A career skills gap is the difference between the requirements of a target role and the skills a candidate can currently evidence. Identify it by collecting ten real adverts for that role, listing every requirement that appears in most of them, and marking each one as evidenced, partly evidenced or absent from your CV.
Evidence, not ability
The distinction that matters is between what you can do and what you can show. Employers cannot assess ability directly at application stage; they read evidence. A skill you have used but never written down is, for hiring purposes, a gap — and it is the cheapest kind to close.
So each requirement falls into one of three states:
- Evidenced — it appears on your CV with a concrete example.
- Partly evidenced — you have done something adjacent, but the CV does not make the link.
- Absent — you have not done it.
Most people discover that half their apparent gaps are documentation problems.
The method
1. → Choose one target role and one seniority level. 2. → Collect ten current adverts for it. 3. → Copy every requirement into a single list. 4. → Keep the ones that appear in six or more adverts; those are the real requirements. 5. → Mark each as evidenced, partly evidenced or absent. 6. → Close the partly-evidenced ones first by rewriting your CV. 7. → For the absent ones, ask whether a short project would produce evidence faster than a course.
Ten adverts is enough to separate genuine requirements from one employer's wish list. Anything appearing once is noise.
Which gaps are worth closing
Not every gap deserves investment. Sort them:
- Blocking gaps — named in nearly every advert, often a specific tool or qualification. Close these first.
- Differentiating gaps — appear in half the adverts and would strengthen you. Worth a short course or project.
- Nice-to-have gaps — appear occasionally. Ignore them until the first two are done.
A common mistake is starting with a long qualification for a nice-to-have gap, because it is easier to enrol on a course than to write two honest CV bullets.
Producing evidence quickly
For most practical skills, a small piece of finished work is stronger evidence than a certificate:
- A short analysis of public data, with the method described.
- A rebuilt version of something you saw done badly, with your reasoning.
- A volunteer task in the area, done properly and written up.
- A course, where the assessment produces artefacts you can show.
The test is whether an interviewer could ask you questions about it. Certificates rarely survive that; work does.
A realistic example
Josh wants a junior data analyst role. From ten adverts, the requirements appearing in six or more are SQL, spreadsheets to an advanced level, one visualisation tool, communicating findings to non-specialists, and basic statistics.
Marking his CV: spreadsheets are evidenced; statistics is partly evidenced through his dissertation but never stated; communication is partly evidenced through a teaching assistant role; SQL and the visualisation tool are absent.
Two gaps are documentation and are fixed in an evening. One is a genuine blocking gap. He works through a SQL course with practical exercises, then rebuilds a piece of his dissertation analysis using queries and a dashboard, so the skill arrives with evidence attached rather than as a line in a certificates section.
What to do next, without any account
- Pick one target role — not three.
- Collect ten adverts and build the shared requirement list.
- Mark each requirement evidenced, partly evidenced or absent.
- Fix all the partly-evidenced items on your CV this week.
- Choose the single most common absent requirement and plan a piece of work that would evidence it.
Revisit the list every couple of months. Requirements shift, and so does what you can show.
A career skills analysis does this comparison for you, using your CV and one target role, and points to the gaps worth closing first.