Personnel assessment has been and remains one of the essential elements personnel management systems: it is impossible to do without assessment either during personnel selection, certification, creation of a personnel reserve, or personnel rotation. Often the effectiveness of the entire HR system depends on the effectiveness of personnel assessment. The effectiveness of personnel assessment directly depends on the adequacy of the methods and approaches used. Is testing, so fashionable in the early 90s, always an adequate method?

At one time, when HR management in our country was taking its first steps, the majority of HR managers were recruited from psychologists who directly transferred their usual skills with them to a new area of ​​activity. scientific activity working methods - tests. This is quite understandable - in those days they didn’t know and couldn’t do anything else, information about Western technologies work with personnel trickled down “a teaspoon per hour”; its own methods had not yet been developed.

To maintain their authority and not lose their jobs, some psychologists, when hiring, gave candidates 300–600 questions each to fill out a battery of clinical tests. Of course, such a selection made an indelible impression. Both for candidates and employers. And on the “HR managers” themselves. In addition, the output is “objective” data. Apparently this is where the myth about the omnipotence of tests originates.

Unfortunately, this is just a myth. The use of tests for scientific purposes has a number of limitations, while the use of testing in business is doubly limited.

Traditionally, the advantages of testing include the standardization of methods, the presence of a normative result, and its reproducibility. It is believed that the data obtained during testing are objective. Also, many managers are impressed by the scientific nature of the assessment procedure in the case of testing.

However, almost all of these advantages have “ reverse side medals." Let's start with standardization. Not all methods used by HR managers are truly standardized (tested on a large, reference sample, which confirmed that for people with the same expressed trait being tested, the test results will be the same); amateur and popular science tests are very often used in HR work. Moreover, standardization in itself is not a guarantee of quality: as a rule, tests are standardized on students, and no one can guarantee that the norm of, say, anxiety among students, accountants and, for example, customs brokers will be the same.

The objectivity of data obtained through testing may also be questioned. Most of the tests used in personnel assessment are questionnaires; not all of them are equipped with a lie scale. The bulk of these questionnaires were designed for research purposes, testing took place voluntarily, or on the initiative of the subject, so the lie scale was not provided, or was poorly protected: the subjects had no need to lie. Therefore, for a person with higher education(which means it's enough high level intelligence) “bypassing” such a test is not a problem, especially if the success of passing the test determines whether he will be accepted for a promising job.

In addition, cumbersome questionnaires require a lot of time to complete, process and interpret. Naturally, a person who spends a lot of time and effort filling out tests begins to feel irritated towards the company and the people who subjected him to such a “test”. As a result, the company’s image deteriorates and employee loyalty decreases.

By by and large, psychological testing in personnel work makes sense in two cases: when assessing the professional suitability of specialists in a number of fields that place special demands on the cognitive functions (attention, memory, thinking, emotional sphere, etc.) of a professional (accountant, dispatcher, pilot, etc.) and with a large flow (mass recruitment or certification of the same type of specialists), when speed of assessment and great importance gains the ability to compare results.

At the same time, many characteristics that benefit in great demand in the labor market (corporatism, loyalty, constructiveness, customer orientation, etc.) cannot be reliably identified using tests. And it is impossible to determine whether a candidate will fit into the organizational culture of the company using any methods other than observation and conversation. In addition, it is not always possible to establish a direct connection between the presence of certain psychological qualities in a candidate and his professional success, and the absence of a number of professional important qualities may be compensated by experience and individual style activities. In general, a focus on identifying a predetermined set of characteristics limits the range of information that can be obtained during a survey.

