Skills Inventory Assessment: What It Is and How to Do It

If you want to do a task, having the ability and right tools for it will further your success. Otherwise, you face complications that can delay your progress and keep you from doing what's required. Before taking on a task, it's wise to do a skills inventory assessment first.

If you're wondering, "what is skills assessment?" this article will explain what you need to know.

What is Skills Assessment, and Why is It Important?

Skills inventory refers to your set of talents, education, and experience that qualify you for a role. Companies do skills inventory assessments to know whether their current staff can meet their goals. However, you can also do this to assess yourself as a part of your job search.

Job openings differ in roles, required expertise, and level. Unfortunately, you won't qualify for every position since you can't meet the levels of experience, knowledge, and education needed in the field. Unless you carefully consider th match between your skills and the job, you will face more rejections and challenges in your job hunt.

Preparing a skills inventory assessment helps you take a good look at yourself so you can land a job that perfectly matches your skills. Here are the ways how to do a personal skills inventory assessment.

How to Do Skills Inventory Assessment

Now that "what is skills assessment?" has been answered, it's time to learn how to do it. During a job hunt, you need to determine the skills you have in your inventory. This includes both technical and soft skills. Here's how to review your current skills to help you in your journey.

1. List the things you know how to do

   Everyone's knowledge is limited to what they have learned, what they can do, and their experiences. To better understand your capabilities, list all the minor and major skills in your arsenal. This can help narrow down your abilities and see what type of jobs are best suited for you.

2. Describe each item that you have listed

   Take each skill in your list and briefly describe what it is and how you use it. This part of the skills inventory assessment can help you identify any skills gap you may need to address to improve your overall ability to perform a specific task.

3. Categorize each item into hard skills or soft skills

   The ideal employee needs to find a balance between soft skills and technical skills. Without balance, it will be more challenging for you to manage tasks of different varieties and importance. If you have more soft skills than technical, you may need to train to build expertise; the same applies vice versa.

4. Test out each skill

   Not all of your abilities will be on an equal level and capacity. You may excel in one and lack in others. Skills inventory assessment aims to test each element and see how basic or advanced it is. This can open you up to new ways of developing your talents and overall profile.

The First Step to Your Job Hunting Journey

Success can't be accomplished just by doing the same thing everyone else does. In the real world, there will be situations where your experience, education, and skills can put you at either a disadvantage or an advantage. To ensure a higher success rate, you'll need to undergo a skill inventory assessment to see where you stand.

While it may not seem like it, knowing your skills inventory better can greatly benefit your job hunt. A skills inventory assessment is the key factor to kicking off a great start to your career.

To learn more about how you can assess yourself, visit Career.com today.