Client and task

WorldSkills Russia assesses participants' professional skills at events held to the international WorldSkills standards. The movement needed a digital platform to automate its work, bring many users into the system and make managing users and resources as easy as possible. The end goal: hard and soft skill assessment results build up into a participant's "digital footprint". Large Russian and international employers use it as a portfolio and CV. This makes the first platform in Russia for targeted search of people with proven experience and qualifications.

What we built

We worked on the platform as part of the development team. The platform is made of modules: single sign-on, events and demonstration exams, skills matrix, participant profile, skills passport, talent search, admin panel. Our part:

• Go back end

  Services for demonstration exams, the skills matrix, the participant profile, documents and directories (organisations, schools, addresses), plus the code shared by all services.

  All modules rely on the same data and rules.

• Single sign-on and access rights

  An OAuth 2.0 authorisation service and transfer of users and their rights from a related system of the movement.

  Users sign in once and reach any module with their own rights.

• Demonstration exams

  The module's API and its interface, built together with the platform team: applications, running the exam, results, PDF documents.

  Skills are assessed by one set of rules and go straight into the system.

• Skills matrix

  A service that breaks WorldSkills standards down into the skills a participant is assessed on.

  You see what a person can actually do, not just a final score.

• Participant profile and digital footprint

  A unified service with all user data and the profile interface: education, career, documents, results.

  A participant's achievements are kept in one place and don't get lost between events.

• Skills passport

  An interface that turns digital footprint materials into the participant's portfolio and CV.

  Participants show employers proven qualifications, not a self-description.

• Talent search and admin panel

  A talent search service for employers and the platform's admin panel.

  Employers search by verified skills, the operator keeps data in one place.

How it works

The platform is a set of modules behind one sign-in: exams, skills, profile, passport, search. Each module is a separate Vue.js web app backed by services, mostly in Go. Participant data is gathered into one profile, which feeds the skills passport and employer search. Storage is PostgreSQL with full-text search, and everything runs on Kubernetes.

Timeline and scale

1. October 2018 our work starts: single sign-on and participant profile.
2. 2019 demonstration exams, skills matrix, events, admin panel.
3. 2020 a new unified profile and the skills passport. Our last changes in December 2020.

Scale: more than 30 apps, services and shared libraries in the platform's repositories, one sign-in for all modules.

What it gave

• A digital footprint instead of scattered results

  A participant's exams, skills, education and career are gathered in one profile.

• Qualifications employers can see

  The skills passport and search rely on verified assessment results.

• One ecosystem

  Participants, experts and organisers work in shared services with one account.

Technologies

• Go
• Vue.js
• PostgreSQL
• Full-text search
• Microservices
• OAuth 2.0 (ORY Hydra)
• S3 (MinIO)
• Docker
• Kubernetes

Status

Project completed. We took part in building the platform in 2018–2020. The WorldSkills Russia movement has since been renamed, and the platform no longer runs at its old address.