In general, the use of questionnaire tests requires the HR manager to have less competence in the field of psychology than projective techniques, observation and interviews, since the results of testing as a method minimally depend on the skill of the researcher. However, the lack of proper competence can lead to the fact that what is measured is not what was planned due to an inadequate choice of method. Often the test that the researcher is good at or is used to using is used, rather than the one that fits the situation. Many have probably encountered the fact that clinical MMPI test, created to identify severe mental pathologies from the field of major psychiatry, was used to select and evaluate managers, sales representatives, insurance agents, and bank employees. Even if we ignore ethical issues, the adequacy of using this method outside the clinic raises, to put it mildly, great doubts. And the use of the Rorschach test (an even more complex projective clinical test, which takes several years to master) in marketing focus groups (imagine, this happens) is simply shocking. As practice shows, much more adequate and informative results when assessing professionalism can be achieved with the help of specially designed, structured interviews, the case method and an assessment center.

In terms of the variety of information provided, testing as a method is significantly inferior to such methods as conversation and observation. For all its apparent simplicity, ingenuousness, bias and “unscientific” nature, a half-hour conversation can give an experienced psychologist or manager more information about a person than a half-hour test.

However, there are three main categories of tests that can be used successfully by HR departments. These are projective, professional and cognitive tests. Projective tests They provide a lot of varied information about a person, do not require much time to complete, and are very difficult to “deceive”, since these techniques rather appeal to the unconscious, having little contact with our conscious attitudes and beliefs. That is why projective techniques, among other things, best method to identify serious mental pathologies of an organic nature that may not be detected in observation and conversation. Cognitive tests allow you to evaluate features cognitive functions: attention distribution, stress resistance, reaction speed, etc. Professional tests, as a rule, are not strictly psychological. They allow you to assess the level professional knowledge specialist

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that the testing data, as well as the refusal passing testing, according to current legislation, cannot be the reason for denying a job to an applicant or employee.

Based on materials from “New Markets”

Personnel assessment has been and remains one of the most important elements of the personnel management system: it is impossible to do without assessment either during personnel selection, certification, creation of a personnel reserve, or personnel rotation. Often the effectiveness of the entire HR system depends on the effectiveness of personnel assessment. The effectiveness of personnel assessment directly depends on the adequacy of the methods and approaches used. Is testing, so fashionable in the early 90s, always an adequate method?

At one time, when HR management in our country was taking its first steps, the majority of HR managers were recruited from psychologists who directly transferred with them to a new field of activity the methods of work familiar in scientific work - tests. This is quite understandable - in those days they didn’t know or know how to do anything else, information about Western technologies for working with personnel leaked out “a teaspoon at a time”, their own methods had not yet been developed.

To maintain their authority and not lose their jobs, some psychologists, when hiring, gave candidates 300–600 questions each to fill out a battery of clinical tests. Of course, such a selection made an indelible impression. Both for candidates and employers. And on the “HR managers” themselves. In addition, the output is “objective” data. Apparently this is where the myth about the omnipotence of tests originates.

Unfortunately, this is just a myth. The use of tests for scientific purposes has a number of limitations, while the use of testing in business is doubly limited.

Traditionally, the advantages of testing include the standardization of methods, the presence of a normative result, and its reproducibility. It is believed that the data obtained during testing are objective. Also, many managers are impressed by the scientific nature of the assessment procedure in the case of testing.

However, almost all of these advantages have a “other side of the coin.” Let's start with standardization. Not all methods used by HR managers are truly standardized (tested on a large, reference sample, which confirmed that for people with the same expressed trait being tested, the test results will be the same); amateur and popular science tests are very often used in HR work. Moreover, standardization in itself is not a guarantee of quality: as a rule, tests are standardized on students, and no one can guarantee that the norm of, say, anxiety among students, accountants and, for example, customs brokers will be the same.

The objectivity of data obtained through testing may also be questioned. Most of the tests used in personnel assessment are questionnaires; not all of them are equipped with a lie scale. The bulk of these questionnaires were designed for research purposes, testing took place voluntarily, or on the initiative of the subject, so the lie scale was not provided, or was poorly protected: the subjects had no need to lie. Therefore, for a person with a higher education (and therefore a fairly high level of intelligence), “bypassing” such a test is not a problem, especially if the success of passing the test determines whether he will be accepted for a promising job.

