We are creating an electronic test to assess the competencies of document specialists. Instructions for testing to assess competence Testing to assess personal competencies

When managing a team, managers are often more fascinated by the status and exciting functionality of the manager than by caring about the quality of management services provided.

Nevertheless, the manager is responsible precisely for the competent implementation of management. After all, even if the organization has a strong leader who will inspire the team, show the goal and challenge, without effective implementation of processes it is pointless to count on a good result.

Will management skills pass the test?

Becoming a great manager requires a wide range of skills, from planning and delegation to communication and motivation. From this list, it is enough to use only a few components and this will already give some kind of result. But if your goals are more global, and your ambitions do not allow you to be satisfied with little, then you need to develop yourself in all facets of leading people.

Before starting any development, it is important to transparently understand the level of proficiency in each competency that is important in management. This approach will allow you to hit the target, saving time on analyzing illusions and images of an imaginary result. The test below will help you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, thereby extracting maximum benefit from the former and managing the latter.

Test instructions

The test contains 20 statements. For each of them, you need to write down a score for the answer that most corresponds to reality. When taking the test, it is important to describe the actual situation, and not the one in which you would like to find yourself and which is considered correct. Upon completion of the test, you must sum up the resulting scores.

Test:

20 statements		Never	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Always
1	When I have a problem, I try to solve it myself before asking my boss what to do.	1	2	3	4	5
2	When I delegate work, I give it to someone who has more windows in their schedule.	5	4	3	2	1
3	I correct team members whenever I see their behavior negatively impacting customer service.	1	2	3	4	5
4	I make decisions after careful analysis rather than relying on intuition.	1	2	3	4	5
5	I do not allow the team to waste a lot of time discussing strategies and assigning roles; many changes can still occur during the implementation of tasks.	5	4	3	2	1
6	I wait before disciplining an employee, giving them a chance to improve on their own.	5	4	3	2	1
7	Being able to do the job my employees do perfectly are the skills I need to be an effective manager.	5	4	3	2	1
8	I set aside time to discuss with the team what is going well and what needs improvement.	1	2	3	4	5
9	During meetings, I take on a facilitator/facilitator role when necessary. This helps the team reach a better understanding of the issue or reach consensus.	1	2	3	4	5
10	I fully understand how business processes work in my department and eliminate bottlenecks.	1	2	3	4	5
11	When it comes to assembling a team, I determine what skills are needed and look for the people who best meet the selected criteria.	1	2	3	4	5
12	I do everything I can to avoid conflicts in the team.	5	4	3	2	1
13	I try to motivate people by tailoring my approach to suit each employee's needs.	1	2	3	4	5
14	When the team makes a big mistake, I report it to the boss and then review the importance of the lesson learned.	1	2	3	4	5
15	When conflict arises in a new team, I perceive it as an inevitable stage in its development process.	1	2	3	4	5
16	I discuss with team members their individual goals and integrate this with the goals of the entire organization.	1	2	3	4	5
17	If I form a team, I choose similar personalities, ages, length of service in the company, and other characteristics.	5	4	3	2	1
18	I think the statement: “If you want it done well, do it yourself” is true.	5	4	3	2	1
19	I find an individual approach to everyone to ensure effective, comfortable and productive work.	1	2	3	4	5
20	I keep team members informed about what is happening in the organization.	1	2	3	4	5

Result:

Point	Interpretation
20 — 46	Managerial skills urgently need to be improved. If you want to become an effective leader, you need to learn how to organize and control the work of a team. Now is the right time to develop these skills and increase the success of your team.
47 — 73	The right path to becoming a good manager has been chosen. A number of competencies have already been successfully developed and provide a certain amount of comfort at work. At the same time, certain skills and abilities still need to be upgraded. It is necessary to focus on those elements where the lowest score was obtained.
74 — 100	Strong work being done in team management! It is important not to stop there and continue to build your skills. Competencies with a lower rating are those that await improvement!

Effective management requires a wide range of skills, each of which is complementary. The manager’s task is to develop and maintain all these competencies in order to guide the team to achieve stable results. It is important to remember: as soon as development stops, degradation begins! Below is a “feed” for the brain that allows you to become even stronger and more professional as a leader.

Model of effective management

The test is based on eight essential management skills. These are precisely the fundamentals, the secret of success that demonstrates aerobatics in managing people.
Understanding team dynamics and developing good relationships.
Personnel selection and development.
Effective delegation.
Motivating people.
Discipline management and conflict management.
Information exchange.
Planning, decision making and problem solving.

Understanding team dynamics and forming good relationships

Questions: 5, 15, 17
Competent management implies awareness of the principles of team work. As a rule, each team adheres to a certain development model:
1) Formation.
2) Conflicts.
3) Rationing.
4) Execution (effective work).
It is important to encourage the passage of each stage of development, this contributes to the rapid formation of an effective team. When forming a team, the manager's role is to ensure balance in recruiting the diverse skills of team members. Undoubtedly, it is easier to manage a homogeneous group, but only with the maximum diversity of people can mistakes be almost completely avoided. The most valuable competency in this area will be the ability to direct all differences in the right direction.

Selection and development of people

Questions: 11, 17
Finding the right people and developing them is the shortest path to success. Systematic training and analysis of the need for it quickly take the team to a new level.

Effective delegation

Questions: 2, 18
Some managers, especially those coming up from lower positions, tend to do most of the work themselves. They are convinced that only this will allow them to produce high-quality results. In such cases, a valuable rule is forgotten: a leader is needed to manage, not to execute. And the team can achieve much more if all the work is distributed among the right people, rather than concentrated on one person. Sometimes it is difficult to trust; in this case, it helps to realize that if the team has the appropriate functionality, people are trained and motivated, and, as a rule, the work will be done efficiently.

