​

Overview

SkillsDB’s talent development capability gives your organization a structured way to define what skills are expected in each role, measure where employees currently stand against those expectations, and support their growth through targeted learning. Rather than relying on informal conversations or disconnected spreadsheets, SkillsDB brings skills data, assessments, benchmarks, and learning plans together in one place. This getting started guide covers the administrator setup required to activate talent development for your organization. By the end of this guide, your employees will have assigned Careers that define their skill expectations, assessment grades recorded against benchmarks, and access to learning resources linked to their development areas. The talent development workflow in SkillsDB follows a clear sequence:

1. Configure your grading scale — define the proficiency levels used across your entire organization
2. Enable the features you need — turn on libraries, flags, and notifications in Settings
3. Build your Skills Library — create the skills your organization tracks
4. Create Careers — define role structures with skills, sections, benchmarks, and settings
5. Assign employees to Careers — connect people to the roles that apply to them
6. Run an assessment cycle — collect self and manager grades to populate skill data
7. Add learning resources — link training content to skills and Careers
8. Monitor and act — use analytics to track coverage, gaps, and progress

Administrators have access to all setup steps described here. Some steps — such as assigning employees to Careers and running team assessments — can also be performed by managers within their reporting structure.

---

​

Prerequisites

Before setting up SkillsDB for talent development, confirm that:

• You have Administrator access to your SkillsDB organization
• Your organization’s employee records have been created or imported into SkillsDB (either manually via Company > Employees or via the Import tool)
• You have an understanding of the roles, levels, and skills used in your organization — this will be the foundation for building Careers

If employees have not yet been added to SkillsDB, complete that step first. See Viewing Your Team for details on how people records are structured.

---

​

Step 1: Configure Your Grading Scale

The grading scale defines the proficiency levels used across your organization for all skill assessments. Every grade badge, benchmark, and gap calculation in SkillsDB uses this scale, so it should be configured before you create skills or run assessments. SkillsDB supports a fully customizable grading scale. Each grade has a numeric value, a short description, and an optional detailed description. For example, a five-point scale might use: 1 - Awareness, 2 - Developing, 3 - Proficient, 4 - Advanced, 5 - Expert. To configure your grading scale:

1. Select Settings from the left sidebar under the Company section.
2. Locate the Grading Scale section and select the link to open the grading settings page, or navigate directly to Settings > Grading Scale.
3. Review the existing grades. Each row shows the grade number, short description, and detailed description.
4. To edit a grade, select the field you want to change and type a new value. Changes are saved automatically.
5. To add a new grade, select Add Grade and enter the grade number, short description, and an optional detailed description.
6. To remove a grade that is no longer needed, select the delete icon on that row. Grades that have been used in existing assessments or benchmarks cannot be deleted.

---

​

Step 2: Enable Features in Settings

SkillsDB has a set of company-wide settings that control which features are available to your users. Review and configure these before proceeding with your talent development setup. To access settings:

1. Select Settings from the left sidebar under the Company section.

The Settings page displays all available configuration options. The key settings for talent development are: | Date Assigned | Controls whether employees and managers can see when skills or assessments were assigned to them | Enable the Library settings for Skills, Careers, and Training as a minimum for the talent development use case. Toggle each switch to the desired state — changes are saved immediately.

---

​

Step 3: Build Your Skills Library

The Skills Library is the master list of skills your organization tracks. All Careers are built from skills in this library, so it should be populated before you create Careers. To access the Skills Library:

1. Select Skills from the left sidebar under the Library section.

The Library > Skills page opens, showing all skills currently defined in your organization.

​

Creating a skill

1. Select Create Skill in the top right of the page.
2. In the drawer that opens, enter:
   • Name (required) — the skill name as it will appear throughout SkillsDB
   • Description — a plain-language description of what the skill covers
   • Labels — optional organizational labels to help categorize skills (for example, by function or domain)
3. Select Save.

The skill is added to the library and is immediately available to be added to Careers.

​

Importing skills in bulk

If your organization has a large number of skills, use the Import tool to create them in bulk rather than one at a time. Navigate to Import in the left sidebar and follow the instructions to upload a formatted spreadsheet.

---

​

Step 4: Create and Configure Careers

A Career in SkillsDB is a structured role definition. It groups skills into named sections, assigns benchmark proficiency grades at each level (for example, Junior, Mid, Senior), and optionally links learning resources. Careers are the foundation of SkillsDB’s talent development capability — everything from assessments to skill gaps to learning plans connects back to a Career.

​

Creating a Career

To access the Careers library:

1. Select Careers from the left sidebar under the Library section.
2. Select Create Career in the top right of the page.
3. In the drawer that opens, enter:
   • Career Name (required)
   • Type — the category this Career belongs to in your organization (for example, Engineering, Operations)
   • Labels — optional labels for filtering and grouping
4. Select Save.

The Career is created and its detail page opens.

​

Adding skills and sections to a Career

The Career detail page is where you define the skills and benchmark expectations for a role. Skills in a Career are organized into sections, and each skill can have a benchmark grade assigned at each level. To add a section:

1. On the Career detail page, select Add Section.
2. Enter a section name (for example, “Core Competencies” or “Technical Skills”).

To add a skill to a section:

1. Select Add Skill within the relevant section.
2. Search for and select the skill from the Skills Library.
3. The skill appears in the section. You can now set benchmark grades.

To set benchmark grades:

1. For each skill row, each defined level (for example, Junior, Mid, Senior) shows a grade selector.
2. Select the cell for the skill and level you want to set, and choose the benchmark grade.
3. The benchmark grade is the minimum proficiency expected at that level. Employees assessed below this grade will have a skill gap for this skill.