In addition, cumbersome questionnaires require a lot of time to complete, process and interpret. Naturally, a person who spends a lot of time and effort filling out tests begins to feel irritated towards the company and the people who subjected him to such a “test”. As a result, the company’s image deteriorates and employee loyalty decreases.

By and large, psychological testing in personnel work makes sense in two cases: when assessing the professional suitability of specialists in a number of fields that place special demands on the cognitive functions (attention, memory, thinking, emotional sphere, etc.) of a professional (accountant, dispatcher, pilot and etc.) and with a large flow (mass recruitment or certification of specialists of the same type), when speed of assessment is necessary and the ability to compare results becomes of great importance.

At the same time, many characteristics that are in great demand in the labor market (corporatism, loyalty, constructiveness, customer orientation, etc.) cannot be reliably identified using tests. And it is impossible to determine whether a candidate will fit into the organizational culture of the company using any methods other than observation and conversation. In addition, it is not always possible to establish a direct connection between the presence of certain psychological qualities in a candidate and his professional success, and the absence of a number of professionally important qualities can be compensated for by experience and individual style of activity. In general, a focus on identifying a predetermined set of characteristics limits the range of information that can be obtained during a survey.

In general, the use of questionnaire tests requires the HR manager to have less competence in the field of psychology than projective techniques, observation and interviews, since the results of testing as a method minimally depend on the skill of the researcher. However, the lack of proper competence can lead to the fact that what is measured is not what was planned due to an inadequate choice of method. Often the test that the researcher is good at or is used to using is used, rather than the one that fits the situation. Many have probably encountered the fact that the MMPI clinical test, created to identify severe mental pathologies from the field of major psychiatry, was used to select and evaluate managers, sales representatives, insurance agents, and bank employees. Even if we ignore ethical issues, the adequacy of using this method outside the clinic raises, to put it mildly, great doubts. And the use of the Rorschach test (an even more complex projective clinical test, which takes several years to master) in marketing focus groups (imagine, this happens) is simply shocking. As practice shows, much more adequate and informative results when assessing professionalism can be achieved with the help of specially designed, structured interviews, the case method and an assessment center.

In terms of the variety of information provided, testing as a method is significantly inferior to such methods as conversation and observation. For all its apparent simplicity, ingenuousness, bias and “unscientific” nature, a half-hour conversation can give an experienced psychologist or manager more information about a person than a half-hour test.

However, there are three main categories of tests that can be used successfully by HR departments. These are projective, professional and cognitive tests. Projective tests provide a lot of varied information about a person, do not require much time to complete, and are very difficult to “deceive”, since these methods rather appeal to the unconscious, having little contact with our conscious attitudes and beliefs. That is why projective techniques, among other things, are the best method for identifying serious mental pathologies of an organic nature that may not be revealed in observation and conversation. Cognitive tests allow you to assess the characteristics of cognitive functions: attention distribution, stress resistance, reaction speed, etc. Professional tests, as a rule, are not strictly psychological. They allow you to assess the level of professional knowledge of a specialist.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that testing data, as well as refusal to undergo testing, according to current legislation, cannot be the reason for denying a job to an applicant or employee.

Based on materials from “New Markets”

Most students in the process of learning English will undergo knowledge tests: TOEFL, IELTS, school exams, etc. Tests are a way to quickly and easily check a large amount of information, and, like any type of testing, they help psychologically prepare the student for upcoming exams. Also, the test is a statistical proof of the student’s progress, since here he gets a clear result, for example, 80% out of 100.

At the same time, it should be taken into account that tests are not suitable for testing all language skills, especially the main one - speaking. In addition, tests give an idea of ​​the student’s passive rather than active knowledge. Many, for example, have no problem choosing the correct verb forms in a test, but at the same time use them incorrectly in communication and writing.
In the article we will consider different kinds test items, their advantages and disadvantages, and what skills they are best suited to test.