Motivating people

Questions: 13, 19
Another skill needed in management is motivation. Motivating yourself and motivating someone else are completely different things. It is necessary to remember that motivation is individual and what warms one is completely uninteresting to another. Just as life values ​​and goals differ, so do the methods of motivation. If you have warm, trusting relationships with team members, then motivation will not be difficult.

Discipline management and conflict management

Questions: 3, 6, 12
Sometimes, despite all efforts, some subordinates have difficulties in their work: systematic failures, underachievement of indicators. If you turn a blind eye, letting things take their course, and not adjusting or correcting such failures, this will have a negative impact on the entire team. Staff motivation decreases when they have someone working next to them who consistently fails to meet expectations.

There are often cases when direct conflicts arise between employees due to differences in values. The manager’s task is not to panic, but to facilitate the solution of the situation. But it is important to remember that disagreement also has a positive side; it highlights systemic problems and areas of possible failure in the organization. In any case, when conducting confrontation, it is necessary to work with the cause of the disagreement, and not to suppress symptoms or avoid them.

Information exchange

Questions: 8, 9, 16, 20
The ability to communicate and convey information correctly is significant in any profession, but for a manager it is of particular value. It is necessary to convey to the team everything that is happening within the company. Employees need to understand the nature of decisions made, job changes and other situations. This not only eradicates rumors, discussing issues allows you to establish contact.

Planning, decision making and problem solving

Questions: 4, 10
This competence acquires particular significance when a manager is promoted from an ordinary employee. At the initial stages, priorities shift from planning and resolving team issues to developing yourself as a former specialist. Without changing your development priorities, without switching to improving your management skills, you can very quickly end up in a puddle and return to your previous position. You need to constantly make sure you are focused on what matters most!

How to avoid common manager mistakes

Questions: 1, 7, 14
Building interaction in a team helps to avoid a number of difficulties and simplifies procedures. A common mistake is the reluctance to think for yourself and the inability to ask yourself the question “What can I do myself to solve the situation?” Often, novice managers knock on the doorsteps of their leaders, urging them to solve the problem that has arisen, thereby distracting them from completing more global strategic tasks.

Another mistake is shifting development priorities when moving from a line employee to a management position. It is necessary to tell yourself “stop” in time, otherwise the entire routine of the department may fall on the shoulders of the manager, because he will try not to teach others to do tasks correctly, but to take on more responsibilities than he should.

Delegation, motivation, communication, and understanding team dynamics are some of the key skills needed to be a leader. With these skills, along with patience and a developed sense of balance, they reach incredible heights in management.

Psychological tests are designed to assess personal qualities, intelligence, and psychophysiological properties of a person. Indeed, knowing what a person wants, what he can, and what his character is, one can make assumptions about what type of activity it would be preferable for him to engage in. But individual indicators for measuring these properties alone do not allow us to draw any holistic conclusion.

Let's say the test showed that you are an emotionally stable extrovert who is also good at mental math. This data in itself may be of interest only to you, for the purpose of self-knowledge.

Therefore, the tests used by psychologists for the purpose of selecting and assessing personnel needed to be interpreted by specialists regarding the purpose of their use. Psychologists summarized the data obtained and, based on this analysis, made conclusions about the potential suitability of an employee or candidate for a particular position. Thus, psychological tests involve the projection of immediate test results - indicators on psychometric scales - onto some secondary criteria.

The Laboratory has long and successfully used the principle of using reference profiles of professions. Knowing the requirements for professional activity, it is not difficult to imagine what psychological qualities a person should have in order to most successfully cope with his responsibilities. The respondent, undergoing comprehensive psychological testing, received a report in which his individual psychological profile was compared with the reference profiles of professions included in the program. And the report included a rating list of these professions with similarity coefficients that showed how suitable a particular profession was for a person. This approach was used not only to provide career guidance services, but also for companies that, when conducting a mass selection of candidates for various vacancies, wanted to know what alternative vacancies a given candidate with given psychological properties could apply for.

But the results of psychological testing can be projected not only onto professions, but also onto individual professionally important qualities, types of activities and, of course, competencies, which “flourished victoriously” in every self-respecting Russian company (commenting on some of the irony that sounds at innocent competencies, I would like to emphasize that they have spread in Russian HR management like fashion, when its item is worn by everyone, even those who doesn't like it).

Competencies

At the moment, most medium and large Russian companies have corporate competency systems. For some, they were once developed by one or another consulting company. In some organizations it was “brought down from above.” Someone developed them on their own. But, as a result, competency systems, as corporate criteria for personnel assessment, exist almost everywhere.

It must be said that among the many corporate competency systems of various companies there are much more similarities than differences. And this is not because the competencies for them were developed by the same well-known consulting company, but because the “portrait of an ideal employee” in the Russian mentality comes down to the same traits - organization, loyalty, leadership, stress resistance, development orientation , teamwork, etc. Compare with your list of competencies and underline familiar words!

As one old song from “Soviet times” says:
"You just have to be beautiful"
Noble, fair,
Smart, honest, strong, kind,
That's all..."

Thus, socially approved behavioral manifestations become criteria for personnel evaluation.

Let's take a look at the hypertext dictionary of methodological terms on our website.

COMPETENCE- a requirement of an organization to an employee, prescribing him responsibility for a certain result in a certain area in the organization (within a certain “area of ​​responsibility”). The second meaning, which is often used in the context of ASSESSMENT, defines COMPETENCE as a standard of behavior desired by an organization in a specific job role (business situation) that ensures the organization successfully achieves its goals.

We are talking, of course, about the “second meaning” of this word. In fact, there are many definitions of the concept “competence”, but all of them, one way or another, come down to the idea that this is a behavioral criterion. And since human behavior can be observed, it is convenient to use competency criteria in expert assessment methods - where experts can serve as observers: Assessment Center and 360 degrees.
However, a method such as the Assessment Center is expensive and labor-intensive, and therefore is used, as a rule, only for assessing key specialists and managers. Collecting feedback using the “360 degree” method can not be carried out in all companies, since its success strongly depends on the socio-psychological climate in the team, in addition, for obvious reasons, it is not applicable for assessing candidates. Thus, there is a need for an assessment method that is easy to use, relatively cheap, and allows one to predict human behavior in a work situation. This is, of course, psychological testing. But to solve our task - assessment within the framework of the corporate competency system - it is necessary that the test results be projected onto the competency criteria.

