Episode 344: Why Skills Have to Be Earned

In this episode of the Brandon Hall Group™ Excellence at Work podcast, host David Wentworth, Managing Director of Learning and Talent at Brandon Hall Group™, talks with Bernie Barbour, Chief Technology and Product Officer at Skillsoft, about why most of the skills data organizations already have cannot actually be trusted, and what it takes to build a system that turns skills into a measurable business discipline instead of a completion rate. Barbour brings the technical and product view of what it actually takes to build that system at scale, from separating claimed skills from earned skills to using AI without letting judgment quietly erode. Together with Wentworth, Barbour digs into why proficiency is so hard to define, what changes once a skill has to show up in real work and why picking one problem to solve beats trying to fix everything at once.