Career Path Planning
CAREER PATH PLANNING EXERCISE
- For Employee Selection & The Development Of Personnel
- Carried out under the professional supervision of Mr. David E. Harrison, BA (Hons.) MSc. (Lond.),
Registered Psychologist
Introduction
Matching the Person to the Job - Personnel Selection
If used for personnel selection, this exercise matches each assessee with the company's specifications for a position in question however detailed these specifications might be (e.g. a competent and honest sub-accountant with management potential, or a factory manager able to develop a motivated team who must also become involved in marketing, customer relations, and import/export formalities.)
Developing the Employee - Career Path Planning
Detailed information about the individual helps the employer, guided by the psychologist, to focus on attitudinal, motivational, emotional, or skills problems of the employee, and to solve through counselling and/or training i.e. to plan the career of the employee.
Every assessment undertaken involves the selection of tests, exercises and questionnaires to match specifically the needs of the job and the 'person' - specifications provided by the Client.
The psychologist personally writes each report, using computerized matching, whenever specifications are precise and quantifiable.
Reports
Objective information is provided about:
- Personality characteristics
- Occupational interests
- Aptitudes
- General intellectual ability, and
- Administration, leadership and decision making skills
Such qualities as:
- Integrity
- Capacity to work effectively in a team
- Persuasiveness
- Persistence in the face of obstacles, and
- Dependability
are either measured directly, or may be inferred from relevant clusters of information.
For Your Information:
| Location: | Human Resources Assessment Centre: 11 Lawson Avenue, Cnr Blakiston Street, Milton Park, Harare, Zimbabwe |
| Assessment Periods: | 8.00 a.m. - 1.30 p.m. must be booked. |
| Report Production: | Guaranteed within 10 working days, usually within 2-3 working days. |
| Assessment Fees: | |
| Middle level Battery | US$ 300-00 per person assessed. Middle level Battery |
| Executive Battery | US$ 1200-00 per person assessed. Executive Battery |
| Vocational Guidance | US$ 200-00 per person assessed. Vocational Guidance |
Location: Human Resources Assessment Centre, 11 Lawson Avenue, Cnr Blakiston Street, Milton Park, Harare.
Assessment Periods: 8.00 a.m. - 1.30 p.m. must be booked.
Report Production: Guaranteed within 10 working days, usually within 2-3 working days.
Fee: US$ 300-00 per person assessed. Middle level Battery
US$ 600-00 per person assessed. Executive Battery
US$ 200-00 per person assessed. Vocational Guidance
Psychometric Tests
The tests used in the Human Resources battery have either been developed abroad and normed and validated for use in Zimbabwe, or they have been developed in Zimbabwe and normed locally by Human Resources (Pvt.) Ltd.
Personality Questionnaires
The Edwards Personal Preference Schedule
This forced choice questionnaire involves answering 225 paired statements, covering 15 dimensions of personality. These are:
- Achievement - ambition and drive
- Deference - willingness to be led, conformity
- Order - tendency to be precise, neat, orderly
- Exhibition - flamboyance and enjoyment of attention
- Autonomy - need for independence
- Affiliation - need for personal attachments, loyalties
- Intraception - analysis of own and others' motives
- Succorance - tendency to seek help, support from others
- Dominance - desire to influence and lead
- Abasement - humility, tendency to accept blame
- Nurturance - helpfulness, support of others
- Change - need for variety, change
- Endurance - persistence at tasks, industriousness
- Aggression - tendency to feel or to be aggressive
It will be apparent to the reader that the above dimensions would vary in significance depending upon the nature of the individual's job.
For example, low endurance would not suit a person engaged in a job involving a high proportion of routine work, and as another example, low deference and high aggression are unsuitable characteristics for a person involved in the helping profession, e.g. personnel or training functions.
The Eysenck Personality Inventory
This is a questionnaire designed to measure two basic dimensions of personality: Extraversion - Introversion, and Emotionality - Stability.
The EPI is particularly useful since research by Human Resources (Pvt) Limited has provided Zimbabwean norms which are used for interpretation.
The person of high "emotionality" tends to be emotionally labile and perhaps occasionally over-reactive. This tendency is amenable to personal control, provided that awareness of it exists.
The Ie Scale For Locus Of Control
The IE Scale measures the degree to which a person feels in control of the outcomes in life, as opposed to feeling that events are controlled by external factors such as chance, luck, etc.
Very strong belief in personal control indicates a self-confident but "driven" personality.
Belief in control by 'external' factors suggests a less motivated, more "happy-go-lucky" type of individual.
The Rathus Assertiveness Scale
This scale provides an indication of how assertive a person is. Assertiveness must not be confused with aggression.
Assertiveness is standing up for one's own rights, without infringing upon the rights of others.
