Jason Culloty has offered a solution to the issue. A former army officer, Mr Culloty draws several similarities between the world of business and the Defence Forces, using his skills within one realm to help him succeed in the other, much like what his company, Skillsvista has set out to achieve.

Launched by Mr Culloty at the beginning of 2021, Skillsvista is an online platform specialising in workplace planning. It enables firms to assess what skills they are missing within the organisation and connects these to existing employees capable of bridging the gap.

Speaking from the company’s headquarters in Mallow, Co Cork, Mr Culloty tells the Irish Examiner: “A company can post a job opening and immediately view all the employees that could make potential candidates". 

“The system will show internally who has the skills or the shortest skill gap for the role, strengthening the company’s internal recruitment process.”

As demand for labour continues to outstrip supply, Mr Culloty says his tech startup emphasises existing employees, easing reliance on external candidates.

“With Skillsvista, it allows you to operate internally first and see if you already have that talent. If you hire within the company first, you can then hire at the lower level. If you can not get the talent internally, only then do you look for outside candidates.”

If a skills mismatch does exist, Skillvista recommends courses that would bridge the divide between what organisations have and what they need, with more than 100 offered by the Education and Training Board (ETB) which are available on the website’s system.

For employees, the CEO explains that workers can view the top five jobs most suited to them within the company, as well as curate their own skills profile and avail of courses that will help upskill them in their current role.

Tasked with creating an upskilling plan for the Defence Forces during his time as an army officer, Mr Culloty said it took the team more than nine months to combine the number of skills gaps across the organisation.

“I remember thinking to myself, 'there must be an easier way to do this'. And that is what Skillsvista is.”

“I had to learn a lot very quickly,” Mr Culloty recalls. “I don’t have a background in tech, so it took longer than hoped to create the system, it was so different than anything else out there.”

However, almost three years in, Mr Culloty says Skillsvista has entered talks with several national and international clients, with Mr Culloty saying companies with turnovers over €1bn have turned to Skillsvista seeking solutions to their hiring problems. 

With the company now valued at €4m, Mr Culloty tells the Irish Examiner: “We have converted more from our pipeline and the opportunity for this is just massive.”

“We have created artificial intelligence that will tag skills to content. That means we can accurately tag skills to ebooks, audio, and in the next few weeks, we’re looking at plugging in a full learning management system into Skillsvista — automating that using AI. Once that happens, it’s a game-changer.”

With labour and skills shortages currently at the tip of every employers’ tongue, Mr Culloty sees extensive space for Skillsvista to grow, reiterating the need for a new solution to solve a worsening problem.

After being recently named overall winner of the Global EdTech Startup Awards Ireland Semifinals, Mr Culloty hopes to expand the Skillsvista team early next year before moving on to represent Ireland in the UK educational-tech exhibition BETT in 2024.

“We want to hire for a number of key roles, especially in the areas of tech, business development, sales and marketing,” says Mr Culloty.

Looking to the future, the CEO aims to have Skillsvista at the top of every employer’s mind, adding, “I want this to change how we approach talent management globally". 

“If we keep bringing in multinationals, promising them talent, but we don’t have the agile system that gives them what they want, they will not stay very long. We have a solution now, we just need to spread the word.”