​

Configuring Career settings

Each Career has four settings that control which SkillsDB features are active for that role. To configure them:

1. On the Career detail page, select Career Settings (the settings icon in the top right).
2. The Career Settings modal opens with four toggles:

3. Toggle each setting to the desired state and select Save.

---

​

Step 5: Assign Employees to Careers

Once your Careers are configured, assign employees to the appropriate Career for their role. Career assignment is what connects a person to the skills, benchmarks, and learning resources defined for their role.

​

Assigning from the Career page

1. Select Careers from the left sidebar under the Library section.
2. Select the Career you want to assign employees to.
3. On the Career detail page, select Assign People (or the people assignment button in the top right).
4. Search for and select the employees to assign. You can assign multiple people at once.
5. For each assignment, select the appropriate Level (for example, Junior, Mid, Senior) if your Career has levels defined.
6. Confirm the assignment.

Assigned employees will immediately see this Career in their Skills profile, and their grades will be measured against the benchmarks defined for their level.

​

Assigning from the Employee record

You can also assign a Career from an individual employee’s record:

1. Select Employees from the left sidebar under the Company section.
2. Select the employee you want to update.
3. On their profile, navigate to the Career assignment section and assign the appropriate Career and level.

---

​

Step 6: Run Your First Assessment Cycle

Assessments are how SkillsDB collects proficiency grades. A standard talent development setup uses two concurrent assessments: a self-assessment (where employees grade themselves) and a manager assessment (where managers grade their direct reports). The combination of both grades gives you the most complete picture of skill proficiency across your organization.

​

Creating an assessment

1. Select Assessments from the left sidebar under the Company section.
2. Select New assessment in the top right.
3. In the Create New Assessment drawer, complete the following fields:

4. Select Create to save the assessment in Draft status.

​

Starting an assessment

An assessment in Draft status has not yet been sent to participants. To launch it:

1. Select the assessment from the Assessments list to open its detail page.
2. The detail page shows two cards: Manager Assessment and Employee Assessment. Each can be started, scheduled, and ended independently.
3. To start the Employee Assessment, select Start on the Employee Assessment card. You can set a start date, a deadline, and whether email notifications are sent.
4. To start the Manager Assessment, select Start on the Manager Assessment card and configure the same options.

Once started, assessments move to Active status and participants receive notification emails (if system emails are enabled). Employees complete their self-assessment from their Profile > Assessments page, and managers complete their assessments from Team > Assessments.

​

Monitoring progress and sending reminders

The assessment detail page shows completion counts in real time:

• Total Assigned — how many people are included in this assessment
• Complete — how many have submitted
• Manager Assigned / Manager Completed — progress on the manager side
• Employee Assigned / Employee Completed — progress on the employee side

If completion rates are low, you can send a Nudge from the assessment card to email a reminder to participants who have not yet completed their assessment. If system emails are disabled, nudges will not be sent.

​

Ending an assessment

When sufficient responses have been collected, select End on the relevant assessment card to close it. Ended assessments move to Completed status. The grades collected are retained and used for ongoing benchmark comparisons and skill gap calculations.

---

​

Step 7: Add Learning Resources

Learning resources are the training content you link to skills and Careers to support employee development. Once linked, resources appear in employees’ Upskilling view alongside their skill gaps, and managers can assign them directly to individual Learning Plans.

​

Adding resources to the Training Library

1. Select Training from the left sidebar under the Library section.
2. Select New resource in the top right.
3. Complete the resource details:
   • Title (required)
   • Description
   • Category — the type of resource (for example, Course, Video, Article, Workshop)
   • URL — a direct link to the resource
   • Duration — estimated completion time in hours
   • Labels — optional labels for organizing your library
4. Select Save.

​

Linking resources to skills and Careers

After adding resources to the library, link them to specific skills in the Careers where they are relevant. This association is what causes resources to surface automatically in the Upskilling view for employees with a gap in that skill. To link a resource to a skill within a Career:

1. Navigate to the Career detail page.
2. Select the skill row you want to link resources to.
3. In the skill panel or settings, select Add Learning Resource and search for the resource from the Training Library.
4. The resource is now linked to this skill in this Career.

---

​

Step 8: Monitor and Act on Results

Once assessments are complete and grades have been collected, use SkillsDB’s analytics tools to monitor skill health across your organization and take action on what you find.

​

Team Skills overview

Select Skills from the Team section of the sidebar to open the My Team Skills page. This gives you a consolidated view of all Careers in your organization, showing how many people are assigned to each and how many skills each Career covers. Select any Career row to open the Career Overview for a deeper analysis. The Career Overview shows:

• Meets Target / Below Target percentages — the overall skill health for this Career
• Skills ranking — which skills have the highest and lowest average proficiency
• People ranking — which employees are performing strongest and where development support is most needed
• Skills Matrix preview — a grid overview of grades across the team; select Full Report to drill into the full matrix

​

Skills Matrix

The full Skills Matrix for a Career shows every employee’s grade for every skill, color-coded by gap status (red = below benchmark, green = meets, blue = exceeds). Use this to identify:

• Which skills have widespread gaps (many red cells in a column)
• Which employees need priority development attention (many red cells in a row)
• Which skills and employees are already meeting or exceeding expectations

Access the full Skills Matrix from a Career’s detail page or the Career Overview’s Full Report button.

​

Acting on gaps

When you identify skill gaps, the typical response is to:

1. Assign learning resources — navigate to the employee’s Learning Plan and assign library resources targeted at their specific gap
2. Schedule a follow-up assessment — create a new assessment cycle after a development period to measure whether grades have improved
3. Flag skills for focus — if Skill Flags are enabled, apply a Focus flag to skills that need priority attention. Flagged skills appear in the Highlights section of the team’s Skills view and in the employee’s Skills profile

---

​

Common Questions

---

​

Related Articles

---

​

Need Help?