Launching ‘Growth Skill Assessment Test’
Launching ‘Growth Skill Assessment Test’
And what to expect from Skilletal in the coming months
First, pardon the hiatus since completion of the Firestarter series. There are some exciting things I have been up to: putting together the tech stack for all that is to come on skilletal.com. And, more importantly, building a program to hire and to get hired for Growth roles faster.
But, I am getting ahead of myself. Let me put all of it in perspective of the broader picture of Skilletal.
With Skilletal, the overarching idea has been to build a place where anyone looking to build a great career in the internet economy, can come to:
Learn: explore and pick up new skills,
Assess: test their proficiency in those skills, and
Apply: find relevant opportunities (full-time or project-based) that make use of those skills.
Over the last quarter, I have focussed on Growth as a function, and have made some progress on all three sub-objectives. Details follow.
Learn
Progress so far:
I began with curating the set of skills to lead Growth function at an internet startup. By publishing the Firestarter series. Some highlights:
Got ~500 subscribers against a notional volume target of 1000. As for the engagement metric: around ~100 of you read all the 10 essays!
Published the series as an ebook, which has received ~40 pledges against the target of 100, on this LinkedIn post. Still need 60 more pledges to publish its physical copy on Amazon :)
I also experimented with webinars as well as in-person workshops, to expand on the series. Could generate very little interest in it, in comparison to the written format. For now, shelving them (at least in their current format).
Next Steps:
Buoyed by the encouraging feedback to the Firestarter series, I am going deeper in this format with ‘Learn with Skilletal’. It will cover skills in Growth – as well as related fields of Analytics, Brand & Content, Product, etc. – in much more depth. Instead of a ten-thousand-feet view, expect a step-by-step run-through of specific skills. Such as:
How to prepare a media plan
How to set up an analytics dashboard for a D2C brand
How to create a content calendar, and so on.
I will be curating these skills along with practitioners from the respective fields. If you do want to share a skill of yours with the Skilletal community, do reach out to me at sudhanshu@skilletal.com. I’ll be happy to work through all the stages – brainstorming possible ideas, structuring the selected idea, and fleshing it out – along with you. You will, of course, get the author credit on the respective skill page, and this newsletter.
This Substack newsletter will be a round-up of all the skills going live throughout the week on the Learn section of the Skilletal website. So, this newsletter should continue adding value to you if the Firestarter series did.
Assess
Progress so far:
While the ‘Learn’ sub-objective is already pretty saturated with content creators and communities (although unstructured and fragmented, and often behind paywalls), when it comes to assessment of their Growth skills, there is absolutely no destination that I can point someone to.
More validation of pursuing this sub-objective came with the sheer number of registrations for the growth skill assessment test in March.
There was also encouraging feedback about the quality of questions from people who took the practice test.
Next Steps:
The goal for this sub-objective, during the coming months, would be to generate respective assessment tests against the specific skills going live in ‘Learn with Skilletal’. So that the learner can get an objective view of how much of the content they actually soaked in, and if they can actually put it into practice.
Apply
Progress so far:
I strongly believe this: once the market is ready to pay for a skill that you’ve learnt, that’s the ultimate proof of a valuable skill. Unfortunately, the internet has spawned a lot of colleges and not enough placement cells.
Based on my research on the current talent hiring process, as well as the response to the growth skill assessment test in March, I’ve put together the first version of the ‘Apply’ program to ‘Land a Growth job in 4 weeks’.
Next Steps:
The full-fledged version of Growth Skill Assessment Test (120 minutes compared to the 20 minute version for the practice test last month) is going live on 16th and 23rd April. More on the program here.
100+ people have signed up for the program. More than the number, what excites me is the quality of Growth talent who have registered for GroSAT (too early for an acronym?)
The immediate goal is to understand the strengths & preferences of those making the cut, and connecting them with their dream roles at the right startups. If you are hiring for your Growth team, do reach out.
Thank you for reading patiently through what Skilletal’s objectives and immediate plans are.
In summary, skilletal.com will have ‘Learn’ and ‘Assess’ section for covering specific skills in-depth, starting 1st week of May. And ‘Apply’ section is already live.
Suggestions are welcome. I am available at sudhanshu@skilletal.com.