Non-assertiveness is the incapacity to act as one would like to, the tendency to hold back and refrain from expressing feelings and thoughts because of fear, inhibition, modesty, or simply as a result of being taught not to be assertive or never having learned to assert oneself.
It is helpful to be able to understand one's own, or another person's level of assertiveness, because differing occupations require varying levels of the characteristic for effective job performance.
Occupational Interests
Two occupational interests inventories are normally used, for sound professional reasons.
Connolly Occupational Interests Questionnaire
An occupational interests questionnaire which helps pupils, students and adults to understand their levels of interest in seven major areas, and to analyze the connections between these interests. This is technically described as an ipsative scale, because of it's forced choice format. Interest levels are assessed for the following occupational areas:
- Scientific
- Social Welfare
- Persuasive
- Literary
- Artistic
- Clerical
- Practical
Thurstone Interest Schedule
This interest schedule allows for choice of as many occupational areas as might interest the assessee. It is therefore termed non-ipsative. In effect, we are then able to identify the person who has a wide range of strong interests, and also, the person who has very weak overall levels of interest strengths. Thus, in combination with the Connolly Occupational Interest Questionnaire, we obtain information on both relative intensity and breadth of occupational interests. The following occupational interests are assessed:
- Physical Science
- Biological Science
- Computational
- Business
- Executive
- Persuasive
- Linguistic
- Humanitarian
- Artistic
- Musical
The Survey Of Study Habits And Attitudes
This is not normally administered to employees, unless there is a possibility that further academic work might be undertaken. It provides extremely important information about the assessee's current suitability for academic study. The ratings are on habits and attitudes, and scores, in the form of percentiles, are provided for the following factors:
Delay Avoidance:
Promptness in completing study assignments and ability to resist distraction.
Work Methods:
Use of effective study procedures, skill and efficiency in doing academic assignments.
Study Habits:
Composite measure of academic behaviour.
Teacher Approval:
Feelings and opinions about teachers, their classroom behaviour, and their methods.
Education Acceptance:
Approval of educational objectives, practices and requirements.
Study Attitudes:
A measure of scholastic attitudes and beliefs.
Study Orientation:
An overall measure of study habits and attitudes.
Intelligence & Aptitudes
Intelligence tests assess general intellectual ability. A person's score on such a test reflects his or her development stage. A person's ''I.Q. tends to vary from year to year, depending on a number of factors, such as education, occupation, age and health.
Tests can provide a good idea of a person's ability at the time of testing. Thus, they can supply the basis for advice as to which vocational direction should be taken in order to maximise chances of success. However, because of the importance of the contributions of interest and effort, psychologists cannot often state that a chosen goal is absolutely impossible for a person to attain. Therefore, the results from the following tests need not be considered in isolation, but rather, in combination with biographical data, personality characteristics and interests.
Tests Administered
The following is a sample of the aptitude/ability tests administered by Human Resources (Pvt) Ltd. A Career Path Planning exercise would normally involve the selection by the psychologist of five or more of these, as appropriate for the needs of the Client who has commissioned the work.
The A.H.5
This is a test designed to discriminate between individuals of higher than average levels of intelligence. High scores would be predictive of potential for higher management or university education.
Basic Business Computations
The emphasis is on rational computational reasoning, from which the calculations are relatively easy.
Aptitude for Reasonable Action
This exercise requires the assessee to provide written answers to hypothetical problems for which there is insufficient information for a strictly deductive solution to be made. This simulates the nature of a large proportion of business decision, and allows the evaluation of the assessee's depth of analysis of problems, as well as of the practicality of proposed solutions.
The A.C.E.R.
This is an aptitude test of clerical speed and accuracy.
Numerical Reasoning
Aptitude for reasoning with numbers. The result is presented in percentile form, giving comparisons with 3 groups of norms.
Verbal Reasoning
Verbal logic - syllogistic reasoning. The result is presented in percentile form, giving comparisons with 3 groups of norms.
Spatial Reasoning
Spatial aptitude - reasoning with shapes, as opposed to words or numbers. The result is presented in percentile form, giving comparisons with 3 groups of norms.
Administrative, Decision Making & Leadership Skills
The Human Resources In-basket Exercise has been developed specifically for local conditions, with item selection and generation procedures derived from international research. The assessee is required to work under some pressure on 23 items such as might appear on the desk of any Zimbabwean manager. Performance is assessed on the following dimensions:
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Report Format:
Reports are written by the registered psychologist, and consist of 8 - 12 pages of written and graphical information. Each test result is described in some detail. The final section of the report is a presentation by the psychologist of the main considerations derived from the information analyzed, together with conclusions and recommendations based on that information.
The Human Resources' Client Base
Listed below, for your information, is a sample from Human Resources' client base to whom we have provided our services. Should you wish to contact any of these organizations, kindly refer to us for details of the relevant manager associated with the psychometric testing exercise.
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