It must be said right away that not a single assessment method should be used separately, in isolation. Each of them needs to be complemented by another, alternative method. It is advisable to supplement psychological testing with interviewing. In this case, we are talking about a method such as a competency interview. Psychological testing is a statistical, quantitative method. Interview – expert, high-quality. The combination of quantitative and qualitative assessment methods dramatically reduces the likelihood of error.

Building a model of the relationship between psychological factors and competencies

How are psychological factors projected onto competencies? It is not difficult to imagine what psychological properties, for example, an employee who demonstrates customer-oriented behavior should have. Firstly, a certain motivation. He should like to work with people, help them, and receive gratitude from them for this. Secondly, in some production situations, he must have a certain vocabulary. And this is already a property of intelligence. Thirdly, he must be friendly, avoid conflicts, and strive to find mutual understanding with people. Motivation, intelligence and personal qualities can be measured using psychological testing and the results obtained can be translated into the “language of competencies”. To do this, Laboratory specialists who speak the language of psychometric criteria familiarize themselves with the content of the Customer’s corporate competency system and carry out a multidimensional expert scaling procedure, when each expert evaluates each psychometric criterion for each competency criterion. In this case, the consistency of experts is taken into account, and significant connections between the two systems of criteria are identified.

It is clear that in fact psychological tests do not evaluate the complex of behavioral manifestations given in the description of competence, but provide a probabilistic forecast of the manifestation of such behavior in a work situation. Its accuracy depends, firstly, on the qualifications of specialists who build a model of the relationship between psychological scales and competencies, and, secondly, on constant external conditions influencing human behavior - the general atmosphere in the company, relationships with management and colleagues, etc. d. The Laboratory’s specialists are highly qualified and have extensive experience in building such communication models, especially since they are the authors and developers of psychological tests used to evaluate personnel. However, discrepancies between the prediction of human behavior based on testing results and expert assessment using 360 degree methods and the Assessment Center sometimes occur. And this is natural.

A psychological test cannot take into account the influence of social environmental factors. If a person with leadership potential does not demonstrate it in observable behavior, this does not mean that the test is wrong. It’s just possible that the company has the Japanese practice of “hammering nails”, when the manifestation of leadership by subordinates in the company is “extinguished in the bud.”

However, practice shows that if the procedure for conducting an expert assessment of personnel is structured correctly and the criteria system is valid, then the discrepancies between the expert assessment and the results of psychological testing will be minimal.

Case Study

The laboratory developed a model of the relationship between psychological test factors and competency criteria for a Moscow manufacturing company. This company established a system of periodic personnel assessment using the 360-degree method. The same people were 360-degree assessed and tested. The results of psychological testing were translated into values ​​according to competency criteria. The 360 ​​degree assessment was carried out directly on competencies. The results of the two types of assessment were compared with each other within one sample (40 people).

The first column contains the names of the competency criteria (testing and 360). In the second, correlation coefficients between estimates using two methods. In the third, the probability of error, which should not exceed 0.05 to draw a conclusion about the significance of the obtained relationship.

COMPETENCIES (TEST AND EXPERT)	Correlation	p-level
ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION & ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION	0,54	0,00
COMMUNICATION & COMMUNICATION	0,31	0,06
PERFORMANCE & PERFORMANCE	0,32	0,04
SELF CONFIDENCE & SELF CONFIDENCE	0,28	0,08
ORGANIZATIONAL ABILITIES & ORGANIZATIONAL ABILITIES	0,36	0,02
STRATEGIC THINKING & STRATEGIC THINKING	0,59	0,00
TEAMMANSHIP & TEAMMANSHIP	0,50	0,00
RESISTANCE TO MONOTONY & RESISTANCE TO MONOTONY	0,34	0,03
PUBLICITY & PUBLICITY	0,41	0,01

For reference: a correlation coefficient of 0.54 – is it a lot or a little? Since this coefficient ranges from -1 to 1 (rather than from 0 to 1), then, roughly speaking, a coefficient of 0.54 corresponds to approximately 77% inference accuracy. And this is a very good result!

Problems in constructing a model of the relationship between psychological factors and competencies

There are many pitfalls hidden in building the correct model of the connection between psychological factors and competencies.

Firstly, this is the problem of “grading” competencies (dividing into levels). This problem is relevant when using a unified corporate competency system for all employees of the organization. The hierarchy of the workforce and differences in specialization require the division of competencies into levels. These levels allow, when building competency profiles, to some extent, to take into account the specifics of different groups of personnel. At the same time, the levels of competence do not form a single scale. For example, in a four-level system of competencies (from 0 to 3), the first level of the Customer Focus competency can be described as a set of behavioral criteria such as personal attention to the client, politeness, providing the client with complete and truthful information, etc. And the third level is the organization of the activities of the entire division or company to build a system of relationships with customers that increases the attractiveness of the company and its products to them. Agree that the first and second cases require a different set of human qualities and types of behavior! Fortunately, the results of psychological testing can be projected onto a specific level of competency development.

Another problem is that, although the tests are statistically validated, the model for linking to competencies is usually created by experts. And at this stage the likelihood of error increases. It happens that even when the opinion of experts on the connection between psychological criteria and competence is unanimous, in practice it turns out that it is still wrong. But it is precisely the comparison of psychological testing data and expert assessment using the 360-degree method or Assessment Center that makes it possible to make adjustments to the model and validate it.

