Abstract: The disclosed embodiments provide a system for processing data. During operation, the system determines similarity scores between pairs of skills based on occurrences of the skills in documents. Next, the system determines, based on the similarity scores, a first subset of skills that is similar to a first skill and a second subset of skills that is similar to a second skill. The system then calculates a first normalized similarity score between the two skills based on similarity scores between the first skill and the first subset of skills and calculates a second normalized similarity score between the two skills based on similarity scores between the second skill and the second subset of skills. Finally, the system determines a sequence of the two skills based on a comparison of the normalized similarity scores and stores the sequence in association with the two skills.