Overview

A self-assessment is a formal evaluation cycle assigned to you by your manager or an administrator. During a self-assessment, you review each skill assigned to your career and grade your own proficiency using your organization’s grading scale (for example, a 1–5 scale). You can also mark skills that do not apply to your role. Self-assessments exist to give employees a voice in how their skills are recorded. Rather than relying solely on manager observations, self-assessments capture your own view of your proficiency — which your manager and administrator can then compare against their own assessment and the career’s benchmark expectations. All employees can complete self-assessments when one is assigned to them. You do not need any special permissions to access or complete your self-assessment. SkillsDB has two assessment experiences, and you may meet both: Both experiences save your answers as you go and end with a submit step. This article explains each one.

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Navigating to Your Assessments

To view your active and completed assessments, navigate to Profile > Assessments. The Assessments page shows all assessments assigned to you, with the following columns: The Actions button changes with your progress: An assessment shows Ended when your administrator has closed the assessment cycle. If you submitted before the cycle ended, the Scorecard button still appears so you can view your results. If the assessment ended before you submitted, no action button appears — contact your administrator. You can filter the list using the status chips at the top of the page (To Do, In Progress, Completed, Ended) or by assessment name. Select an assessment name or its action button to open it.

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Completing a Guided Skill Assessment

The guided skill assessment walks you through your skills one at a time.

Starting the assessment

When you open the assessment, a welcome screen shows the assessment title and summary cards: Select Start Assessment (or press Enter) to begin. If you are returning to an assessment you have already started, choose Resume to continue from where you left off, or Start from Beginning to go back to the first skill. Select Close to leave without starting.

Career and section introductions

Skills are grouped by career and by section within each career. Before the first skill of each career, an introduction screen shows the career name, its level, its description, and how many skills and sections it contains. Before the first skill of each section, an introduction screen shows the section name and description. Select Continue (or press Enter or →) to move past an introduction. If a career mixes sectioned and unsectioned skills, the unsectioned skills are grouped under a section called General.

Grading a skill

Each skill appears on its own screen. The skill name and description show on the left, and one grade card for each level of your organization’s grading scale shows on the right. Each grade card shows the grade’s short description and a longer detail description. To grade the skill, select the grade card that best reflects your current proficiency, or press the number key that matches the grade’s score. Your grade saves automatically. Two markers help you orient yourself:

• Benchmark — appears on the grade card that matches the expected proficiency for this skill in your career
• Prior — appears on the grade card that matches your grade from a previous assessment, when it differs from the benchmark

Marking a skill as Not Applicable

If a skill does not apply to your role or current work, select Not Applicable below the grade cards (or press N) instead of choosing a grade. The button changes to Marked as N/A. When a skill is marked Not Applicable:

• Any grade you had selected for that skill is cleared.
• The skill counts as answered, so you can move to the next skill.

To reverse it, select Marked as N/A again (or press N). The skill returns to an ungraded state and you can choose a grade.

Moving between skills

Use the arrow buttons at the bottom of the screen, or the keyboard, to move between skills:

• Select the right arrow, or press → or Enter, to move to the next skill.
• Select the left arrow, or press ←, to return to the previous skill.

You cannot move past a skill until you grade it or mark it Not Applicable. The next arrow appears dimmed until you do.

Reviewing and submitting

After the last skill, the review screen asks Ready to submit?

• Select Submit Assessment (or press Enter) to submit.
• Select Back to assessment (or press Esc or ←) to keep editing.

When you submit, your assessment is marked as Completed and SkillsDB opens your assessment scorecard.

Keyboard shortcuts

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Completing a Built Assessment

A built assessment follows the sequence of screens your administrator designed in the assessment builder. It can carry your organization’s branding (logo and accent color).

Starting the assessment

The assessment opens on a cover screen with the assessment title. Select Get started (or press Enter) to begin. If you have already started, the button reads Resume and opens the assessment at the screen where you left off.

Screens you may see

A question marked Optional can be left unanswered. You cannot move past a required question or an ungraded skill until you answer it. Your answers save automatically as you go. You can close the assessment at any time and return to it from Profile > Assessments.

Navigating

Use the arrow buttons in the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, or the keyboard:

• Press → or Enter to move forward.
• Press ← to go back.
• On a skill grading screen, press the number key that matches a grade’s score to choose it, or press N to mark the skill Not Applicable.

Submitting

The final screen, Submit your assessment, summarizes how many items you have answered. If any items are unanswered, a note lists them — select an item to open it, then select Back to review to return to the submission screen. Select Submit assessment to finish. After you submit, a confirmation screen appears. If your administrator enabled results pages for this assessment, select See results to view them — for example, a career report comparing your grades with benchmarks, question results, or recommendations. Otherwise, select Close.

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Viewing Your Results

After submitting a guided skill assessment, SkillsDB opens your Assessment Scorecard. You can also open the scorecard at any time by selecting Scorecard next to a completed assessment on the Profile > Assessments page. The scorecard shows:

• Your self-assessed grade for each skill
• Your manager’s grade for each skill (if your manager has completed their assessment and the administrator has made manager grades visible)
• The benchmark grade for each skill in your career
• A visual comparison of your self-assessment against benchmark and manager grades
• Learning resources you can use to close skill gaps

The scorecard is read-only. Grades cannot be changed after submission.

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Common Questions

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