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Performance Based Assessments & Tools, A New Paradigm Shift
Assessments - Definition
and Objectives Personnel and Career Assessments are gaining
momentum in India, particularly in the corporate world. This article
gives a snapshot about assessments in general and Performance based
assessments and Tools in particular. While pinning down this article,
I have taken an educative approach rather than just being informative.
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Definition
"Assessment is a technique used to establish the 'worth' of an
individual from several related measurements and evaluations to yield
comprehensive information about the individual, on which to base
employment or career based decisions". A true Assessment procedure follows
a holistic approach which includes use of scientific tools and techniques
to assess people on various criteria. A criterion can be a skill,
knowledge, ability, personality, etc.
Objectives The objective (s) of assessments can be varied. Organizations use
assessment tools and procedures to help them perform one or more of the
following HR functions:
- Selection
- Promotion
- Training and development
- Career exploration and guidance
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Constructs, Standards and Assessment Tools The following
section explains in a nutshell about Constructs, Standards and assessment
tools. Also, I have provided URL links which contains comprehensive
research information and published white papers on related areas.
Constructs As mentioned in
the very beginning, assessments are done against parameters called
constructs. The construct could be Knowledge related, Skill oriented
or concerned with intellectual Abilities or a combination of more
than one (also known as KSAO).Refer the following link for more
info on this - www.hrma-agrh.gc.ca/research/personnel/comp_ksao_e.pdf
Standards There are several
internationally acclaimed associations which have defined standards
for assessments. A couple of noted ones include the American Psychological
Association (http://www.apa.org) and the College Board (http://www.collegeboard.com).
Apart from this, many private organizations have also contributed
towards setting standards for assessment. The noted one among them
is the Educational Testing Services (http://www.ets.org).
Apart from these associations and councils, many individuals have spent a
lifetime researching on assessments. Some of the illustrious personalities
include Benjamin Bloom, Frederic M. Lord (more known as Fred Lord) and
Stanley Kaplan. If Benjamin Bloom's contribution towards assessments is
"Blooms Taxonomy", Fred Lord is considered to be the father of "Item
Response Theory (IRT)", while Stanley Kaplan has the credit of creating
the "Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)".
Assessment Tools Assessment tools include tests, inventories
( eg : personality inventory ), rating scales ( eg: 3 point scale,
5 point scale ) and procedures ( eg: Written test, Multiple choice
test, Group Discussion, etc.). Organizations may use one or more
of these tools for the purpose of assessments.
Some of the popular assessment tools and techniques used today by corporates are:
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1. Resume evaluation - This is usually the first cut evaluation
procedure followed to eliminate candidates based on checkpoints like
Qualification, experience and skills.
2. Interviews
- Interviews are conducted by a Panel of experts.
Interviews again can be unstructured or structured. In an unstructured
interview, the interviewer asks questions on an adhoc basis.
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On the contrary, a structured
interview has a definite pattern. It contains the set of questions that an
interviewer needs to ask the interviewee along with expected answers (also
know as best case solutions). The test specification also includes
parameters like the total time for the interview and more importantly the
guidelines for scoring or rating the candidate.
3. General Aptitude tests - The primary objective of these tests is
to assess the cognitive abilities like verbal reasoning, numerical
ability, analytical and logical reasoning, etc. Extensive research on
cognitive abilities has established that there are 8 different abilities
that a human being needs to possess to perform any job. These tests are
usually Mutiple Choice Questions (MCQ) tests comprising of questions
grouped under different sections titled by the cognitive abilities
mentioned before (eg: Verbal ability section, Numerical reasoning section,
etc.).
4. Personality inventories - Personality inventories are
extensively used for psychometric assessments. A personality inventory is
nothing but a questionnaire that is given to candidates that tries to
check a candidate's interest, likes, dis-likes etc through a set of
questions ( many of them are MCQ based questionnaires ) and then based on
the candidate's response tries to map his profile against already defined
ones. Some of the popular psychometric assessments include 16PF, FIRO-B,
MBTI and Thomas profiling. You can find more information on these tests in
these sites - http://www.opp.co.uk/ , https://www.thomasinternational.net/
5. Performance tests - The objective of these tests is to assess
the on-the-job-skills of a candidate. Skills here refer to hard skills,
also called as technical skills. A skill can be as mundane as carpentry,
driving, typing or as niche as driving a jet plane or programming for an
embedded system. Organizations used varied assessment tools and techniques
to assess people on these skills. Pertaining to Software Programming,
performance based testing assumes paramount significance especially during
recruitment. In software parlance performance is considered in terms of
design, coding and testing. Currently, performance testing is done by
giving problem scenarios to candidates and asking him / her to write the
solution (please note that it is a pen-and-paper test). The candidates'
responses are then manually evaluated by a team of experts. Since
evaluating written code requires an expert going through each line of code
and ascertain its correctness, it is not only a pain staking exercise, but
also time consuming, apart from being subjective and error prone.
Of late, a few companies have come up with an innovative and effective way
of assessing technical skills (in particular programming skills). A few
noteworthy products are from SkillCheck, NCE Technologies and Liqwid
Krystal. Among these, I have found DevSquare from NCE Technologies (www.devsquare.com)
interesting and convincing. DevSquare is an online development platform
that also tests "coding skills". Currently, DevSquare supports assessments
of C, C++, C#, ASP.Net, Core Java, Java Servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP)
technologies. DevSquare has an intuitive user interface akin to any
Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with provision for writing,
compiling and executing code. The candidate is challenged with a
programming question and has to think and write code as solution. The
solution is evaluated for coding correctness, compliance with coding
standards and syntax rules and such other parameters. According to me,
DevSquare is ideal for pre and post training assessments, pre-employment
and career assessments. In the articles that follow I will walk you
through Skills Assessments - Techniques and Tools.
Contributing Author: Ravi Kumar is a
technical consultant with more than a decade experience in the IT industry
(specializes in assessment tools & techniques). You can reach him at
rk1601@hotmail.com
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