Case Study

For a large transport company, a model of the relationship between tests and competencies was developed, including the frequently encountered competency “Leadership”. For some competencies, the values ​​“coincided” immediately (high correlation of values ​​calculated from the test results and obtained during the Assessment), for others they did not. In particular, for the “Leadership” competency in our communication model, at first the values ​​converged poorly, when they began to check it, it turned out that not all the proposed test scales take part in assessing this competency. The validation stage confirmed that the ideal profile for this competency includes such psychological factors as: the desire for active work, a dominant position, the ability to understand many issues and effectively solve problems (including outlook, logic). However, it turned out that for this particular company, for its ideal leaders, sociability and fluency in speech are of no importance, although experts called these factors significant for the Leadership competency.

In another project, experts, based on interviews with organizational leaders, found that middle managers constantly have to work in difficult, emotionally stressful environments that require a lot of physical strength. From which the experts concluded that active, sociable and emotionally stable people should cope most successfully with such activities. But a comparison with the results of an internal assessment showed that the model works exactly the opposite way - the highest results according to the model are shown by the least suitable managers. Mass testing showed that successful leaders in a given organization should be not so much hardy and “fearless” as experts imagined them to be, but rather moderately cautious and not overly sociable people.

These cases show that the stage of validating the model of connection between psychological scales and competencies is technologically necessary. Even if in a small company it is not possible to simultaneously collect the required amount of data (minimum - 15 more successful and less successful people each within a competency or a certain position) and immediately build a statistically sound model of connections, it is worth accumulating test results and expert assessments of candidates and employees, in order to be able to compare them in the future and check whether the test scales you propose are really significant for a given company, a given specialty, a given competency. Although this will require some effort, the result will be worth all the effort.

One of the most pressing issues of our time is how to assess the quality of professional training of students and graduates of colleges and technical schools. It is clear that this requires new methods and tools, cost-effective and easy-to-use procedures. And as it turned out, they already exist. Thus, in St. Petersburg, the small innovative enterprise “Academy of Information Technologies” has developed and put into practice several computer systems (programs) that make it possible to quickly diagnose the level of leading professional competencies of students studying in the specialties “Medical Optics” and “Emergency Medical Assistant” , “Laboratory Diagnostics”, as well as employees of relevant profiles (more details - www.ait.spb.ru). Similar systems can be created for many other specialties, thereby helping to improve the quality of vocational education and informatize the process of assessing the competence of workers.

A new method for diagnosing the professionalism of mid-level specialists is presented by the General Director of the Academy of Information Technologies, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences Alexander KHODAKOV, Chairman of the Board of Directors of St. Petersburg Colleges, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences Viktor SMIRNOV and Executive Director of the Board of Directors of St. Petersburg Colleges, Honored Teacher of the Russian Federation Roman PAKHALYUK.

We proceed from the fact that a specialist is an integral subject of professional activity, possessing a set of special competencies. Considering that in practice professional activity is a set of typical, repetitive tasks and problems solved by a specialist, we can propose such a working definition of professional competencies as the willingness (ability) of an employee to independently analyze on the basis of consciously acquired knowledge, skills, acquired experience, and all his internal resources and practically solve significant professional problems, typical tasks (problem situations).

To conduct professional diagnostics, you should use a set of leading final competencies for a specific specialty. Let's say it will be an emergency medical technician. For this specialty, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor I.P. Minnullin identified 10 leading final competencies: conceptual, diagnostic, technical-diagnostic, pharmacological, educational-manipulative, technical-hardware, treatment-tactical, organizational-tactical, psychological and deontological. All of them meet the basic requirements of the professional standard and together can serve as a comprehensive assessment of competence, that is, show the level of professional preparedness and compliance with the requirements of modern practice of both a graduate student and a specialist who has worked for many years in a medical institution. In other words, these are competencies that reflect the outcome of mastering a profession. They must be logically connected with “modular” ones, intended for ongoing monitoring of the educational process and tied to individual educational modules provided for by the new educational standards. Leading final competencies generalize “modular” ones and integrate them.

For rapid diagnostics of professional competencies in computer programs, special test systems are used. This or that test models a specific production or cognitive situation in which the test taker must comprehend a typical professional problem, show his understanding of its essence and suggest ways of the correct and best solution. It does not involve any speculative questions with a list of ready-made answers, among which false judgments predominate.

Test tasks, if possible, are given such a character that the test taker has to actively think, perform some conditional actions, search for and make conscious decisions, maximally mobilizing his internal resources. They are intended not so much to measure specific knowledge, but to assess the level of understanding of the subject, the degree of maturity of his professional thinking.

Test items were developed by experienced specialists. In particular, for emergency medical assistants they were compiled by employees of the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Emergency Medicine named after. I.I. Dzhanelidze.

Completion of test tasks is assessed according to a single scheme:

• the number of correct (answers) solutions (A) is counted;
• the number of errors is counted (B);
• The time spent on completing the test task (T) is recorded.

For each subject, the program, at the user’s command, automatically calculates five different scores, reflecting various features of professional preparedness. The results are displayed in the form of tables and graphs.

The value of the main assessment for any competency - On is calculated using the following formula:

Where Amax is the maximum number of correct solutions for a given test. In all cases, it varies from 0 to 10. The sum of all grades is considered as the individual final grade (the maximum possible is 100).

In the process of testing the system, intended for ambulance specialists, 16 student trainees and 106 medical workers were tested. For both the first and second groups, the main scores turned out to be in the range from 43 to 74. On the one hand, this indicates the high measuring ability of the test systems used, which successfully record individual differences in the training of the examined students and workers, and on the other hand, the difference (heterogeneity) in the level of professional competence of both college graduates and staff. And in normal practice, this difference cannot be correctly recorded using traditional methods.

The program easily and quickly calculates the group (total) assessment of all competencies - Op (average value for a given sample). For students who are mastering the specialty “Emergency Medical Paramedic,” this score turned out to be 57.5, for medical workers - 70. The program also easily builds a profile of professional competencies for each group of people who have passed the test.

Figure 1. Group profile of professional competencies for students and emergency medical workers.

