The Occupational Information Network (O*NET) has recently been developed as a replacement for the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. As a comprehensive system designed to describe occupations, the O*NET incorporates the last 60 years of knowledge about the nature of jobs and work. This article summarizes its development and validation by first discussing how the O*NET used multiple descriptors to provide “multiple windows” on the world of work, utilized cross‐job descriptors to provide a common language to describe different jobs, and used a hierarchical taxonomic approach to occupational descriptors. Second, we provide an overview of the O*NET's Content Model of descriptor domains (i.e., worker characteristics, worker requirements, occupational requirements, experience requirements, occupation characteristics, and occupation‐specific requirements) and their potential uses. Third, we discuss some of the technical issues surrounding the O*NET Finally, we discuss some of the implications for research and theory, as well as some limitations of the O*NET system.

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A major goal of the Army Selection and Classification Project was to develop an experimental predictor battery that would best supplement the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery for making selection and classification decisions for entry‐level enlisted personnel. That is, what predictor measures would best serve the needs of all the jobs in an entire selection/classification system? This paper describes the characteristics of the new test battery and the procedures that were used to develop it. The major steps in the procedure were a structured literature search using a standard protocol, an extensive expert judgment study of expected true validities for a population of predictor variables against a population of performance components, fabrication of modularized software and a special response pedestal for computerized measurement of perceptual and psychomotor abilities, evaluations of experimental measures in three iterative pilot tests and one major field test, and a series of reviews by a panel of scientific advisers. The test battery that resulted from this 2 1/2‐year development effort is described. The basic psychometric properties of each measure, as determined in a large concurrent validation sample, are also described.

Throughout industry, government, and education, people are worried about worker skills. This concern with "skills," however they may be defined, is evident in a number of initiatives, including the 1990 Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) and the 1994 Congressionally mandated National Skill Standards Board. These new initiatives can be traced to the problems confronting workers as we enter the 21st century (Cascio, 1995; Howard, 1995a). N o longer can one go to school for 12 years, take a job, and then do much the same thing for the next 30 years. Instead, changes in technology, global competition, and the emergence of new organizational structures have created a dynamic workplace where people are confronted with a host of complex new duties and are asked to take responsibility for their own work and their own careers.These changes, indeed, stress the need for complex performance skills and ongoing skill development. This apparently straightforward statement, however, raises many more questions than it answers. How are we to define skills in the first place? Assuming we can define the skills of interest, how are we to identify the kinds of skills likely to be required on different jobs? What do these job skill requirements, in turn, tell us about how we should go about preparing people for the jobs of the future?In this chapter we hope to provide some initial answers to these and a number of other questions about occupational skill requirements. We begin by briefly reviewing what is known about occupational skills and proposing a working definition for them. Next, we propose a taxonomy of occupational skill requirements and a strategy for obtaining measures of the skill requirements of different occupations. Finally, we present some initial evidence bearing on the reliability and validity of these measures and examine its implications for answering certain questions about workforce skills.

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