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What is a tech skills assessment?

A tech skills assessment measures your ability and proficiency using technology skills. They often take the form of questionnaires, tests, live assessments, interviews, formal reviews, or a combination of these things.

They can assess your knowledge, but they generally focus more on your tech proficiency while using technology skills to meet objectives or job tasks.

How do you take tech skills assessments?

You can self-administer a tech skills assessment or you can be provided one by a teacher, coach, or business manager.

An individual may choose to take a tech readiness assessment while developing technical skills to see how well they use them or to see how their skill mix matches up to a certain tech career. Furthermore, individuals can use them to support personal development planning to improve these tech skills over time.

Educators and teachers also use these assessments within career and technical education programs. They can provide insight to a teacher on effectiveness of their training or as tests to give grades in a course.

Finally, employers utilize them to assess the skills of employees or job candidates during performance reviews or interviews.

Importance of these assessments

For individuals, tech skill assessments are a very helpful tool during technology skill development. They can assess your tech skills to determine your readiness for a tech job while also helping guide future training activities to enhance your abilities.

Schools use tech skills assessments to evaluate program goals, student readiness for employment, and to inform future improvements in their courses. So they are a key element to both measure student performance and effectiveness of the class and instruction for students.

Employers commonly use these assessments to evaluate candidates during interviews and performance reviews for existing employees, potentially leading to promotions or salary changes. So also they are a critical measurement tool for an employer or and employee being reviewed.

Types of tech skills assessments

There are different types of tech skills assessments that generally align to and serve different objectives based on who is using them. Most commonly this includes individuals, educators and employers.

Individual tech skill assessments

Individuals use tech skills assessments to assess their current level of proficiency or to guide themselves in making informed decisions about their tech training. They can take the assessments at any time during the technical training process.

• Career aptitude and alignment assessments – Career aptitude and alignment tests are designed to measure a candidates skills to identify career paths that might align well with them. They can be helpful to provide insight to someone about a type of job or career area to further explore.
• Technical certification tests – There are thousands of different certifications in tech. This test or examination delivers one type of tech skills assessment to validate your comprehension of the certification material. Upon passing these tests a badge or certification is often provided.

• Personal development planning (PDP) tech skills assessments – PDP tech assessments use personal development planning as a component of the tech skills assessment process. First you do the assessment, then you build a development plan to improve skills and proficiency. CyberForward Academy uses a Tech Worker Readiness assessment™ as a component of its development process for all of its programs.
• Mock interviews – Mock interviews are a great way for someone to measure how prepared they are for a technical job. They generally have an assessment component that is provided by the administrator of the interview that tells the participant how they performed.
• Situational training session skill assessments- During performance of technical training practices coaches can deliver situational assessment and feedback to participants in the training. More common in athletics but very helpful in technology training as well.
• Attending job fairs – Attending job fairs are a form of bi-directional tech skills assessment both by a potential job seeker and an employer.

Educator driven tech skills assessments

In the world of academia, educators use formative and summative assessments as tools to measure student performance during a course. Teachers often use activities or projects (formative assessments) and then use more formal tests to evaluate students’ comprehension in order to assign grades (summative assessments).

As more high schools and colleges have launched career and technical education programs that teach vocational courses they use tech readiness assessments within these classes. However, they still often blend these assessments with academic summative and formative formats.

Because of this, these assessments are often more tests of knowledge then tech proficiency. So you may get an A in the class but you might not be tech proficient.

• Formative tech readiness assessments –Formative assessments help students identify strengths and weaknesses without tying them to a grade. Teachers use them to provide feedback and improve teaching.
• Summative assessments – These assessments are less frequent than formative assessments, determine student learning and achievement in reaching course goals.

Employer driven tech skills assessments

Employers connect tech skills assessments with employee performance leading to giving employment, promotions or raises. So again they are quite important.

• Pre-employment tech skills assessments and interviews – Employers use pre-employment tech skills assessments to screen candidates during the employment process. They might use them in conjunction with interviews or other elements during the examination process.
• Job interviews – Employers use job interviews as a powerful type of tech skills assessment. These are often performed as a live meeting and they measure a job candidate to see if they are skilled for a job.
• Formal business reviews – Employers use these formal performance reviews to provide an assessment of job performance by an employee. A manager can then tie them to either a promotion or increase in salary.
• Personal improvement plans – Employers use these formal employment assessments for underperforming employees. They will set improvement goals and then measure whether this improvement happens as described in the plan.