Types of test items:

• Multiple choice
  
• Transformation
  
• Gap-filling
  
• Matching
  
• Close
  
• True/False
  
• Open questions
  
• Error correction
  

1.Multiple choice

Choose the correct word to complete the sentence.
I….. tennis every Sunday morning.

• playing
  
• play
  
• am playing
  
• am play
  

The essence of the task: The student must choose the correct answer among several options.
Suitable for testing: grammar, vocabulary, reading and listening.
Advantages:
- most quick way test a large amount of information
– Suitable for preparing students for standardized tests
Flaws:
– Creating high-quality multiple choice tests takes a lot of time.

2.Transformation

Complete the second sentence so that it has the same meaning as the first.
We paid some people to landscape the garden for us last year.
had
We _____________________________________ last year.

The essence of the task: The student must remake the sentence using a specific word.
Suitable for testing: grammatical forms

3. Matching

The essence of the task: The student matches the items in one column with the corresponding items in the other. These can be individual words, words and their definitions, parts of a sentence, pictures and words, etc.
Suitable for testing: vocabulary
Advantages:
– reduce the student’s “test stress”, since there is support for answers
Flaws:
– do not always provide a clear picture of the student’s knowledge. Even if the student does not know the correct answer, he has a chance to guess. This problem can be solved by including more words or pictures in the second column than in the first.
– one mistake can “advance” the entire task and it will be completed incorrectly

4. Completion (fill in the blank tests, cloze tests)

Complete the text by adding a word to each gap.

Word Bank: feast, turkey, parade, football, cranberry, pumpkin pie, thanks

Thanksgiving is a special time of year when families come together and give ___ for all they have.
There is a popular ___ in New York, and you can also enjoy the ___ games on TV.
Thanksgiving dinner is a ___ that includes ___, potatoes, ____ sauce and much more.
There are also many desserts after Thanksgiving dinner, including the most popular ___.

The essence of the task: The student fills in the gaps in the sentences.
Suitable for testing: grammar and vocabulary

5.True/False

Decide if the statement is true or false.
The currency of the USA is the dollar. T/F

The essence of the task: every question is a statement. The student must determine whether it is correct or not.
Suitable for testing: reading and listening.
Advantages:
– very quickly and easily checked
Flaws:
– in this type of task, a student may choose the wrong answer not due to ignorance of the topic, but due to ordinary inattention to some details
- do not always indicate gaps in knowledge, since the student has a 50% chance of guessing correctly. This problem can be solved with the help of an additional task - the student must not only mark incorrect statements, but also correct them.

6. Open questions

Answer the questions.
Why did John go to the shop?

The essence of the task: the student gives written answers to questions
Suitable for testing: all linguistic aspects.
Advantages:
– tests how well a student can use knowledge, not just how much information he has memorized.
Flaws:
– takes more time to check
– the test is more subjective than with other types of test tasks. One teacher may agree with a student's choice of words, another may not. This problem can be solved by using a word bank - a set of vocabulary that students can use when answering. It is advisable to provide students with more options than required in the answer. For example, if there are 20 questions on a test, the word bank may contain 30 words.

Error Correction

Find the mistakes in the sentence and correct them.
I would rather work from home than come to the office.

The essence of the task: The student must find and correct errors in the sentence. Errors can be unnecessary words, irregular shapes verbs, missing words, etc.
Suitable for testing: grammar, vocabulary, reading and listening

To summarize, it should be noted that the main advantages of tests include the fact that it is a structured and objective way to quickly check a large number of information.
The main disadvantage is that the tests are not suitable for testing the main aspect of study - communication. Therefore, to fully check the level of language proficiency test tasks should be combined with forms of assessment such as essays and oral interviews.

Testing as a means of teaching and monitoring knowledge has been used for a long time. The word test itself, translated from English, means checking, testing. Here, by testing we mean a survey: questions with suggested answers, from which the subject chooses one or more correct ones.