Thus, computer diagnostics makes it possible to obtain a detailed description of the level of preparedness of a group of students and at the same time see what was learned better and what was worse (strengths and weaknesses of training). If testing is carried out in the middle of the final year of study, it is possible to make timely adjustments to academic work and, in the remaining time, purposefully eliminate shortcomings in the preparation of graduates. And if we take into account that the program clearly ranks the tested individuals according to the value of the assessment and thus identifies the students who have mastered the competencies most and least well, it turns out that the head of the educational institution has the opportunity to draw a conclusion which professional tasks future specialists will be able to cope with successfully and which ones will challenge them. they have difficulties.

A profile of professional competencies (individual schedule) can be built for any test participant. It is only necessary that when entering the system, he fills out an electronic personal card, in which he indicates his last name, first name, and gender. Students note their course of study, and medical workers note their education and work experience in their specialty.

One click, and the user will see tables in which comparative assessments of competencies will be presented. Let us give as an example the data obtained as a result of testing a group of students at the St. Petersburg Medical-Technical College studying in the specialty “Medical Optics” (Table 1).

Table 1. Average ratings of professional competencies for students of different courses (53 people).

The information presented clearly shows the effect of professional training: the total (final) assessment of competence turns out to be noticeably higher among senior students.

The advantage of the developed computer program is that it is possible to analyze the dynamics of indicators related to different types of competencies. The table clearly shows that the greatest “increase” in professional preparedness comes from production, technological and instrumental competencies.

The program allows you to build tables that show the dynamics of an employee’s competence as his work experience increases (example in Table 2).

Table 2. Basic assessments of professional competencies of emergency medical workers with different length of service.

The table reveals the complex and contradictory dynamics of professional competence. The On score gradually increases when moving from the first group of health workers to the third. The most interesting thing: it seems that with the accumulation of a certain working experience, a specialist’s competence freezes at the achieved level, although he has very significant reserves for professional growth (an On score of 71 is not the limit of competence). Such information is extremely important for improving the system of advanced training of specialists.

Computer testing is a good tool for individual diagnostics of a student’s (specialist’s) professional preparedness.

For each subject who has passed the test, it is easy to obtain a personal profile of professional competence, since tables and graphs clearly reflect many important features of the preparedness of a particular graduate student or employee.

Note that the computer program allows you to additionally calculate (for each test) an assessment of the productivity of actions - Ra and an assessment of the accuracy of actions - Pb.

where As is the average number of correct answers in the sample

where Bs is the average number of errors in the sample

Personal data shows by what parameters a high level of student preparedness is observed, and by what parameters failures in preparation are detected. As an example, we present testing data for two students studying at St. Petersburg Medical College No. 3 in the specialty “Laboratory Diagnostics” (for ease of presentation, the names of competencies are not given):

Figure 2. Personal profiles of professional competencies of students A and B (Ra scores).

For all competencies, the testing results of student A turned out to be lower than the group average (all Ra scores are negative), with the worst results for competencies 2, 3 and 9. Student B has a different picture. With the exception of tests No. 1 and 4, the subject demonstrates results higher than the average for the sample.

For each student, you can build a competency profile using the Pb assessment. It will be a good basis for individual work.

Based on the results of professional competency testing, special tables are compiled. Below is a fragment of one of them - for an emergency medical assistant, whose main assessment of On was below the average value for the sample (Table 3).

Table 3. Assessments of professional competencies of emergency medical assistant.

For all competencies, with the exception of psychological, Ra's assessment is negative. The weakest point in the preparedness of this specialist is the performance of therapeutic manipulations: a low result combined with a large number of errors. He also faces considerable difficulties when working with technical and diagnostic equipment, as well as when solving organizational and tactical problems.

At the user's command, the program creates a meaningful six-page report for each person tested. This greatly simplifies the procedure for analyzing the results.

Personal results reflect important individual characteristics of workers and specialists. Slow and fast employees are detected; working carefully, accurately and making many professional mistakes; effective in solving certain professional tasks and insufficiently competent in some issues of their activities, etc. Based on these results, it is possible to more accurately determine the nature of the consulting assistance that a particular employee needs to improve his level of competence.

It is useful to conduct “entrance” testing of applicants for vacancies available in a given organization.

Both the educational institution and the production organization will greatly benefit if they introduce regular monitoring of the professional competence of graduate students and specialists.

Computer systems designed for diagnosing competencies are distinguished by their fundamental novelty, simplicity of technical solutions, ease of use, and great information and analytical capabilities.

In our opinion, the proposed methodological tool can be successfully used in the emerging certification and professional qualification centers, which are designed to carry out an independent examination of the level of preparedness of university and college graduates.

"KADROVIK.RU" No. 6, 2011

Valery Chemekov, Ph.D. psychologist. Sciences, Moscow

To build an effective personnel assessment system in an organization, it is necessary to develop a universal competency model that should be applicable to any activity in the company. In addition, it will be necessary to develop assessment tools adequate to this model and, finally, to describe the rules for making personnel decisions based on the assessment results.

Depending on the object of study, all types of assessment can be divided into two categories - group and individual. Individual diagnostics include:

• assessment of competencies for decision-making when hiring or appointing to a higher position;
• assessment of personal qualities to resolve the employee’s psychological problems and improve his relationships with colleagues;
• assessment of the employee’s potential to determine the directions of his development and career advancement.

Group diagnostics include:

• assessment of the properties of the group, the relationships of its members;
• assessment of corporate culture.

Each of these approaches may have its own set of methods.

Modern methods of personnel assessment in the company

Corporations today use a fairly wide range of tools, which are constantly being replenished as assessment technologies develop and requirements for personnel services increase. The most popular methods are:

• tests and psychological questionnaires;
• study of biographical data and professional path (Track Records);
• expert review;
• observation;
• interview;
• performance assessment;
• assessment center (assessment center).

