How does it work?   

ESCOX works by reading unstructured text and automatically identifying the skills and occupations mentioned. It does this by comparing the words in the text to a large database of official skill and occupation categories, using artificial intelligence to understand the meaning rather than just looking for keywords. Users simply paste a piece of text into the tool or upload a file, and ESCOX returns a structured list of relevant skills and job roles, complete with confidence scores. The tool can be used through a simple web interface, requiring no technical background, or integrated into more complex workflows via its open-source software and API. This makes it accessible to both non-technical users and developers who want to analyse large volumes of data.  

Why it matters  

Using real-world job data from the European Employment Services, ESCOX was tested on over 6,500 job postings. The tool identified high-demand technical skills like Java and SQL, but also key soft skills such as communication and problem-solving. In parallel, it recognised roles like ICT Business Analyst and Project Manager, making it easier to map demand in the digital sector.  

This kind of insight is valuable for:  

• Policy design: identifying regional or sectoral skill gaps  

• Curriculum development: aligning educational content with real-world demand  

• Recruitment and workforce planning: better job descriptions and talent strategies  

ESCOX is highly relevant for initiatives like TechConnect, which focus on the interaction between human capabilities and emerging technologies. One of TechConnect’s core goals is to understand how digital tools can support skills development, workforce planning, and more inclusive labour market strategies. ESCOX contributes directly to this by making it easier to map skills and occupations from real-world data in a structured and scalable way. It helps bridge the “affordance gap” between what technologies are designed to do and how they are actually used, by providing clear insights into the evolving language of work. As a tool that supports data-driven decision-making around education, employment, and policy, ESCOX is well aligned with TechConnect’s mission to build human-centred technology ecosystems. 

Built for usability and scale  

ESCOX has been designed to be both accessible and technically robust. It includes a user-friendly web interface that allows non-technical users, such as policymakers or HR professionals, to interact with the tool easily. The system can also be deployed using standard infrastructure and performs efficiently even without GPU acceleration. It supports multilingual input, integrates summarisation mechanisms for processing long documents, and can be accessed via API or run in environments such as Google Colab.