The skills portfolio is the most accurate representation of your skills ever created. It is a big step forward in going beyond subjective resumes and cover letters to make you stand out as a professional. The skills portfolio brings all your skills-related activities together to create a summary of your current skills, future potential, project work, and endorsements. It is a longitudinal record of your skills journey showing not only your current skills but also your skills progression.

Once you have a skills portfolio, there is no need to create another document to showcase your expertise.

For professionals:

• Share your skills portfolio at work with your employers to get more challenging assignments.
• Share with recruiters and employers to standout as a job candidate.
• Use the skills portfolio to stand out as a freelancer and get more projects.
• Use skills portfolio to check the efficacy of learning resources by comparing resources spent with skills acquired.
• Meet mentors and peers dedicated to professional development

For hiring managers:

• Use skills portfolio to shortlist candidates based on actual skills instead of relying on subjective resumes or one-off assessments.
• Use skill portfolio to manage professional development for your team. You will know where they stand not only within the company but also in the larger market.
• Use skills portfolio to check the efficacy of learning programs by comparing resources spent with skills acquired.

For students:

• Start early to build real world skills by showing your work to the expert community
• Meet peers and mentors to exchange ideas and look for internship opportunities.
• Learn what it takes to do jobs at different seniority levels.

Prowess is designed with user privacy at the center of our product. Your data is your data. Your profile, your skills score, and your skills portfolio will be kept private unless you decide to share it with the larger professional community. Your profile is kept anonymous and you control when and who should have access to your information.  Not only that, you can decide to selectively share only a section of your portfolio with others based on your target audience. Just click on the manage access button on your portfolio and control access for each section of your portfolio!

Skills pathways are curated tracks for users to build skills and meet their goals. Skill pathways are designed for users to meet a specific career goal in an optimal timeframe. For example, if you are a business analyst and want to be a product manager, we look at your current skills and target skills to build an upskilling plan just for you.

Users are free to select their own journey on the Prowess platform. We want you to show your skills and succeed in your career. If a curated pathway is not for you, so be it!

A skill score is a number that measures a professional’s ability to apply skills to achieve determined results for a particular role. Professionals improve skill score by showing skills related to the job role on the Prowess platform. The performance in skill associated with the job role is added to calculate the skills score. Users can show skills in 4 ways:

• By submitting projects for expert review
• By receiving endorsements
• By contributing to the prowess community

You can use the skill score to measure your skill level relative to other users on the platform. You can share the skill score at work or with recruiters to show your prowess.

Skill score can also be used to know the difference between your current skill level and target skill level to meet your career goals. In fact, when you share your career goals with us, we assign you a target skill score that you should achieve to be ready for your target role. 

Project reviews are designed for users who have built or designed something or are interested in building or designing something people want. Experts in the Prowess community review the projects and assign skill points based on predetermined criteria. The reviewers use rubrics to grade performance and provide qualitative feedback. This allows experts to understand the relative quality of your project and accordingly provide actionable feedback. The expert review results are added to the user’s current skills score, resulting in a higher skills score.

Target scores are the minimum scores users need to achieve to be competitive for their target role. The senior the target role, the higher the target score. For instance, target scores for the senior product manager role will be higher than target scores for the product manager role.

Skill credits are rewards given to the user for participating and upskilling on the Prowess platform. The users can earn skill credits for participation by submitting projects, getting endorsements, requesting expert reviews, and engaging with the community. Users can also earn skill credits for performance by showing skills. The more you demonstrate skills, the more skill credits you earn.

Skill credits can be used to access premium product features and receive discounts on expert review requests. Skill credits are similar to your bank balance, only you have access to skill credits and only you can use them to buy services and product features on the Prowess platform.

Skill score is a representation of your skills. It is like a credit score for skills. You can increase skill score when you show your skills, not for participation. On the other hand, skill credits can be earned for participation and performance.

There are six skill levels on the Prowess platform based on your skill score:

• Novice Level: skill score less than 100.
• Rookie Level: skill score between 100 and 199.
• Professional Level: skill score between 200 and 299.
• Seasoned Professional Level: skill score between 300 and 399.
• Master Level: skill score between 400 and 499.
• Legend Level: skill score at or above 500.

The first three skill levels are non-expert skill levels – Novice, Rookie, and Professional. The last three skill levels are expert skill levels – Seasoned Professional, Master, and Legend.

• Project review access: users can get paid for reviewing projects while improving their own skills score.
• A dedicated private group to interact with other expert-level members.
• A dedicated private group to interact with peers at each level. For example, Legend level users will have access to a dedicated private group.
• Moderator access: expert-level users can apply to become moderators and shape the future of the prowess community.

Your data is your data. Your expert review information is kept anonymous and none of your information is shared with the community without your approval. With regards to the expert review, the average score across your expert reviews will be sharable with your consent. You can submit multiple projects and receive multiple endorsements and expert reviews. If you achieve a good score, you can make your information public with a flip of a button!

360° reviews are an integral part of making an unbiased, merit-based skills evaluation system on Prowess. The 360° reviews work in the following way:

1. A professional can request an expert review for skills and industry tagged on their project.
2. A professional’s project is matched using our smart matching algorithm with an expert with industry experience and skills like the ones tagged in the project.
3. Expert receives a blind expert review request i.e. expert does not have any personally identifiable information about the professional. Blind reviews ensure unbiased and fair reviews.
4. The expert submits the review and the professionals receive expert feedback without getting any personally identifiable information about the expert
5. The professional is prompted to rate the expert review on 5 attributes: specificity, actionability, understandability, achievability, and extensivity.
6. The professional rates the expert review solely on the performance of the review without knowing any personally identifiable information about the expert
7. The expert receives the rating and analyses it to improve the quality of reviews
8. Expert still does not receive any personally identifiable information about the professional

This closed-loop of 360° reviews maintains the quality of project submissions and expert reviews on the platform and helps us build a truly meritocratic system.

All projects on Prowess follow a two-step process to bring clarity and structure to your projects.

Step 1: Create a problem statement that clearly explains the problem you are trying to solve with your project. Keep it brief and to the point. Avoid jargons and long sentences that make it hard to understand the problem.

Step 2: Submit a solution along with your artifact. Take your time to understand the problem statement and come up with a solution. Summarize your solution and add it as an excerpt to your project submission. Then link your project to the project submission so that others can not only read your thought process but also see your actual work. 

In terms of file formats, we suggest you use the format that fits your project type. For example, if it is a market analysis project, it would be better to share a presentation or a document. If it is a product design project, it would be better to share the mock-ups along with a narrative that clearly explains the problem statement and your solution.

Whichever format you choose, please make sure you make the project file sharable using a cloud service of your choice.