The goals of assessing basic and specialized competencies and employee behavior in a production situation and in a team are best met by tests (questionnaires) and an assessment center. Sources of information for the study of special competencies are the candidate’s resume and questionnaire, which relate to methods for studying biographical data and professional path.

Other methods, as a rule, play a supporting role and are used in cases where there is no possibility of using tests and an assessment center.
The tests are divided:

• to personal ones;
• aptitude tests;
• intelligence tests.

In the last decade, in domestic personnel practice there has been a surge in activity in the use of tests of all of the listed categories. At the same time, the picture is quite motley. The narrowly focused methods “Raven’s Progressive Matrices”, “Corrective Test”, “Compasses”, EPI by G. Eysenck, which seem to be a thing of the past, are still popular among appraisers. At the same time, new products – MBTI, OPQ, CPI, “360 degrees” – occupy an increasingly important place in domestic assessment.

Intelligence tests

Intelligence tests allow you to evaluate various aspects of intellectual activity (the ability to analyze, generalize, highlight the main thing, classify, etc.), which makes them more effective and informative compared to the classic IQ test. They are still actively used - it is believed that their correlation with business success is the highest. They often take the form of professional tests or ability tests: tasks are formulated based on the material of a specific company, real situations in the economy, sales and logistics of the organization are simulated.

At the same time, intelligence tests are the most “acute”: any person can come to terms with the conclusion about his low resistance to stress, but information about the low level of his own intelligence is traumatic for the test subject.

Aptitude tests and professional tests

Ability tests in corporate practice are most often used in the form of professional tests, although they retain independent significance for identifying the need for training, career guidance, development ability and are used in assessment centers. They are directly or indirectly related to the assessment of intelligence; multiscale intelligence tests are often used in aptitude test batteries.

The main disadvantage of aptitude and occupational tests is that they are difficult to produce. Their development is within the capabilities of companies professionally involved in personnel assessment. If an organization does not have the opportunity to pay for such services, it will be forced to settle for available simple techniques.

Personality tests

Personality tests are the most widely used. They are usually divided into formalized and informal (descriptive). The first group includes all test questionnaires, the second group includes projective methods. The latter cannot be used for group testing - the quality of data interpretation depends on the level of training of the specialist, and the test results are incomparable.

Tests can be single-scale or multi-scale. To diagnose a set of competencies, you will also need a set of appropriate methods. If there are seven items in the competency profile, then seven single-scale tests will be required. The likelihood that such tests will be found is very low.

In addition, as a rule, it is more difficult for a test taker to complete a battery of short tests than one - even with the same number of questions. Therefore, it is easier and more convenient to use a multiscale questionnaire, the results of which can be used not only for diagnosing competencies, but also for other tasks that can be formulated later during the work of the tested employee.

Assessment Center

Today the name Assessment Center is better known than the Development Centre. The latter method differs in its goals - it allows one to identify the abilities of the subject and determine the directions of his development.

The assessment center was originally intended to assess a candidate's ability to occupy senior management positions.

Today this line has been erased, and the assessment center (AC) method is used for:

• assessing the suitability of an ordinary employee to occupy a leadership position;
• determining a candidate’s suitability for a position during selection;
• identifying areas of study and career development of the subject;
• periodic personnel certification.

Table 1

Note: * – core competency assessed in the exercise; ** – additional competence.

The essence of CO is to study the behavior of the subject under conditions as close as possible to real activity. Often it looks like a business game, where participants are evaluated by expert observers. More often, research using the CO method is a set of separate simulations (processes, exercises), ability tests and personality tests. In table 1 shows an example of a matrix of CO criteria-exercises. In addition to these exercises, the OPQ competency assessment method was used.

Exercises are selected in such a way that the competencies they simulate are partially duplicated. One competency must be simulated in at least two processes.

Work with the central authority can last from a couple of hours (mini-assessment) for candidates for ordinary positions and up to several days for senior managers.

The following stages of preparation of the CO are distinguished:

1. defining a competency model and assessment objectives;
2. selection of ready-made or development of new corporate simulations and cases for the assessment program;
3. development of instructions and descriptions of the assessed competencies for participants (see Appendix 1);
4. development of instructions and evaluation sheets for experts for each exercise with evaluation criteria;
5. selection of tests to assess individual competencies;
6. selection, invitation and training of experts;
7. preparation of handouts and consumables;
8. development of a central heating program;
9. selecting, inviting and instructing assessment participants.

An example of an assessment program is given in Appendix 2. An important section here is the time list - a clear schedule for each process. Time limits in the CO also act as an additional factor in assessing the participant’s abilities such as self-organization and resistance to “the stress of time shortage.” The schedule indicates the “attachment” of experts to participants, the movement of participants among audiences, etc.

A significant element of the system is the training of experts to minimize subjectivity. Experts train in unambiguous interpretation of demonstrated competencies.

As a rule, two experts work with one subject. All visible behavioral reactions are assessed without speculation or interpretation. Typically, a set of symbols is used to quickly capture the flow of observations.

The main disadvantages of central heating are its high cost, large investment of time and organizational effort. However, this method is considered the most valid of all assessment tools.

From the point of view of price-quality ratio, as well as for reasons of compactness of the instrument, multiscale questionnaire tests seem to be more optimal.

Personality tests in assessing competencies

Tests and questionnaires are the most popular tools. Traditionally, multiscale questionnaires are used to predict success - the R. B. Ketell test questionnaire (16PF), MMPI, CPI, which can be used both with a holistic and personal approach.

Over the past decades, there have been criticisms of personality tests in the human resources industry or among company executives, such as the following:

• These are American tests that are not applicable to our conditions.
• These tests are outdated.
• Due to the large volume of questions, the load on the test taker is excessive.
• Questions about the same thing are asked several times in different formulations.
• Despite the many questions, tests are able to characterize a person in only 10–20 parameters.
• The same test cannot be used on the same person more than once.

Answering such objections is beyond the scope of this article. One has only to note that such judgments are untenable, and among professional psychologists these methods are respected.

