Skill is all about whether the candidates have proven their capabilities to perform in a certain activity before. You probably already have many hypotheses about the candidate's skills. Now is the time to check and substantiate your assumptions!
To give you a determined answer about the skill level of the candidate in a certain activity, the reference giver can choose between 5 well distinguishable categories:
Not Applicable - While working together, there was little or no opportunity to demonstrate skill in this activity.
Room for Improvement - The proficiency in this activity was below average. There was potential to improve!
Good - Did well in this activity but was not necessarily better at it than others.
Excellent - Did very well in this activity and was better at it than other people in this role.
Outstanding - Was an outstanding high performer and role model when it came to this activity.
You can customize the activity you want to ask about! Our rule of thumb: The more specific and practical you get here, the better the answers will be. For instance, you can think of particular tools and tasks the candidate will encounter in her new role to define a specific activity you want to verify. Unfortunately, getting very precise can be challenging, and it is not always possible for many reasons. We are here to give you some inspiration and collected a long list of activities with specific descriptions that might be relevant for your case!
We summarize the answers by highlighting the most selected response option in the dashboard. However, there is a special mechanism for this question!
What if the candidate provides a reference who knew them only years ago? Can they still estimate the current skill level of the candidate? We say no. This is why we only highlight the most recent opinions about the skill level in the "by question" summary on your dashboard. This is how we calculate the recency of the opinion:
Every candidate specifies a timeframe where they have worked with the reference giver with a "start date" (e.g., 2012) and an "end date" (e.g., 2020). We use the "end date" to determine the recency of the reference giver's opinion. Every reference giver that has worked with the candidate before the highest "end date" minus three years (e.g., 2017) is treated as not recent!