Candidate Assessment Guide

A guide on how to assess a contributor candidate proposal for community advisors

Currently Project Catalyst is using Ideascale as an idea platform to submit and assess proposals for the governance process. To start with contributor proposals will also use this proposal and assessment process. Due to needing to use the same assessment criteria the contributors assessments will need to include the feasibility, impact and auditability ratings for a given candidate proposal. The adapted usage of this criteria is detailed below in the assessment guide.

In the future this approach for assessments will likely change as the ecosystem evolves and we move away from the impact, feasibility and auditability criteria that is more suited to proposal based funding.

Assessment guide

When reviewing candidates please assess them using the following criteria and provide a rating based on the scoring guide provided.

🚀 Impact

Objective

Review how the contributor wants to get involved, how they want to support the ecosystem and whether that is well aligned with the needs of the ecosystem.

What to look for

• Are there role details clear and well described? Has the candidate clearly detailed how they would be able to improve the ecosystem or support the community for that role?

• Has the candidate provided examples of how they would like to contribute?

• Do the role details and examples align well with the responsibilities and roles?

Scoring guide

• 5 ⭐ - It is very clear what the candidate would like to focus their time on providing useful examples of how they will be most impactful whilst being a contributor. The role details offer good information on understanding the needs of the role and how they will deliver impact that is aligned with the role and contributor responsibilities.
• 4 ⭐ - Role details are provided with sufficient depth and examples on matching their skills and experience. There is a moderate amount of information showing their understanding of the role and how they can make a high impact.
• 3 ⭐ - Role details are added for where the candidate wants to contribute with potentially some examples. The candidate does not provide sufficient evidence they understand the duties of the role and how their experience and skills apply to deliver high impact.
• 2 ⭐ - Some role details are added however the information lacks enough depth to produce any confidence the candidate understands the role and how to provide impact.
• 1 ⭐ - Little to no detail is added on areas of focus the candidate is looking to contribute towards.

🎓 Feasibility

Objective

Look at the candidates professional background, experience and skills relevant to the role they want to contribute to and with that in mind how reasonable the budget is that they have requested.

What to look for

• Does the candidate have a relevant professional background or experience?

• Does the candidate present enough evidence to support whether they have the right skills or experience to perform the selected role?

• Are the links, references and any online profiles provided sufficient evidence towards the candidates background?

• Is the budget they requested reasonable? Do they provide sufficient reasoning for their budget against what the budget ranges guidance? If they deviated from the budget range is it reasonable and fair? Please check the latest contributors challenge setting proposals for the most recent budget range guidance. The budget reasoning does not require much depth providing the candidate has a budget in the guidance range and their professional background evidence supports the budget selected with sufficient evidence.

Scoring guide

• 5 ⭐ - The candidate has provided clear overview with links showing evidence of their professional background and experience. There is a high confidence the candidate is able to fulfil their duties and the budget is sensible. Their budget reasoning matches the experience and skills of the candidate.
• 4 ⭐ - The candidate has provided information on their professional background with some evidence included. The candidate has either requested a non sensible budget or lacked sufficient reasoning, not provided enough depth of supporting evidence.
• 3 ⭐ - The candidate provides their professional background with some evidence and a budget. The candidate has one or multiple issues around either their budget amount being somewhat not sensible, the budget reasoning lacking depth or the evidence of background not being fully sufficient.
• 2 ⭐ - The candidate provides a professional background with some evidence and budget with reasoning. The background and budget both lack enough clarity, depth, supporting evidence or are simply not sensible enough to give confidence that the candidate is well suited to the selected role.
• 1 ⭐ - The candidate provides little to not information about their background or includes an unreasonable budget with little to no fair reasoning.

🔍 Auditability

Objective

Review previous contributions towards the Catalyst ecosystem or similar distributed ecosystems that help to showcase evidence of useful and relevant contributions against the role that the candidate has selected.

What to look for

• What evidence is provided for any existing contributions to the ecosystem? Are those contributions relevant to the role that the candidate is looking to contribute towards?

• Is there any evidence provided towards the candidate participation in the Catalyst ecosystem?

• For when there are no Catalyst contributions, are any other relevant contributions for other ecosystems or companies provided?

• For future contributor rounds, have they added links to historical progress reports showcasing when they are a contributor previously?

Scoring guide

• 5 ⭐ - There is multiple forms of evidence that the candidate is high engaged in the Catalyst ecosystem and has made numerous contributions that are relevant to the roles they have selected to contribute towards.
• 4 ⭐ - The candidate provides evidence of their previous contributions to either Catalyst or another similar ecosystem that relate to their role. Alternatively the candidate has shown evidence high levels of participation in Catalyst.
• 3 ⭐ - There is little to no evidence of the candidates previous contributions in the Catalyst ecosystem or another similar ecosystem in relation to the role they selected. The candidate may or may not show some level of participation.
• 1 - 2 ⭐ - DO NOT USE. This part of the assessment does not look to penalise candidates for not having previous relevant contributions. Instead it looks to just provide information to the community for those candidates which do have previous contributions and for the community to use that information to make their own informed voting decisions.