Cross-Occupational vs. Occupation-Specific Descriptors

A second axis in modeling work separates what’s reusable across domains from what’s unique to a specific context.

Cross-occupational descriptors apply across many jobs, industries, and sectors. Abilities like “oral comprehension” or work activities like “analyzing data” appear in thousands of occupations. These enable comparison and transfer.

Occupation-specific descriptors apply only within particular roles. The specific tasks of a “dental hygienist” or the technology skills for “network administrator” don’t generalize. These enable precision and depth.

The distinction determines how you structure a taxonomy. Cross-occupational descriptors form the shared vocabulary, the common framework everyone uses. Occupation-specific descriptors form the specialized extensions, the detailed knowledge that experts need.

Getting this wrong creates either systems too generic to be useful or too specific to scale.

Related: 06-atom—worker-oriented-vs-job-oriented, 06-molecule—onet-content-model-framework, 02-atom—hierarchical-faceted-descriptor-architecture