A free NACE competency rating rubric

A rating rubric is the part of career readiness assessment that institutions most often build from scratch, badly, in a hurry. This one is finished, it is free, and you may use it whether or not you ever use our platform. Copy it into Qualtrics, Google Forms, a Word document or a paper form. Attribution is appreciated and not required.

The scale

Rate how often the student demonstrated the behaviour, not how good it was.

Two things about that scale are deliberate and worth keeping if you adapt it.

Frequency, not quality. "How often did they do this" gets more honest answers from a supervisor than "how good are they at this", because the first asks about something they watched and the second asks them to pass judgement on a twenty-year-old. It also produces ratings that different observers use more consistently.

"Not observed" is a real option. Without it, a supervisor who never saw the student lead anything will rate leadership 3, and a 3 that means "no idea" is indistinguishable from a 3 that means "adequate". Exclude "not observed" from scoring rather than treating it as a midpoint or a zero.

The eight competencies, with behavioural anchors

Each competency below gives the definition, then three observable behaviours. Rate the competency once. The behaviours are there to make raters think about the same thing.

1. Career and Self-Development

Taking ownership of professional growth: identifying strengths and gaps, seeking feedback, building a network, and pursuing opportunities rather than waiting for them.

• Asked for feedback, and visibly acted on it later
• Sought out work or responsibility beyond what was assigned
• Could describe what they were trying to get better at, specifically

2. Communication

Exchanging information clearly and appropriately for the audience and the medium, in writing, speech and non-verbal form, including active listening.

• Wrote messages a busy reader could act on without a follow-up
• Adjusted explanations for the person in front of them
• Listened without interrupting, and their response showed they had heard

3. Critical Thinking

Making sound decisions using analysis, judgment and available evidence, including recognising when the information is insufficient.

• Checked a claim or a number instead of passing it along
• Identified a problem with a plan before it was executed
• Said "I don't know yet" and then found out

4. Equity and Inclusion

Engaging with people whose backgrounds and perspectives differ from their own, and contributing to an environment where colleagues can participate fully.

• Made space in a discussion for someone who had not spoken
• Adapted their approach when it was not working for a colleague
• Raised a concern about exclusion, tactfully and at the right moment

5. Leadership

Using interpersonal skills to guide and motivate others toward a shared goal, with or without formal authority.

• Took responsibility for an outcome that was not solely theirs
• Helped a colleague who was struggling without being asked
• Made a decision when one was needed and nobody else was making it

6. Professionalism

Personal accountability, reliability and workplace-appropriate conduct, including time management and follow-through.

• Delivered what they said they would, by when they said
• Told somebody early when a deadline was at risk
• Owned a mistake without being prompted, and fixed it

7. Teamwork

Building collaborative relationships and working effectively within a team, including negotiating disagreement and sharing credit.

• Disagreed with a colleague without damaging the working relationship
• Gave credit to someone else for shared work
• Adjusted their own task so the team's work fit together

8. Technology

Understanding and adapting to the technologies used in the workplace, and applying them to improve efficiency and solve problems.

• Learned an unfamiliar tool without being walked through it
• Used the tools the team already had rather than inventing a workflow
• Spotted something worth automating or simplifying

The supervisor form

Everything a site supervisor needs, in the order to ask it. Keep it to one page.

1. Your name and role, and your relationship to the student's work.
2. Roughly how much of the student's work did you observe directly? All of it / most /

some / very little. This single question is what lets you weight or exclude a rating later, and almost no homegrown form asks it.

1. The eight competency ratings, on the scale above, with "not observed" available.
2. What did this student do well? Free text, two or three sentences.
3. What is the one thing you would have them work on? Free text. Asking for one thing

produces a specific answer; asking for "areas for improvement" produces "communication".

1. Would you consider hiring a student from this program again? Yes / no / unsure. Not a

competency measure, and the single most quoted number in a report to a dean.

How to use the results without overstating them

• The gap is the finding. Have the student rate themselves on the same eight before they

see anything from their supervisor. A student rating themselves a point above their supervisor on communication has something specific to work on; a student rating themselves well below is often the strongest in the cohort and needs to hear it.

• Report the spread, not just the mean, wherever a student has more than one rater.

Two supervisors who disagree are telling you more than their average does.

• Expect generosity. Supervisors rate interns high. This is well documented, it is not

dishonesty, and it does not ruin the data: inflation is roughly consistent across a cohort, so gaps and comparisons still carry information even when absolute numbers sit high.

• Report the response rate next to every result. A reviewer will ask, and a competency

average from 20% of a cohort is a different object from one built on 80%.

• An individual result is a conversation, not a measurement. With one or two raters,

precision at the student level is not available to you. Cohort aggregates are the sound basis for program decisions.

Using this without us

You do not need an account, and nothing on this page is gated. If you want the same instrument administered for you, with single-use rater links that need no account, self-versus-observer gaps computed, response rates tracked and cohort exports built for accreditation review, that is what the platform does, and it is free for every institution.

If you adapt this rubric, the honest thing to keep is the frequency scale and the "not observed" option. Those are the two choices that most affect whether your data means anything a year from now.