Steps to take tech skills assessments

Alright, so now that you know what they are, and how important they are, so the next step is to take the right type of tech skills assessments for you.

First step: Learn how to develop technical proficiency

The objective of a tech skill assessment in any capacity is to measure your level of proficiency for using tech skills. They can also be used to provide information about your skill level to teachers, coaches or employers. Further, they are also an essential tool in the personal improvement planning process.

So before choosing the right type of assessment or using them first learn about the core components of their use. This will let you get the most value out of their use for your objective.

You can read our guidance about everything you need to know to learn tech to provide this context.

Second step: Define your goal for using a tech skills assessment

Next, in order to select the appropriate tech skills assessment, you must first determine your goals and current level of development before either taking or receiving one. Below are some common objectives to their use along the common phases of tech development.

While learning technology skills

You will always be learning while you develop in tech so these assessments will always be helpful regardless of your stage of development or proficiency level. However, they can help earliest in development to build knowledge and experience and help you with initial planning forward.

• Career aptitude and alignment assessments – These are helpful to see how your existing set of skills align to certain career areas. Early in your journey these can really help to choose pathways to select.
• Personal development planning assessments – These will help you to measure your current state and build development plans forward to continue your development.
• Mock Interviews – The more you practice interviews early in development the more you will be ready for real ones later on. Take them often while you develop.
• Attending job fairs – The more you can attend events and job fairs the more you can assess your knowledge and meet others that can assess you.
• Formative and summative assessments – If a school is developing you, then they will give you formative and summative assessments. Ensure you understand their impacts on your grades because these are important for both moving on in school or a career.

While training and building skills

Training and practicing is the most important aspect of building tech proficiency. It is the longest phase of development and use of assessments are important to measure current skills level and to help in planning.

• All of the ones in the learning phase The most important here are the use of the PDP assessments as they will continue to measure your performance and provide you insight while training.
• Technical certifications – Many think that technical certifications are for proficiency, however they more commonly just to test knowledge of a technical area. However, as you transition to a worker employers care about the certifications that you may be able to attain.
• Coach assessments- As you train getting situational coaching assessments are invaluable to improve technique. For these, you need to find development programs that use coaches.
• Pre-employment assessments and interviews- Most likely as you transition from student to worker you will start applying for jobs. Ensure that you have done significant practice using mock interviews but then do not be afraid to try real ones.

As you near employment or are working

As you get ready to enter the work-force or are working you will want to continue to use all of the types of tech skills assessments. Your development never ends! You will also need to use or prepare for the assessments that will be given to you as an employee

• All the ones while you learn and training phase – Again, remember that your tech development never ends! So continue to use all the tools in the other phases.
• Performance reviews – Once you are employed you will be reviewed by your employer. Ensure that you prepare for these by first continuing to build your skills to make yourself a more valuable employee, but also by listening to the feedback of your manager and making improvements over time.

Third step: Take one, use the results and execute

A tech skills assessment is most helpful if you first take them. Next, use the results to help you plan and improve your tech proficiency with tech skills over time. It is really that simple!

Tips for using tech skills assessments

At times an additional viewpoint as a tech skills assessment can also be invaluable. Here are a few pro tips.

Train like an athlete – The tech skill development process is similar to training to become a competitive athlete. The more you recognize the more efficiently you can move forward. Become an expert in the development process.

Be confident – You can do this. Don’t be afraid to take assessments either on your own or ones that are provided by schools or employers.

Take these assessments often – It will take you years to develop in tech and the process never stops. So use the different forms of these assessments early and often.

Always continue to develop – Remember, tech is constantly evolving, and so should you! Even experienced pros never stop learning. Also, if along the way you realize tech isn’t for you, that’s valuable insight too!

Be patient – You will get there, but it will take time. Be patient

Its not just tech – Remember tech skills are not just tech. You will need to build communication and team work and many more as well. Focus on more then just the tech in your development.

Moving forward

We want to help you develop in tech and tech skills assessments are a big part of that. get your tech worker readiness score now.