How much have you grown as a professional? Think back to when you were fresh out of school or to day one at your current job. Take some time to reflect … and then come back to the here and now.

Odds are you’ve come a long way.

It’s easy to look back now, but as you were in the moment building your skill set, the process was an unclear journey. You likely didn’t know if or how your efforts to grow and skill up were truly paying off. Thankfully, when it comes to understanding your professional development and validating skill growth, that clarity is now possible with retakes, a new feature for adaptive skill measurement.

When adaptive skill measurement was released in June, learners had a trusted way to benchmark their skill level and get tailored, guided learning—all in as little as five minutes. Today, the feature is evolving to allow members to retake skill measurement to do two things:

1. Measure and prove your skill growth over time

2. Get a “do-over” to replace a result you feel is not reflective of your knowledge

Let’s dive a little deeper to see how you can leverage these two retake options.

Let’s say a project came your way and you need to learn a new skill; in this case it’s JavaScript. You have some JavaScript experience, but you’d like to know where your skills stand. So, you take a skill measurement to help you benchmark your current knowledge and pinpoint where to start in the JavaScript learning path. Your skill status comes in at 44—not bad, but still in the novice level. It’s time to get to learning.

You follow the path course by course. You practice and you might even work through a side project or two. But do you actually know how far you’ve come? Take an adaptive skill measurement to find out. After completing each level of a path, you can retake a skill measurement to see how your skill status has changed. Those new JavaScript skills are coming in especially handy for this project, the learning is working and you can see just how much more potential there is to develop your JavaScript skills.

Our skill measurement technology is adaptive, meaning it’s smart enough to acknowledge your previous skill status and cater questions directly related to your level. This way, you’re able to pick up the test right where you left off, meaning you’ll know how far you’ve come in even less time than a full measurement. (Learn more about the science behind our adaptive skill measurement here.)

After continuing to learn and retaking the measurement after each level of the path, you’ll also know when you’ve moved into a new level, like leveling up from novice to proficient. This will give you a good indicator of when you’re ready to take on the technology or skill, like JavaScript, professionally. You’re putting in the effort to advance your skills. Now you can prove it and stay motivated knowing your hard work is paying off!

The second opportunity to retake a measurement is, well, because we’re human. After each measurement, you now have the option to do a one-time retake to replace the result. Maybe you think the first result isn’t truly reflective of your skill level—you got distracted by Neil in finance asking for expense report, or you just had one of those days. If you improve your skill status on your retake, your result will be replaced. (If you don’t do better, we will still keep your best result.) It’s as simple as that.

Again, replacing a skill status is available one time after each measurement (whether it’s an initial measurement or after each path level completion). You’re able to replace your initial skill status with a do-over retake. But, after taking the skill measurement two times, you’ll need to complete the next path level in order to take the same measurement again. By limiting the number of do-over retakes, we’re more able to measure your accurate skill level, and you’re more motivated to keep learning what you need to. 

All skill measurement tests are available on their associated learning path page. Take a measurement, benchmark your skill, know where to start in a path and track your growth all the way to becoming an expert.

Ready for a retake? Rate your skills now.