The MMPI method deserves a special comment. It has earned a lasting reputation as a clinical research tool, but at the same time it is most widely used in the personnel sector. Scales that are considered “clinical”, in skillful hands, can provide good assistance in finding contraindications and hidden threats.

Multiscale tests and holistic approach

The implementation of a holistic approach involves the creation, based on large statistical material, of such an instrument (test, test, questionnaire), which, without “fragmenting” the personality into individual competencies and useful qualities, allows us to draw a conclusion about the suitability of the candidate and predict his success.

As part of a holistic approach based on the 16PF test questionnaire, the following are created:

• reference profiles – profiles of the best representative for a given profession;
• success indices are test scores compiled on the basis of the weights of the primary factors of the test questionnaire.

In the first case, to predict the candidate’s success, his profile is compared with the reference profile, which is characteristic of the most successful representatives of the profession. To do this, the correlation of 16 test values ​​of the subject with 16 values ​​of the reference profile is calculated, and based on its value, a conclusion is made regarding the degree of suitability.

In the second case, the numerical value of the index is calculated using a formula derived through regression analysis. So, for example, the index of a successful police officer is: 0.47 × A – 0.35 × (F + L) + 0.23 × (Q2 + Q3) + 9.41. And the index of a successful retailer looks like this: 0.44 × A – 0.33 × L – 0.44 × Q2 + 0.22 × H – 0.22 × E – 0.22 × Q4. The resulting value is compared with the criterion value or with the interval. The criterion values ​​for the given examples are 5.09 and 5.56, respectively. The intervals are deciphered as follows:

• 0–2.9 – suitability is lower than necessary (the candidate is not recommended for this position);
• 3.0–4.7 – minimum suitability (the candidate is recommended if there is a shortage in the labor market);
• 4.8–6.9 – suitability is sufficient (above average);
• 7.0–8.0 – high suitability.

When predicting professional success based on the multiscale questionnaires MMPI and CPI, as a rule, a different method is used that corresponds to the principles of these methods. It consists of developing scales based on statistical analysis of the results of surveys of so-called “contrast groups” of subjects. The initial questionnaire is completed by two groups of people:

1. possessing the required quality or successfully operating in a certain area;
2. not having such characteristics. From those questions to which both groups give consistently different answers, a new scale is compiled. However, such scales are not published and are not widely used - they can only be used in those organizations in which they were created.

The success of a company depends not only on the professional skills of employees, but also on their compliance with values, corporate culture, and their ability to get along with management. Therefore, the resulting scale reveals the subject’s compliance with these features.

When interpreting the results of such testing, it is impossible to determine due to what qualities the test taker will be an effective employee.

Multiscale tests and competency-based approach

Multiscale methods show their effectiveness when it is necessary to select diagnostic tools for a set of competencies. Thus, more than 400 additional scales have been developed for the MMPI method (10 main scales). Many of them are available to domestic practicing psychologists.

Often, additional MMPI scales bear the names of competencies, for example: “Responsibility Traits”, “Lawyer Personality Type”, “Dominance”, “Dependence”, “General Poor Adaptability”, “Intellectual Efficiency”, “Impulsiveness”, etc. (see Appendix 3).

The CPI method (20 main scales) is a relatively new tool, there are so many applications to it, but they exist. Here are examples of additional CPI scales: “Managerial potential”, “Orientation to work”, “Leadership potential index”, etc. (Appendix 4).

The 16PF questionnaire has 16 scales, 4 secondary factors, and no additional scales. Perhaps this method is the most convenient; it is often used in practice to diagnose competencies (Appendix 5).

The competency-test matrix shown in Appendix 6 demonstrates how the competency and main scale of each of the questionnaires discussed can be compared.

Assessment system and solution of personnel problems

Personnel management in an organization is associated with solving the following main tasks:

• assessing the candidate's suitability;
• education;
• career and relocation;
• non-material and material motivation.

table 2

Matrix for making personnel decisions
		Competency assessment
		low	average	high
Grade effectiveness	low	It is necessary to make a decision about the employee’s stay in the company	Need to make decisions about suitability or find adequate employment	Transfer to expert work is possible. Additional bonus recommended
	average	Required to make a decision about suitability or to find an adequate place of work	Needs training and coaching to improve performance	Must be referred for coaching or performance training
	high	Training required	There are reserves for knowledge development	Maximum achievements (danger of burnout). Additional bonuses possible

It is impossible to solve them based on conclusions about the development of competencies alone. Let’s assume that the assessment showed a high level of competency development, but the employee’s performance in practice turned out to be low. In this case, it would be reckless to increase the salary after successful certification without taking into account the employee’s real performance. We can say that competencies are the potential of an employee, and his performance is an indicator of how much he was able to realize his potential.

Therefore, the personnel evaluation system should also take into account its effectiveness.

Performance assessment can be monthly, quarterly and annual.

An example of an annual assessment is KPI, which is based on objective and measurable performance indicators. Monthly assessments cannot always use objective indicators - they can hardly be obtained in such a short period of time. In this case, formal, indirect parameters are used to evaluate effectiveness:

• percentage of tasks completed for the period;
• deadline for completing tasks;
• quality of execution.

Grades are given expertly by the employee’s immediate supervisor. Some corporate information systems and ERP have modules for setting tasks and monitoring their execution. The manager can use built-in tools to evaluate the quality of task completion, while the system takes into account the percentage and timing of completion. Monthly estimates easily turn into annual estimates. Another advantage is that they are comparable, regardless of the content of the employee’s activity and his rank, while KPIs may not be established for all employees and are often incomparable.

Having assessed data on the employee’s competence and performance, it is possible to build a matrix for making personnel decisions (Table 2). In this example, the matrix contains only examples of instructions for actions with personnel. A real matrix can have at least 4 gradations for each of the dimensions, as well as detailed instructions in the field of career, motivation, training, the sources for which are the organization’s personnel policy. These requirements are enshrined in regulatory documents regulating personnel business processes.