Questions asked may be verbal or printed, but modern stage society development equipment educational institutions and enterprises with funds computer technology large enough to carry out certifications, testing work using computers.

Obviously, the main advantage of automated testing is ease of use, reduced labor intensity, and elimination of errors during testing (computers do not experience a decrease in attentiveness due to fatigue). In addition, distance learning, in which interest is growing, without the use of appropriate software it is hard to imagine.

Among the disadvantages of testing, one can note the difficulty of formulating answers to questions on subjects related to the general laws of development of nature, society (philosophy, history, economics, some branches of astronomy, physics, etc.), which are characterized by ambiguous answers, and binary logic " yes/no" is not enough. Also, it is impossible to control creative knowledge through testing. So, testing understanding and skills in some areas of the humanities and socio-political disciplines is beyond the scope of testing. There are other assessment methods for this.

A significant drawback of testing, indirectly related to the above problems, is that students get used to ready-made formulations and lose (do not gain) the ability to express thoughts freely and competently. On the other hand, people who are embarrassed to speak find themselves on an equal footing with “speakers.”

Sometimes our users ask to eliminate the “excessive objectivity” of the testing program, meaning that when oral questioning the teacher can choose the complexity of the questions asked, taking into account the level of preparedness of the respondent, which is impossible when using computer testing. It is difficult to say whether such a deficiency should be eliminated.

In addition, there are testing flaws that are successfully eliminated in SunRav Software programs. Let's list some of them.

The imperfection of testing is often attributed to some inflexibility of the final assessment.

In the SunRav TestOfficePro program, summarizing the work of the test taker and generating an assessment is configured according to various parameters. You can evaluate:

• percentage of correct answers,
• the ratio of correct answers to incorrect or given ones,
• summing up points (each answer, both correct and incorrect, can be assigned its own coefficient).

And also, in SunRav TestOfficePro it is possible to create an adaptive test, in which the transition to the next task occurs depending on the answers to the previous ones. This function is especially in demand when creating tests used for learning and mastering material.

Thus, the labor intensity at the first stage - creating test databases, introducing testing into the organization - is temporary. In general, computer-based knowledge testing is undoubtedly more cost-effective than oral or written tests.

PROS AND DISADVANTAGES OF TESTING AS A METHOD
Pustynnikova Yu.M.
"New Markets", No. 6, 2002

Personnel assessment has been and remains one of the most important elements of the personnel management system: it is impossible to do without assessment either during personnel selection, certification, creation of a personnel reserve, or personnel rotation. Often the effectiveness of the entire HR system depends on the effectiveness of personnel assessment. The effectiveness of personnel assessment directly depends on the adequacy of the methods and approaches used. Is testing, so fashionable in the early 90s, always an adequate method?

At one time, when HR management in our country was taking its first steps, the majority of HR managers were recruited from psychologists, who directly transferred with them to a new field of activity the methods of work familiar from scientific work - tests. This is quite understandable - in those days they didn’t know or know how to do anything else, information about Western technologies for working with personnel leaked out “a teaspoon at a time,” and their own methods had not yet been developed.

To maintain their authority and not lose their jobs, some psychologists, when hiring, gave candidates 300-600 questions each to fill out a battery of clinical tests. Of course, such a selection made an indelible impression. Both for candidates and employers. And on the “HR managers” themselves. In addition, the output is “objective” data. Apparently this is where the myth about the omnipotence of tests originates.

Unfortunately, this is just a myth. The use of tests for scientific purposes has a number of limitations, while the use of testing in business is doubly limited.

Traditionally, the advantages of testing include the standardization of methods, the presence of a normative result, and its reproducibility. It is believed that the data obtained during testing are objective. Also, many managers are impressed by the scientific nature of the assessment procedure in the case of testing.

