# Skills Survey: How to Answer It Honestly and Use Your Results Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-survey/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-survey.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer A skills survey asks you to rate your own skills. Here's what it measures, how to rate yourself honestly, and what to do with your results. ## Key facts - Title: Skills Survey: How to Answer It Honestly and Use Your Results - Category: Types of Skills - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Setting Goals, Working with Your Manager - Primary keyword: skills survey - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-survey/ ## What this page covers - A skills survey asks you to rate your own skills. Here's what it measures, how to rate yourself honestly, and what to do with your results. - Practical guidance for skills survey - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation A skills survey is a questionnaire that asks you to rate how well you can do a set of specific things, usually on a fixed scale, so that you, your school or your employer can see where [your strengths and gaps](/knowledge/types-of-skills/personal-skills-audit/) lie. What it tells anyone depends almost entirely on how accurately you rate yourself. That is the uncomfortable part. Scoring yourself on "explains things clearly" or "works well with others" can feel like guessing, and it is hard not to wonder who reads the answers and what a modest number will cost you. There is a well-documented reason those particular ratings drift, and once you know it, the form becomes far easier to fill in honestly. ## What does a skills survey actually measure? It measures how well you believe you can do the things the survey lists. Inside an organization, that usually means the tasks the work depends on, each rated against levels described in plain words rather than bare numbers. The answers are then laid out as a skills matrix, a grid that shows who on a team can cover what. A school or career service uses the same idea to build a development profile for one person, and a recruiter uses it to compare candidates. Most surveys mix technical skills with workplace skills such as communicating, working in a team and managing your own time. The second group is there for a reason. In a 2026 University of Phoenix and Harris Poll survey of 755 U.S. HR leaders, only 43% were very confident their employees had the skills they needed, and the skills HR leaders most often named as difficult to verify or assess were exactly these interpersonal and self-management ones. A skills survey is partly an organization's attempt to see what it otherwise cannot, which means a thoughtful answer gives it information it genuinely lacks. ## Is a skills survey the same as a skills test or a reference check? Not quite, and it helps to know which one is in front of you, because the stakes differ: - **A development survey** at work or school asks you to rate yourself so that you and others can plan training and support. It is the kind most people are handed, and the one the questions below deal with. - **A recruiting survey** is a set of questions or tasks that lets you demonstrate your skills during hiring, so that hiring managers can compare candidates on the same terms. Here your answers are evidence in a selection decision. - **SkillSurvey**, despite the name, is a reference-checking platform. Its questions go to the professional references you named, who give confidential feedback on your past performance. You fill in nothing about yourself. - **National skills surveys**, such as the UK Department for Education's [Employer Skills Survey](/knowledge/employability/employer-skills-survey/) or the OECD's Survey of Adult Skills, measure skills across employers or whole populations. They produce statistics about shortages, not feedback on you. The most common misunderstanding is treating a development survey as an exam. It is a snapshot meant to show where effort should go, not a test you pass or fail. ## How should I rate myself on a skills survey? Rate the behavior you can point to, not the person you intend to be. For each item, think of a recent, concrete situation where you used that skill and ask what actually happened. Did the summary you wrote after a meeting get used? Did the deadline you agreed to hold? Did the disagreement in your project group get settled, and what part did you play? If you cannot recall a single situation, that is your answer for now, and an honest one. Read the level descriptions rather than the numbers. A 4 out of 5 means little on its own, while a description such as "can do this without help in most situations" is something you can check against your examples. Where you hover between two levels, choose the lower one unless you have evidence for the higher, for a reason the next answer explains. ## Why don't my ratings match what my manager thinks? Because you are looking from different places. A 2020 study that paired 151 employees in Greece with their own employers found that the employees rated their workplace skills more highly than their employers did, while the employers felt those same employees were not properly equipped. You see your intention and effort: you know how hard you tried to explain something clearly. Your employer sees only the result that landed. The gap starts before working life. In a 2026 study of university students, Carvalho, Azevedo and Pacheco found that students rated their own workplace skills fairly high and still saw a shortfall against what employers expect. A high rating and a real gap can sit side by side. That is why a self-rating becomes trustworthy only once you set it next to someone else's view: a manager, a supervisor, a tutor, or a colleague who has watched you work. Even good feedback can leave the measuring stick unclear. > Mostly, my worries didn't come true. What I did — even though I thought it was an unorthodox approach — worked. I remember having a meeting after a couple of months where I presented what I had found, and I got really good feedback on it. > > Still, you're left uncertain about what you actually contributed. Had the work I had done for two months contributed anything, or was it just something to build on? What was I actually being benchmarked against? You just went with your gut feeling. That was one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, and his last question is the useful one. Before you settle your ratings, ask the person who sees your work what a good level actually looks like in your role, so you are rating against the same standard they use. ## Will a low score on a skills survey count against me? In a development survey, an honest low score is usually the most useful thing you can give. Responses are normally named, because a skills matrix has to show who can cover what, so yes, someone will read yours. But what they are looking for is where training and support should go, and