Are you experienced?

This is the question that is so hard to get an answer to any way other than by having a conversation with the person in question.

A colleague recently added another dimension to this by saying 'we know more than we can tell' in the context of expertise and if this is so, and I suspect it is, it makes things even more complicated.

Systems that pool expertise can include self declared expertise, experience and referral based data, all of which seek to create a rounded profile of what the individual knows and knows best.

Part of the problem with any organized structure in which expertise is classified is that it may miss the 'soft' things turn out to be very important in the overall picture. For example the individual may have as a tangential but complimentary experience that speaks very well to some expertise, or, may have lived in place where first hand experience of something local was very informative and catalytic in understanding a certain issue.

I recall hearing a presentation of this subject where the inclusion of free form and non taxonomic expertise categories was a key part to finding the right people for the job, in this case the speaker was giving the example of someone who had 'flying fox relocation' experience...something that would never have been picked up in any classification system but appeared to be very material to the needs of the searcher.

How do we build better systems to accommodate this sort of thing? For now the inclusion of free form text is a good catch all and perhaps the addition of an anonymous expertise rating system based on the experience of others with an individual. This is of course a little tricky and may be best done on a personal level within the social networking software we use to manage our interactions.

LinkedIn is probably the best expertise location system out there today but even then, you really need to read between the lines when looking at someone's profile to get a good sense of what they know and how they know it.

How LinkedIn evolves in this respect will be very interesting and, a bit like Google, this evolution will probably set many of the standards in the space going forwards.