Aspiring Minds Launches First-of-its-Kind Interactive Map To Help Close US Jobs-Skills Gap

US Skill Map shows job seekers, employers and institutions what qualifications are most-needed and highest-paid, nationally and by state

REDWOOD CITY, California (PRWEB) June 15, 2016

Aspiring Minds, the global leader in employability assessments, today launched the U.S. Skill Map – a first-of-its-kind, free, interactive platform that links job qualifications to job vacancies and compensation.

"The U.S. Skill Map fills a huge information gap between job openings and qualified candidates," said Varun Aggarwal, co-founder and chief technical officer of Aspiring Minds. "Continually refreshed with new data, it connects the dots from supply to real-time demand for particular competencies. The map shows which qualifications are most-required and command the highest salaries, both nationwide and in each state."

Despite 5.8 million open positions in the U.S., only 5.1 million people were hired in May, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The U.S. Skill Map meets the needs of three groups:

• Job seekers, who struggle to understand which skills are in highest demand, and where, and which career paths are most profitable
• Employers, who have trouble finding qualified candidates
• Higher education institutions, which can use guidance in preparing students

To develop the map, Aspiring Minds analyzed more than 4 million job openings and matched them with some 200 job skill sets, spanning cognitive and soft skills across hundreds of industries. This was done for the U.S. overall and by state.

Among key insights:

• The most sought-after skills and traits nationwide are research, analytics and teamwork. Sociability, as well as calmness under pressure, also are highly valued.
• The most lucrative specialties in the U.S. are medicine, followed by architecture, software engineering, computer science and energy engineering.
• Software engineering and analytical skills are in highest demand and earn the highest pay in East and West Coast technology hubs.
• Data scientists are most likely to find appropriate work in California, while New York is the best place to locate a finance job.    

The U.S. Skill Map includes Aspiring Minds' recently-published, first-ever classification of job skills that maps more than 1,000 job roles to skills, assessments and training opportunities.

Combined with Aspiring Minds' patent-pending employability assessment test, AMCAT, the world's most-used employability test, the U.S. Skill Map enables jobs seekers to identify the skills they need, test their competency, earn credentials and access the right training to help them improve their marketability.

More information on the U.S. Skill Map here

About Aspiring Minds:

Aspiring Minds is a global job skills-credentialing leader with a vision to create a merit- driven talent ecosystem and enable efficient job skills matching by crafting credible and intelligent assessments. The flagship product, AMCAT, taken by more than 2 million candidates every year, is the world's most widely-used employability test and the only standardized test designed for job matching.

Aspiring Minds enables job seekers to evaluate their job skills, earn industry-recognized credentials and find appropriate career opportunities. With more than 3,500 corporate customers, Aspiring Minds also helps companies dramatically improve hiring quality and efficiency, and it serves some 4,000 higher education institutions.

Founded in 2008 by Himanshu Aggarwal (CEO) and Varun Aggarwal (CTO), Aspiring Minds employs more than 500 people and operates in the U.S., China, India, Middle East, Philippines and Sub-Saharan Africa.

For more information, visit http://www.aspiringminds.com or http://www.myamcat.com.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/06/prweb13486774.htm