There are three ways to assign skills to employees, and the right one depends on where you want those skills to appear. This article explains each method and what it works with, so you can pick the one that fits how you evaluate your team.

Start here. The method you choose determines where the assigned skills show up and which type of review they work with.

The first two methods work together and share the same result: skills and expected proficiencies that appear on employee profiles and in new reviews. The third method is separate, and applies only to classic reviews.

This is the most direct way to say which skills a role should have and at what level. You assign skills to a position, and everyone in that position inherits them on their profile.

You'll need your positions set up first. See Create and manage positions.

The skill is now connected to the position, and applies to every employee assigned to it.

Skill mappings are frameworks that connect positions, skills, and expected proficiencies across roles and seniority levels. Use them when you want more structure than assigning skills to a single position at a time.

There are two ways to connect an employee through a mapping:

Building and publishing mappings is covered in its own guide. See Understanding and creating skills mappings.

If you run classic 1-1 reviews, you can mark a skill to be assessed in them. This option applies only to classic reviews. It doesn't connect skills to positions or profiles.

You turn this on from the skill itself in your skills library. See Step 5 of Managing your skills library for how to set it up.

A new review's skill assessment question can also source skills this way instead of using positions or skill mappings, mainly to support teams still transitioning to the newer setup. It isn't the preferred method. See Assessing skills in reviews for details.

Scenario: Setting expected skills for a new role
You've created a "Product Designer" position and want everyone in it assessed on the same skills. Go to Settings > Positions, open the position, go to the Skills tab, click Add skills, and add each skill with its expected proficiency. Every product designer now sees those skills on their profile.

​Scenario: Rolling out skills across many roles at once
Your company is setting up skills for the first time across twenty positions. Instead of doing each one by hand, import your skills and positions together from a file and review the AI-generated result. See Importing skills with AI.