Practical assessment · published rubrics

Employers don't doubt you. They doubt the certificate.

Skilln3st assesses the actual work, records who assessed it and against what standard, and issues a credential an employer can check in one click — instead of a PDF that anyone can buy for ₦15,000.

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Free to be assessed. You keep the credential and the evidence behind it permanently, whether or not you ever use this site again.

Credential SKN-7741-2A Issued 04 Aug 2026

Chidera Nwosu Enugu, Nigeria

Solar PV installation & commissioning LEVEL 3 · RESIDENTIAL OFF-GRID

Assessed score 81 / 100 · pass mark 65

Assessed byE. ADEYEMI

Assessor IDASR-0318

MethodPRACTICAL + VIVA

Evidence4 FILES ATTACHED

Verifiable independently Rubric, score breakdown and assessor record are public at skilln3st.com/v/SKN-7741-2A — no login, no contact with us required.

Illustrative credential

The problem

Paper is cheap here. That is the whole difficulty.

A certificate can be bought outright, issued by a centre that assessed nothing, or earned honestly after six months of real work — and on paper all three look identical. Employers know this, so they discount every certificate equally, which punishes exactly the people who did the work.

The response from most employers is to stop reading credentials and hire on referral instead. That is rational for them and catastrophic for a young person with skill and no network, which describes most of the people this market is supposedly serving.

The fix is not a better-looking certificate. It is publishing what was assessed, how it was scored, by whom, with the evidence attached — so that a credential is checkable rather than merely presentable.

Fig. 1 — Cohort funnelFrom our pilot cohorts across four skill areas. We publish the fail rate deliberately: a credential that everyone passes carries no information, and an employer reading this should want to know that a meaningful share of candidates were turned down.

How assessment works

You are judged on work, not on attendance.

There is no course to sit through and no exam hall. If you already have the skill, you can be assessed next week and credentialed the week after.

Pick the skill and level

Every rubric is published before you start. You can read exactly what you will be marked on.

Take the practical brief

A real task — wire a system, repair a board, build a page, cut a pattern — not a multiple-choice paper.

Submit your evidence

Photos, video, the working artefact, or an in-person session at a partner workshop. Whatever the rubric requires.

Assessed by a named person

A practising professional in that trade, scored against the published rubric, with written comments per criterion.

Credential issued

With the score, the rubric, the assessor and your evidence attached, at a public link you control.

See a rubric

Nothing about the assessment is hidden.

This is the same rubric the assessor uses and the same one attached to every credential. Employers read it to know what a level actually means; candidates read it to know what to practise.

A candidate below the pass mark receives the same written feedback per criterion and can retake after 30 days. Failed attempts are not published, but a passed credential shows how many attempts it took — employers asked for that, and candidates agreed it was fair.

For employers

Search by what someone can do, and check it yourself.

You do not need an account to verify a credential. The verification link works for anyone, forever, including after the candidate stops using us.

Evidence attached

Every credential carries the work that earned it — photographs of the installation, the repaired board, the deployed page. You are looking at output, not a claim about output.

Named assessor

You can see who assessed it, their trade, and how many assessments they have done. An assessor whose candidates consistently underperform on the job loses accreditation.

Search the pool

Filter by skill, level, score and location. There are no CVs to screen, because the credential already contains what a CV is trying to assert.

Tell us how they did

Six months after a hire we ask one question: did the credential predict the work. That answer feeds back into assessor accreditation and rubric revision.

Pricing

Candidates pay nothing. Employers do.

Charging a young person to prove they are employable is how this market failed in the first place, so we do not.

Who	What	Price	Notes
CandidateBeing assessed	Assessment, credential, evidence hosting, retakes	Free	Permanently, including the verification link
AnyoneVerifying a credential	Full rubric, score, assessor, evidence	Free	No account, no rate limit, no login wall
EmployerSearching the pool	Filtered search, shortlisting, direct contact	₦45,000 / mo	Unlimited seats, cancel monthly
EmployerPer successful hire	Instead of a subscription	₦90,000	Payable 30 days after the person starts
Training providerIssuing through us	Rubric access, assessor onboarding, issuance	₦180,000 / yr	Subject to assessor accreditation
EmployerSponsoring assessments	Funding a cohort in a skill you hire for	By agreement	You get no preferential access — the pool stays open

Questions

From candidates, and from the people hiring them.

Do I need to take a course first?

No. We assess skill, not attendance — if you learned as an apprentice, on the job, or on your own, you can be assessed straight away. We do point you at free and paid learning resources for a rubric you are not yet ready for, but we do not sell training, and we do not require any. Separating the teaching from the assessment is the only way the assessment stays honest.

What stops an assessor from just passing everyone?

Three things. Their name is attached to every credential they issue. A sample of their assessments is re-marked blind by a second assessor. And six months after a hire, employers tell us whether the credential predicted the work — an assessor whose candidates consistently underperform loses accreditation. Roughly one in ten assessors has not made it through their first review period.

Is this recognised by government or an awarding body?

Not as a formal national qualification, and we will not imply otherwise. It is an independent, evidence-backed credential whose value comes from employers being able to check it rather than from an accreditation stamp. Where a regulated trade requires statutory certification — an electrician signing off mains work, for instance — you still need that, and our rubric says so explicitly.

What happens if I fail?

You get the same written feedback per criterion that a passing candidate gets, showing exactly where you fell short, and you can retake after 30 days. Failed attempts are never published and never visible to employers. A passed credential does show how many attempts it took — candidates told us that was fair, and most employers read a second-attempt pass as persistence rather than weakness.

Do I lose the credential if I stop using Skilln3st?

No. The credential, the evidence and the public verification link stay live permanently and at no cost, whether or not you ever open the site again. You can also export the whole record, including the signed assessment, and host it yourself. A credential you can lose by not paying a subscription is not a credential.

How do you stop someone submitting work that isn't theirs?

Every assessment includes a live component — a viva for practical trades, a supervised task for digital skills — where the assessor probes the submitted work directly. Someone who did not do the work cannot usually explain the choices in it. This is not perfect, and we would not claim it is, but it is considerably harder to defeat than a certificate you can buy outright.