Skills Assessment

Introduction

Skills assessment is an art. Although the years working on a skill can provide an indication of maturity and expertise gained, this alone is not enough. Different people have different levels of gaining knowledge and expertise and there are people that have a natural inclination to some specific skills. The latest is more visible in the art related skills, but talent is something that spans almost all the categories of skills advancement.

Saying that, the guide below is indicative and not restrictive. In the Professional ranking scale, we are approaching the level of expertise related to the time a professional has applied his skill. Although there is a correlation of skill advancement to years of practice, the time scale can not overcome natural talent.

It is the Professional’s mission to define and rank himself as he better understands where he fits in the ranking scale. At the end of the day, an accurate (or not) ranking of himself will reveal another skill he should possess. That of adequately understanding the world and himself in it. 

 

Skill Ranking Levels

There are two levels of ranking:

  1. Non-Professional (1-3)
  2. Professional (4-10)

 

Based on the above segmentation, we have the following skill rankings:

 

Non Professional Rankings

Non professional rankings are used to show skills that someone has but he is not practicing them at a professional level (e.g. he might be a football player but doing this for fun, not as a professional football player).

 

Rank

Description

1

NP – Beginner (Learning)

2

NP – Intermediate (knows adequately, qualified)

3

NP – Experienced (well practiced, having versatile knowledge)

 

Professional Rankings

Professional rankings are used to rank skills that the Professional has practised or is practicing at a professional level. This demands adherence to more rules such as regulations, quality specifications, team behaviors, etc.

Rank

Description

4

PR-Junior1 (Usually just graduated from professional education related to the skill but has no working experience).

5

PR-Junior2 (Some level of working experience has been gained. Usually up to 12 months)

6

PR-Mid1 (1-2 years of work experience in the specific skill)

7

PR-Mid2 (2-4 years of work experience in the specific skill)

8

PR-Advanced (4-6 years of work experience in the specific skill)

9

PR-Senior (>6 years of work experience in the specific skill)

10

PR-Skill Leader technology or skill expert.

  1. Usually part of the team that designed the technology or skill, and is actively working in progressing it.

  2. For languages this will be a higher academic in this linguistic field

  3. For soft skills, it is a person that has performed exceptionally in this field and probably is frequently been invited as a speaker and leader to present and explain how this (soft) skill works.

 

 

Attention.

  1. Do not confuse the rankins on a skill level with the ranking you might have on a position. For example a person might be a Senior Developer but he just started working on a new technology (e.g. Vue.js). Although he is senior for his role (Developer), his knowledge on the skill(Vue.js) is Junior (because he just started). The ranking on his skill should be Junior1. The difference that occurs for a senior developer when approaching a new skill (e.g. Vue.js), is that he can move way faster on the skill rank than a junior developer because he can capitalize on his years of experience as a developer and thus common problems and basic knowledge shared between the new technology and his existing expertise.
  2. A Professional might be tempted to add many skills on a very basic level (e.g. NP-Beginner or P-Junior1) to enhance his profile even with skills that he has actually no understanding. At SkillsCharts we are working on a number of new metrics that will evaluate a professional and provide more insights. One of them is the pace of skills advancement which is related to his dedication to a skill. Keeping skills in a stalling position might give wrong signals if you just start them and never progress them.

 

Specialized Ranking

Although the above ranking approach seems to cover most of the cases (especially on technology related skills), it might be difficult to be used on other skills. For this reason we will provide more skill ranking levels based on individual skills requirements in the future. If you have a suggestion, please send us your comments at support@skillscharts.com