At TalentLift, we’re driven by a mission to support people living as refugees to access job and skilled immigration opportunities, as a skills-based solution to displacement. A critical component of this mission is the collection and management of skills and displacement data. To expand our reach and enhance our impact, we collaborate with partner organizations worldwide, including the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), non-profits, and other entities directly working with displaced individuals.

This diverse ecosystem presents unique challenges, particularly in the way data is collected and managed. Different organizations have varying methodologies and standards for recording data, making data transfer and integration a time-consuming process. For instance, language proficiency might be documented as “low, intermediate, high, native” by one partner and “C1-2, B1-2, A1-2” by another. These inconsistencies limit our ability to efficiently and accurately match candidates with job opportunities, impacting the overall effectiveness of many initiatives in this area.

We and our partners have now taken some important steps towards data interoperability, and we think this has significant potential to help scale our collective work.

Uncovering the challenges

In the first quarter of 2024, we embarked on a series of discovery interviews with seven key stakeholders in the Latin America and Caribbean region. These stakeholders included UNHCR country offices, non-profit organizations providing on-the-ground support, and companies offering logistical and technical assistance. Our goal was to understand how our partners handle similar challenges and to validate our assumptions.

The insights gathered from these interviews highlighted two primary challenges:

Fragmentation of data collection: Each organization operates within its own sphere, leading to disparate and opinionated systems for managing candidate data. This fragmentation hinders efficient resource allocation and beneficiary support.
Lack of standardization: Different stakeholders create their own data standards and collection methodologies. This lack of standardization complicates data transfer between organizations, often requiring ad-hoc data sharing agreements.

Despite these challenges, there was a strong desire among stakeholders to develop and use technical standards to better support candidates. Most stakeholders were in the early stages of piloting or planning operations to support skilled immigration as a complementary pathway, indicating an opportunity for greater flexibility and integration.

A path forward: The technical working group

To address these challenges and capitalize on the opportunities, we proposed the establishment of a technical working group for interagency complementary pathways data exchange. This working group would serve multiple purposes:

Collaborative problem-solving: By bringing together various stakeholders, the group can collectively tackle challenges and identify inclusive and comprehensive solutions.
Predictability and consistency: Establishing clear data principles, standards, and protocols would enhance the predictability and consistency of data exchanges, ensuring all stakeholders can align their systems efficiently.
Innovation through integration: A standardized approach would promote efficiency and integration, potentially driving innovation through novel uses of existing data.

Founding goals

We outlined the following goals for the working group:

Identify and address challenges: Pinpoint current obstacles in interagency data sharing and propose actionable solutions.
Standardize data exchange: Develop a framework and protocols for interagency data sharing, including a standardized data schema for skilled immigration as a complementary pathway.
Ensure privacy and security: Establish best practices for ensuring the privacy and security of candidate data during exchanges.
Adopt anonymized data sharing: Develop protocols for sharing anonymized data to protect individuals’ privacy.

Achievements and future vision

We are grateful for the collaboration and insights of our working group partners, UNHCR, HIAS, SkillLab, and Talent Beyond Boundaries. Key accomplishments of the working group over the last half-year include the creation of a standard data schema for data exchange and the development of best practices for data collection with privacy and security in mind.

One of the main products of the working group is the finalized standard schema for data exchange, which can be accessed here. This schema provides a clear technical roadmap for TalentLift and our current partners, as well as for new stakeholders interested in complementary pathways work, enabling them to engage in this space without extensive resource investment.

We envision a future where the framework developed by the working group becomes a key technical resource, precisely identifying critical fields and data necessary to support skilled immigration as a complementary pathway. By fostering collaboration and standardization, we aim to streamline the process, ensuring that refugee populations can access meaningful job and relocation opportunities more efficiently and effectively.

Through these efforts, we are not only enhancing our own operations but also setting the stage for a more integrated and supportive global system for displaced individuals seeking a better future.

Candidates living in refugee circumstances and seeking a job in Canada can join TalentLift. Employers seeking global talent while engaging their team in something transformative can start hiring.

Bridging gaps in data collection to drive skilled immigration as a solution to displacement