# Skills overview
Skills let you capture what your team can do — and put it to work in planning and analytics. This overview explains the building blocks; the other articles in this section cover each one in depth.

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![](/images/guides/skills-overview/image-mqp07i1w.png)

## The building blocks

### Skills and skill types

A skill is a single competency — for example *Angular*, *Kubernetes*, or *English*. Every skill has exactly one **type**:

* **Technical skill**
* **Soft skill**
* **Language**
* **Certificate**

All types are rated with proficiency levels **except Certificates**, which a person either holds or doesn't.

### Skill levels

Skills (except certificates) are rated on five levels:

* **Beginner** — getting started, basic understanding
* **Intermediate** — solid foundation, some practical use
* **Advanced** — confident and independent in execution
* **Expert** — deep knowledge, solves complex tasks
* **Master** — strategic, innovative, top-level expertise

These five are the standard today; admin-customizable levels are planned.

### Skill categories

Categories are semantic groupings that organize your skill catalog — for example *Cloud & Infrastructure*, *Databases & Data*, or *Programming languages*. A skill belongs to one category and has one type; the two are independent. Categories are created and managed by admins.

### Skill sets

A **skill set** is a reusable bundle of skills — of any type — that usually represents a company role (e.g. *Cloud Security Engineer*). Skill sets are organized into their own categories and let you assign a whole role's worth of skills to a person at once. See [Skill sets](/guides/skill-sets).

## What you can do with skills

* **Assign skills to staff** with an individual level per skill — see [Assign skills to staff](/guides/assign-skills-to-staff).
* **Staff projects by skill** — find the right, available people for a project by skill — see [Staffing projects](/guides/staffing-projects).
* **Manage the catalog** of skills, categories, and levels centrally — see [Manage skills, categories & levels](/guides/manage-skills-categories-and-levels).

## Who can do what

Creating and managing skills, skill sets, and skill categories is **admin-only**. Who can view and edit skills — your own, your team's, or everyone's — is controlled by Roles & permissions (covered in [Assign skills to staff](/guides/assign-skills-to-staff)).