However, almost all these advantages have the “other side of the coin”. Let's start with standardization. Not all methods used by HR managers are truly standardized (tested on a large, reference sample, which confirmed that for people with the same expressed trait being tested, the test results will be the same); amateur and popular science tests are very often used in HR work. Moreover, standardization in itself is not a guarantee of quality: as a rule, tests are standardized on students, and no one can guarantee that the norm of, say, anxiety among students, accountants and, for example, customs brokers will be the same.

The objectivity of data obtained through testing may also be questioned. Most of the tests used in personnel assessment are questionnaires; not all of them are equipped with a lie scale. The bulk of these questionnaires were designed for research purposes, testing took place voluntarily, or on the initiative of the subject, so the lie scale was not provided, or was poorly protected: the subjects had no need to lie. Therefore, for a person with a higher education (and therefore a fairly high level of intelligence), “bypassing” such a test is not a problem, especially if the success of passing the test determines whether he will be accepted for a promising job.

In addition, cumbersome questionnaires require a lot of time to complete, process and interpret. Naturally, a person who spends a lot of time and effort filling out tests begins to feel irritated towards the company and the people who subjected him to such a “test”. As a result, the company’s image deteriorates and employee loyalty decreases.

By and large, psychological testing in personnel work makes sense in two cases: when assessing the professional suitability of specialists in a number of fields that place special demands on the cognitive functions (attention, memory, thinking, emotional sphere, etc.) of a professional (accountant, dispatcher, pilot and etc.) and with a large flow (mass recruitment or certification of specialists of the same type), when speed of assessment is necessary and the ability to compare results becomes of great importance.

At the same time, many characteristics that are in great demand in the labor market (corporatism, loyalty, constructiveness, customer orientation, etc.) cannot be reliably identified using tests. And it is impossible to determine whether a candidate will fit into the organizational culture of the company using any methods other than observation and conversation. In addition, it is not always possible to establish a direct connection between the presence of certain psychological qualities in a candidate and his professional success, and the absence of a number of professionally important qualities can be compensated for by experience and individual style of activity. In general, a focus on identifying a predetermined set of characteristics limits the range of information that can be obtained during a survey.

In general, the use of questionnaire tests requires the HR manager to have less competence in the field of psychology than projective techniques, observation and interviews, since the results of testing as a method minimally depend on the skill of the researcher. However, the lack of proper competence can lead to the fact that what is measured is not what was planned due to an inadequate choice of method. Often the test that the researcher is good at or is used to using is used, rather than the one that fits the situation. Many have probably encountered the fact that the MMPI clinical test, created to identify severe mental pathologies from the field of major psychiatry, was used to select and evaluate managers, sales representatives, insurance agents, bank employees... Even if we ignore ethical issues, the adequacy of the application This method outside the clinic raises, to put it mildly, great doubts. And the use of the Rorschach test (an even more complex projective clinical test, which takes several years to master) in marketing focus groups (imagine, this happens) is simply shocking. As practice shows, much more adequate and informative results when assessing professionalism can be achieved with the help of specially designed, structured interviews, the case method and an assessment center.

In terms of the variety of information provided, testing as a method is significantly inferior to such methods as conversation and observation. For all its apparent simplicity, ingenuousness, bias and “unscientific” nature, a half-hour conversation can give an experienced psychologist or manager more information about a person than a half-hour test.

However, there are 3 main categories of tests that can be successfully used by HR departments. These are projective, professional and cognitive tests. Projective tests provide a lot of varied information about a person, do not require much time to complete, and are very difficult to “deceive”, since these methods rather appeal to the unconscious, having little contact with our conscious attitudes and beliefs. That is why projective techniques, among other things, are the best method for identifying serious mental pathologies of an organic nature that may not be revealed in observation and conversation. Cognitive tests allow you to assess the characteristics of cognitive functions: distribution of attention, resistance to stress, reaction speed, etc. Professional tests, as a rule, are not strictly psychological. They allow you to assess the level of professional knowledge of a specialist.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that testing data, as well as refusal to undergo testing, according to current legislation, cannot be the reason for denying a job to an applicant or employee.