes and SFIA professional skills provide a comprehensive role description, supported by the context-specific knowledge required

Don't:

❌    Don't use broad phrases such as 'looks after', ‘manages’, 'drives' or 'responsible for' [a product, geography, market, etc.] in the Role summary of responsibilities.  These phrases don't convey the concrete actions or deliverables associated with the position, making it difficult to select skills for the profile and to make effective use of the profile.

❌    Don't have widely different SFIA levels for attributes or skills.  A role profile has an overall effective level of responsibility.  The skills and attributes in the profile should be at or around the same level.

❌    Don’t ask individuals to create the skills profile for their own role.  Profiles should objectively reflect the business and organisational perspective, not influenced by personal experience or preferences.

❌    Don't select a SFIA skill-level based on just one activity in the SFIA skill-level description.   A single aspect of a skill description may be edited out if it doesn't apply to a role, but the skill description must remain intact, to describe typical activities at the relevant SFIA skill-level.

❌    Don't align roles to SFIA Levels 6 or 7, unless there is clearly accountability at those levels in the organisation.