Getting started with skill assessment
Purpose
This article provides an overview of the skill assessment feature in Career Hub, useful information regarding JIE integration, and an explanation of each of the feature’s main UI components. Skill assessment is geared towards employees, managers, and HRBPs.
Overview
Skill assessment is an integral part of the employee Career Hub profile. With this feature employees and managers can rate skill proficiencies, leave comments, conduct skill searches, and view skill assessment highlights.
With Job Intelligence Engine (JIE) integration, skill and skill proficiency data is imported from JIE’s role library, including required job skills and benchmark proficiency. In the role library, HR teams create, define, update, and maintain job roles. Each role is defined as a set of skills, with each skill graded by a proficiency metric.
JIE integration is preferred. If you don't have JIE, read Skill assessment without JIE for instructions on how to use skill assessment without JIE data.
Privacy
Skill assessment data is private to employees, managers, managers in the chain, and HRBPs (if configured). Privacy restrictions are indicated by the visibility symbol
located to the right of the skill assessment title on an employee’s profile page. For more information on access limitations read Understanding skill assessment access levels.
Role skills tab
The Required By Role tab provides required and preferred role skills from JIE. Skills appear in the same order as they appear in JIE and cannot be altered. Required skills are noted with an asterisk symbol
.
Other skills tab
Employees can add or remove supplemental skills using the Other Skills tab. Supplemental skills add value to an employee’s Career Hub profile by communicating strengths that may not be described elsewhere. Employees are encouraged to add their supplemental skills to enhance their profile. Skills only appear once in either tab to avoid duplication.
Unless configured otherwise, managers are unable to edit or remove skills in the Other Skills tab.
Benchmark proficiency
Benchmarks are data points that indicate the expected proficiency level of skills ingested from JIE. Benchmark scores are set for each skill in the Required By Role tab. A rating can either be below, at, or above what is expected based on the correlating benchmark score.
The skill proficiency slider scale is used to rate skills for Self and Manager Assessments.The slider scale provides a default rating system of 0-5, with 0 being the lowest possible rating and 5 being the highest possible rating. The rating system (which includes the slider scale and anchor text) is configurable and may be altered if desired.
Four proficiency titles are displayed on the slider scale to assist in rating employee skills:
- Learner
- Practitioner
- Professional
- Worldclass
Each title is associated with a numerical range on the slider scale. For example, the Practitioner rating has a range between 2 and 3. This range includes scores with decimal granularity, such as 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3.

Rating skill proficiencies
Self and manager assessment tools are a core component of skill assessment. The Self-Assessment tool allows an employee to rate themselves on either tab, edit, and save their entries to their Career Hub profile. The Manager-Assessment tool allows a manager to rate an employee on either tab, edit, and save their entries to an employee’s Career Hub profile.
Assessment types
Skill assessment supports four data assessment types. Self and manager assessments are provided natively while the remaining two assessment slots are defined by your organization. Companies may decide to add third-party assessment data, such as peer or mentor data, to skill assessment.
After ingestion, third-party data is available in a view-only capacity. Learn more by reading Understanding skill assessment data ingestion.
Skill gaps
Skill gaps are computed based on the difference between the manager assessment and the role benchmark proficiency. In the absence of a manager assessment, the self assessment values are used for computing skill gaps. The self assessment values are not compared against manager assessment.
Skill gaps are only computed on skills Required by Role and are not computed for Other Skills. These values impact course recommendations.
Data filters
Skill assessment data filters are located beneath the Required By Role and Other Skills tabs. You can filter data by assessment type or by All Skills/Required Skills.
Filtering data by assessment type
To filter data by assessment type choose an option from the drop-down menu:
- Self
- Manager
- Peer
- Mentor
The peer and mentor assessment data types mentioned in this section are for example purposes only. These titles may differ based on your company's assessment types.

You can filter for up to two assessment types and for skills listed in both tabs (Required By Role and Other Skills). If you want to filter for only one assessment, select None for the Second assessment type in the drop-down menu.
Filtering data by assessment type affects the assessment highlights and summary data. The data shown in these tables is based on the type of assessment that's selected.
Filtering data by required skills
This filtering option only applies to the Required By Role skills tab. To filter data by required skills choose an option from the drop-down menu:
- All skills
- Required skills
Your company can assign both preferred and required skills to job roles in JIE’s role library. Filtering by All Skills renders a list of all of the skills for a job, both preferred and required. Filtering by Required Skills renders a list of skills marked with an asterisk
which indicate required or essential.
Setting required skills for job roles is optional in JIE. If your company chooses to not set required skills in JIE, the required skills filter can be turned off in skill assessment.
Skill search
The Search skill box is positioned to the right of the data filters. Any keyword can be entered into the search box. Search terms carry across tabs and will generate results for both tabs.
Highlights and summary
The assessment highlights and summary table are prominent visual components of skill assessment. They’re centrally located beneath the data filters and above the skill list and benchmark proficiency.
The highlights and summary table provides a quick reference point for Self-Assessment and Manager-Assessment results. The data presented is relevant to the selected tab only (Required By Role or Other Skills) and is not a combination of data from both tabs.
The highlights section classifies skills into three categories:
Strength (Beyond)
Skilled (Meet)
Opportunity (Below)
Strength skills are skills that are rated above the benchmark score plus (+) 10% of the proficiency scale. Skilled skills meet the benchmark score and are plus (+) or minus (-) 10% of the proficiency scale. Opportunity skills are rated below the benchmark score minus (-) 10% of the proficiency scale. Category names in the highlights section are configurable and may be altered if desired.
The summary table displays three types of counts:
- Skills: The total number of skills in the selected tab.
- Exceeds: The total number of skills that exceed the benchmark in the selected tab.
- Below: The total number of skills that are below the benchmark in the selected tab.
Skill groups and definitions
Skill groups and definitions are directly ingested from JIE and are only applicable to the Required By Role skills tab. Examples of skill groups include managerial, leadership, performance, etc.
Skill definitions appear in a pop up modal when hovering over the skill name in skill assessment. Definitions will not appear in the skill assessment interface until they have been ingested into the skill taxonomy configuration. Skill taxonomy is a JIE add-on. If you don’t see skill definitions check with your Eightfold admin to ensure that skill taxonomy has been configured.
Comments and notifications
The comments section is located below the assessment data in an employee’s Career Hub profile. It marks the end of the skill assessment area.
Employees and managers can view each other’s comments and add and edit their comments in skill assessment. Email notifications are sent when assessments are concluded. Employees are instantly notified when a manager assesses their skills and managers are instantly notified when an employee completes their self-assessment.
Employees that have not completed their assessment are also sent weekly email notifications reminding them to complete their assessment. Notifications can be configured on/off by your company's Eightfold admin in the Admin Console.
Course recommendations
Employees receive course recommendations on their Career Hub page.
Courses are recommended based on the appropriate difficulty level. The proficiency level that the employee selects for both Required for the Role Skills and Other Skills impacts course level recommendations. If a manager assessment for the same skill is present, this assessment takes precedence over the self assessment value and is used instead.
Courses with skills that the employee has with higher skill gaps are be favored.
Skill translations
Translations are not performed for any skill assessment data. Translations may affect functionalities such as filtering and searching and are therefore not permitted.