Get a self-assessment of professional competences in five minutes!

Many refugees and “low-skilled” persons have gathered valuable professional experience outside of their education or entirely without formal education. To optimally integrate them into the labor market, it is important to know with which concrete actions in a reference profession a candidate is or is not already familiar. For this reason, Bertelsmann Stiftung has developed a digital instrument, which allows for an initial self-assessment using images of concrete action situations in only a few minutes. my-professional-experience.org

A free instrument for professional and career guidance

The objective of www.my-professional-experience.org is to offer the users an opportunity to take a self-assessment to determine the extent of their previous professional experience in 30 labor market professions particularly relevant on the labor market. The low-threshold and freely accessible instrument helps labor market and integration advisors plan paths to employment, qualification, in-depth assessment of competence or formal recognition of professional experience with their clients.

Five minutes - twelve languages - thirty professions

The core of www.my-professional-experience.org consists of 20-40 captioned images for each profession, which illustrate selected, typical action situations and are each presented with the question: “How often have you done this?” There are four response options. The results of the self-assessment of professional experience are available in three to five minutes and can be downloaded, printed out or sent via email. No personal data is collected during registration. An anonymous ID is used for identification. The user can choose between twelve languages on the website at any time. German, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Farsi, Portuguese, Polish, Bulgarian, Arabic, Romanian and Turkish.

The tool is based on practical competence models

Competence models are the basis of my-professional-experience.org They describe five to eight practical fields of action for each of the 30 professions, which each include two to eight typical action situations. Professional experts developed the models based on the training regulations and standard curricula. Then, they were reviewed by masters, trainers, vocational school teachers and representatives from chambers and trade guilds and the respective trade associations in user workshops to determine the practical relevance in day-to-day operations. Scientists from renowned research institutes supported the development and review the final competence models.

Options for use

In principle, my-professional-experience.org can be used in three ways:

1.  A client performs a self-assessment with the help of their career counselor.
2. An advisor preselects the professions to be reviewed and sends their client the session ID so they can perform the self-assessment themselves.
3. Clients perform the self-assessment themselves and uses the overview of the results for their further professional and educational path at their own discretion.