Help Center

Building a Skills Inventory

A skills inventory — also called a skills matrix or competency matrix — answers the questions that come up the moment you need to staff work: Who can do this? Who speaks the client’s language? Who is our second person for that system? Your org chart shows who reports to whom; a skills inventory shows what your people can actually do. In Peerdom you build both on the same map — on roles and profiles — using custom fields of type List. And because one list can open another as a follow-up, you capture not just which skills someone has but how deeply — languages with proficiency levels, tools with certifications, and so on.

This guide uses languages with proficiency as the worked example. The same pattern fits any skill catalog:

  • Languages → proficiency (Beginner, Experienced, Professional)
  • Tools & software → certification level → expiry date
  • Domains or methods → proficiency (e.g. facilitation, first aid, data analysis)
Start small. Define one skill list well — for example Languages — before rolling out a dozen. It is far easier to extend a clear inventory than to prune a sprawling one.

The idea in one picture

  • Languages — a List field with the options your organization cares about: German, English, French…
  • Proficiency — a second List field: Beginner, Experienced, Professional
  • Attach Proficiency as the follow-up list of Languages. Now, whenever someone picks a language, Peerdom asks for the proficiency too — and the profile shows German · Professional.

Follow-ups can chain as deep as you like: a language could lead to a proficiency, a proficiency to a certificate, and so on. You are, in effect, linking lists together to describe even complex skills.

Step 1 — Create the skill list

  1. Go to Settings > Role and profile configuration.
  2. In the Profiles section (skills belong to people), click Add field.
  3. Choose the List type — “a list of entries to choose from via drop-down” — and click Configure new field.
  4. Give it a Field name (Languages).
  5. Under List items, add each option with Add item: German, English, French…
  6. For Number of entries, choose List of entries so a person can hold more than one language. (Use Single entry when only one value makes sense.)
  7. Click Add.
The Profiles section puts a field on every colleague profile. The Custom fields for both Roles and Groups section is for describing roles and circles instead — useful when you want to record the skills a role requires. A skills inventory of your people lives in Profiles.

Step 2 — Create the proficiency list

Repeat Step 1 to create a second List field named Proficiency, with items Beginner, Experienced, Professional. Leave it as Single entry — a language has one proficiency at a time. You do not need to add it to profiles on its own; in the next step it becomes part of Languages.

Step 3 — Link them with a follow-up list

The follow-up list is what turns two flat lists into a structured skill.

  1. Back on Role and profile configuration, find the Languages field and click its Configure (gear) button.
  2. In the Follow-up list dropdown, choose Proficiency.
  3. The field now shows Follow-up list: “Proficiency” with an Unlink option. Click Update field.

Proficiency is now nested under Languages (it appears indented, marked follow-up of Languages, and no longer as a standalone field). Every language a person selects will prompt for a proficiency.

Create the follow-up list first and save it — the Follow-up list dropdown only offers list fields that already exist. To go deeper, give Proficiency its own follow-up, and so on; Peerdom prevents loops but sets no depth limit.

Step 4 — Fill it in

Open a colleague’s profile and find the Languages field. Pick a language from the dropdown; an indented → dropdown appears for its Proficiency — choose one. With List of entries, add another language and it gets its own proficiency. The profile then reads, for example, German · Professional and English · Experienced.

To populate many people at once, use bulk import on paid plans — see Managing People.

Step 5 — Browse, find and export

Once the inventory exists, put it to work:

  • On the map and profiles — each person’s skills show in the Inspector and on their profile, rendered as skill · level.
  • In the Directory — add the Languages column and sort by it to group people by skill. (Follow-up values like proficiency are shown together with their parent, not as a separate column.)
  • In List View — search by name and open any person to check their skills in the Inspector.
  • Export & API — for heavier analysis, export your data to CSV or read it through the API and pivot it however you need.
Today you build and browse the inventory, then sort or export to work with it. Filtering people directly by a skill value inside the app — "show everyone who speaks French at Professional level" — is on our roadmap; for now, sort the Directory column or export the data.

Keep it private, keep it multilingual

  • Each field can be public or private. Mark sensitive skills private so they stay hidden from guests and are excluded when you share your map.
  • Field names are translatable (English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish). Enter translations when you create or edit the field, and each colleague sees the inventory in their own language.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a skills inventory and a skills matrix?

They are two names for the same thing — a structured record of who holds which skills, and at what level. This guide builds one on your Peerdom map, where it sits alongside your org chart instead of in a separate spreadsheet.

How do I record proficiency levels or certifications?

Use a follow-up list (Step 3). A Languages field with a Proficiency follow-up renders as German · Professional. For certifications, follow up to a level and then an expiry date so you can see who is qualified and who is about to lapse.

Can I filter people by a specific skill value?

Not yet inside the app. Today you build, browse, sort, and export — add the Languages column in the Directory and sort, or export the data. Filtering directly by a skill value is on the roadmap.