Set the requirements for an opportunity

What this achieves

Requirements are the list of skills and competencies the work needs, each with a level and a weighting. They are what match scoring compares an employee against, so an opportunity with no requirements can be advertised but not matched.

Required role: Administrator or Manager.

Steps

Go to Opportunities → Browse and open the opportunity.
Select the Requirements tab.
Under Skill Requirements, select Add skill.
Choose the Skill.
Set the Required level (1-5).
Choose the Importance.
Select Add.
Under Competency Requirements, select Add competency and repeat steps 4 to 7.

Importance changes what a gap costs

Every requirement carries an importance, and it is what separates a candidate who is not ready from one who is merely imperfect.

Option	Description
Required	The work cannot be done without it.
Preferred	Wanted, and its absence is a real gap rather than a disqualification.
Nice to have	Useful, and not a reason to rule anybody out.

Marking everything Required is the common mistake. It produces a shortlist of nobody, because internal candidates almost never meet every line of a role they have not done yet — which is the point of moving them into it.

Example: an engineering opportunity at HC Corp UK Ltd marks its core language Required and a reporting tool Nice to have. James Whitfield lacks the reporting tool and still scores as a strong match, which is the correct outcome.

Required level is the level the work needs

The level is what the work demands, not what an ideal applicant would have. Setting it above what the job actually needs makes every candidate look short and hides the people who could do it.

Example: a role that needs working competence at level 3 should say 3. Entering 5 because the previous holder was expert produces gaps against everyone.

Removing a requirement

Selecting the remove control on a requirement asks you to confirm, and the confirmation names the skill or competency that will no longer be required. Removing one changes what future matching scores against.

Requirements and match scores move together

Match scores are calculated against the requirements as they stood when the matching ran. Changing the list afterwards does not rescore anybody.

If you add, remove, or re-level a requirement on an opportunity that already has matches, generate the matches again. Otherwise the scores on screen describe a version of the role that no longer exists.

What happens next

With requirements in place, the opportunity can be published and matched. Employees who open it see their own gaps against these requirements, along with courses that cover them, so the list you set here is also what tells somebody what they would need to develop.