# Check whether I can actually apply a skill on the job

A practical assessment with real-work tasks and a rubric that shows whether you can use a skill, not just recall it.

- Topic: Learning & Teaching
- Framework: Few-Shot
- Level: Advanced
- Tags: Analyze, Fill-in Template, Interactive
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/check-whether-i-can-actually-apply-a-skill-on-the-job

## Prompt

```text
Assess whether I can actually apply a skill at work, not just talk about it.

**Skill:** [e.g. "building a financial forecast", "running a retrospective", "writing a business case"]
**My role and where I would use it:** [CONTEXT]
**How I learned it:** [course, reading, on the job]
**Standard I need to meet:** [e.g. "good enough for my manager to approve without major edits"]

Steps:
1. Define what competent performance looks like for this skill in my role: 4-6 criteria, each with what "not yet", "competent", and "strong" look like. Show me this rubric first.
2. Give me 2-3 realistic tasks that require applying the skill (not recalling definitions), from simple to complex, with any data or context I need. Give them one at a time and wait for my work.
3. Assess each piece of work against the rubric, quoting what I did as evidence.
4. Ask me one follow-up question per task about why I made a key choice, to check understanding behind the output.

Return at the end:
1. A rubric scorecard: Criterion | Rating | Evidence.
2. A verdict: ready to use this unsupervised / ready with review / not yet - with the reasons.
3. The 2 gaps that matter most and a specific practice task for each.
4. A real work opportunity in the next month where I could use the skill, plus who could review it.

Be honest; a generous score helps no one. Base the verdict only on the work I produce here, and say if more evidence is needed.
```

## What to fill in

- CONTEXT
- course, reading, on the job

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.