Abstract: Traditional job analysis methods have relatively obvious disadvantages like inadaptation to environmental change and cost inefficiency. The development of Occupational Information Network (O*NET) is deemed to solve these aforementioned problems. The key framework of O*NET, known as content model, incorporates the work and worker information together. The main features of O*NET contain unit reduction, cost effectiveness and timeliness, hierarchically nested model, cross-occupation descriptors. The paper argues that O*NET plays an important role in individual development and organizational management. Recent research progress on O*NET is summarized in two fields: job analysis and occupational classification. Future research in Chinese context is suggested to explore further in different areas.

Key words: Occupational Information Network (O*NET), job analysis, competency modeling, occupational classification