an inflated answer hides exactly that. Inflating a rating only moves the discovery to a less convenient moment, such as a task you were assumed to handle alone. Recruiting surveys work differently: your answers are evidence in a hiring decision, so be accurate and ready to back each rating with an example. In both cases, a low rating on a workplace skill is not a verdict on who you are. These skills are learned behaviors, not personality traits, and a gap is simply something you have not learned yet. Naming it is the first step to closing it. ## What workplace skills should a skills survey include besides technical ones? The ones your work runs on every day: how you communicate, how you work in a team, how you work with your manager, how you manage your time, how you make decisions and how you recover from setbacks. They are also the ones [new graduates](/knowledge/employability/skill-fresh-graduate/) most often find missing in themselves. A study drawing on Cedefop's European skills survey found that graduates' self-assessed gaps included communication and teamwork, alongside technical competence and limited exposure to real workplaces. Gaps like these are common rather than personal, and they are learned mainly by doing the work, not in a lecture hall. If the survey you were given covers only the technical side of your role, you are left with half a picture. [A broader workplace-skills check](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) fills in the half the form leaves out, and it is something you can do before anyone asks. ## What happens with the results of a skills survey? That depends on who runs it. At work, your answers join a skills matrix that managers use to plan training and decide who covers what. The same skills and levels are usually kept from one round to the next, so the real value shows up over time: the second survey reveals who has moved. In recruiting, results feed a comparison between candidates. From a school or career service, they become a development profile you can take into a conversation with a career advisor. In every case, the results are only as good as what you do with them next. ## What should I do after I get my skills survey results? Treat them as the start of a few decisions, not a report card: 1. **Compare before you act.** Put your ratings next to how your manager, supervisor or a trusted colleague sees you, and note where the two differ most. The biggest differences are where the useful information sits. 2. **Choose a short list.** Pick one or two skills to develop over the next six to eighteen months rather than trying to lift every low score at once. Weigh your strengths as much as your gaps: the work that suits you is usually the work that uses what you already do well. 3. **Turn it into a conversation.** If you have a manager, bring the results to [a one-on-one](/knowledge/working-with-your-manager/one-on-one-meetings/) and agree which skills matter most in your role. If you are still studying, a tutor or career advisor can play the same part. 4. **Rate again later.** Use the same scale in a few months, and look for movement rather than a perfect score. ## What makes your skills survey results worth acting on Look back over these answers and the same few habits keep surfacing: seeing yourself accurately, deciding what to do with what you see, and checking both with the person who judges your work. **Building Self-Awareness** is what makes the ratings honest in the first place. It means telling your natural strengths apart from things you are merely competent at, accepting that a blind spot cannot be seen from the inside, and asking for feedback in a way that gets you something specific: understand what you are told first, add your own view, then reflect before deciding what to change. A rating built this way describes your behavior, not your personality, and a low one simply marks something you have not learned yet. **Setting Goals** turns a page of scores into a direction. Rather than trying to fix every weak rating, it points you toward your strengths zone, the kind of work where what you already do well gets used, and toward a planning horizon of months rather than years. Read through that lens, a skills survey stops being a list of shortcomings and becomes evidence about which tasks, roles and next steps fit you. **Working with Your Manager** is how the survey becomes a two-way agreement instead of a form that disappears into a folder. Bring your ratings into a one-on-one, ask how your manager would score the same items, and agree on what a good level looks like for your role. That conversation is also your chance to shape your job toward the development you want, and if you do not have a manager yet, the same habits work with a supervisor or tutor. Knowing which of these to work on first is the harder call. The **free Job Skills Test** helps you make it by [showing which skill comes first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), with these three measured alongside the rest of a set of **twelve work skills**, and every one of them is something you can practice and improve. ## What you already bring to the next survey Parts of this may already feel familiar. If you have ever hovered between two levels on a rating scale and gone looking for a real example to settle it, you were already doing the hardest part of assessing yourself. Nothing here asks you to become someone else; it asks you to see your habits clearly and choose which ones to build, in the order that suits the work you want next. A self-picture that nobody ever checks tends to carry more weight as your responsibilities grow, and a clearer one takes very little time to get. ## See your own profile before the next round What remains is a second view to hold against the one you gave your employer or school. The Job Skills Test is a **free**, 7-minute self-assessment of the workplace skills behind every answer above, twelve of them in all, and it shows which ones would make the biggest difference if you worked on them next. Put its results beside your survey and you have something specific to bring to your next development conversation. **[Discover my skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, results shown instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? A skills survey asks you to rate your own skills. Here's what it measures, how to rate yourself honestly, and what to do with your results. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Setting Goals, Working with Your Manager. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/setting-goals.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/working-with-your-manager.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/types-of-skills/skills-survey/ Preferred summary: "A skills survey asks you to rate your own skills. Here's what it measures, how to rate yourself honestly, and what to do with your results." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.