---
id: "concept-skill-adjacencies"
type: "concept"
source_timestamps: ["§ Reskilling Is a Strategic Imperative", "§ Reskilling Is a Change-Management Initiative"]
tags: ["recruitment", "talent-matching", "transition-pathways"]
related: ["concept-skill-taxonomy", "framework-reskilling-change-management"]
definition: "Related or overlapping competencies that allow an employee to transition more easily from their current skill set into a new, different occupation."
sources: ["reskilling"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-reskilling"
originDay: 10
articleStem: "hbr-edu-34-reskilling-in-age-of-ai"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2023/09/reskilling-in-the-age-of-ai"
sourceTitle: "Reskilling in the Age of AI"
---
# Skill Adjacencies

**Skill adjacencies** are the overlapping or related competencies between an employee's current skill set and the requirements of a new, different role.

Because reskilled workers *cannot* be recruited on traditional credentials — degrees or direct experience in the target field — organizations must use skill adjacencies to set enrollment policies for reskilling programs. Identifying adjacent skills enables smoother, lower-friction transitions from one occupation to another. Examples: **Infosys reskilled over 2,000 cybersecurity experts** by leveraging their various adjacent competencies, and **Novartis uses an AI-powered talent marketplace** to predict and match roles based on adjacencies.

Skill adjacencies depend on a well-built [[concept-skill-taxonomy]] and feed the "recruiting and evaluating" task of [[framework-reskilling-change-management]].

**Enrichment note.** This idea appears under many labels in HR-tech literature — skill graph, skill similarity — and is operationalized by internal talent-marketplace platforms (Gloat, Eightfold). It is more elaborated in consultancy/product literature than in OECD ([[entity-oecd]]) reports.