So, to build a personnel assessment system, you need to:

• formulate requirements;
• choose competency assessment tools;
• combine methods for assessing both competencies and performance;
• determine personnel policy;
• approve regulations for personnel processes.

Now the specialist has the opportunity to go further - to create more effective and compact methods for assessing and predicting the success of activities, namely tests using the “contrast groups” technology.

Annex 1

Example of self-presentation instructions

SELF-PRESENTATION

We are often forced to tell clients, colleagues, employers and other people about ourselves, on whose decisions something in our destiny depends. Depending on how skillfully we do this, the outcome of our business depends. Self-presentation is an element of the activity of representatives of public professions, which, of course, includes yours. This determines the purpose and content of the exercise aimed at developing presentation skills.

Target– demonstrate to the audience the skills of oral public speaking, in which you need to present yourself and your merits to others, making the necessary impression on them.

Tasks that need to be solved during self-presentation:

1. tell about yourself and your achievements, present them favorably, emphasize your professionalism;
2. report your own shortcomings;
3. structure the speech in such a way that it is:
   • whole;
   • consistent;
   • within the allotted time;
   • publicly significant, i.e. audience-oriented.

Procedure

1. Each participant prepares a performance. The sequence of presentation can be any, but the message must contain the following information:
   • First name (patronymic), last name, place of work and current position.
   • Description of career, professional path, achievements and failures.
   • Why do I work for the company? (What attracts me here, what keeps me here, what do I expect from the company?)
   • I think my strengths are... (I do better than others... What I do really well is...).
   • I would like to learn..., develop...
   • I see my career for the next five years...
   • Personal data, etc.
2. Participants speak in turns, addressing the audience and without using notes.
3. Participants give each other feedback on the results of their self-presentation.

Competencies assessed

1. The ability to construct a coherent story, clarity and logic of presentation, the ability to highlight the main thing.
2. Speech quality: colorfulness, variety of vocabulary, intonation.
3. Persuasiveness, ability to interest and hold attention.
4. Ability to manage time.

Time to complete the task is 5 minutes per person. The performance time is fixed and controlled.

Appendix 2

Example of an assessment program

PROGRAM
Comprehensive assessment of managers of enterprises of a group of companies

Purpose of the assessment– determining the level of qualifications in order to determine the suitability of participants for positions of heads of departments and above.

Assessment Objectives:

• assess the level of development of the participants’ management skills;
• determine the management potential of participants;
• develop recommendations for the career relocation of participants;
• identify participants for the nomination reserve.

List of participants– managers at the level of director of an enterprise department and above.

Appraisers– managers and employees of the personnel management unit, appointed by the relevant order (instruction) in accordance with the regulations on personnel assessment.

Competencies assessed

Name of competency	Contents of competence
Basic management skills
Leadership	Ability to persuade, inspire, explain goals and train, ability to form a team
Strategic planning	The ability to have a long-term vision, the ability to set long-term goals and generate resources to organize achievements, develop strategies
Communication competence	Skills in effective interpersonal and business communication, influence, interaction with partners, subordinates and management
Organizational Competence	Knowledge of the principles and rules of behavior in the organization, attraction to certain roles and positions, ability to fit into the organizational culture and comply with it
Time management	Skills in planning and optimal use of working and personal time, distributing your resources between daily routine and long-term tasks
Delegation of Responsibility	Skills in defining, dividing and transferring powers to employees, controlling responsibility
Representational skills	Skills in representing and successfully promoting the interests of the organization in the external environment, the ability to form and maintain a personal and corporate image, negotiation and public speaking skills
Operational management skills
Situational leadership	Decision-making skills, ability to take responsibility, consolidate, distribute resources, operational management skills of the production process
Personnel Management	A set of personnel management skills: selecting and placing personnel, the ability to conduct training and education, the ability to motivate, monitor performance, manage conflicts
Meeting management	Skills in organizing, preparing and effectively conducting meetings
Project management	Planning, distribution of resources for the implementation of projects within the planned time frame, with a given effectiveness
Financial management	Ability to form and distribute budgets, plan expenses, calculate profits, financing schemes, skills in drawing up a feasibility study, business plan, balance sheet
Information Management	Ability to receive, process, form, analyze and summarize information, draw correct conclusions, solve problems, draw up documents

Assessment Toolkit

1. A standard form completed by each evaluator that serves to evaluate the performance, competencies and qualities of participants.
2. Qualification tests and assignments aimed at assessing the knowledge and qualities required by a high-level manager:
   • “Qualification test for a manager”;
   • "Financial management";
   • "Legal Test";
   • psychological tests;
   • sociometric method (leader election and team formation);
   • methodology for group personality assessment (with a set of assessed competencies).

Tasks and Processes (Case Study)

• Self-presentation process.
• Assignment “Report on the state of the Enterprise.”
• Discussion “Effective Manager”.
• Basket Method: “Working with Documents” process.
• Game "Enterprise on the market".
• Process "Personnel decisions".
• Process "Project".
• Process “Meeting following assessment or assignments/processes.”

Duration– 16 hours, including breaks.

Number of participants– 8 people.

Appendix 3

MMPI test

Appendix 4

CPI test

ADDITIONAL SCALES

Willingness to cooperate30% Discipline60% Quality of work50% Teamwork53.3% Leadership53.3% Focus on the interests of the client and partner10% Responsibility (including social, legal)60% Ability to negotiate33.3% Commitment to development50% Respect36.7% Focus50% Honesty (decency)60% Broad interests, broaden horizons30%

Appendix 6

Competency-test matrix

Profile competencies	Name of scales
	16PF	MMPI	CPI
1. MOTIVATION
1.1. Process/result orientation	Q3	/ 78	Ai
1.2. Normative motivation	G	L25/40	V2 Re So
1.3. Resistance to stress	C	19 / 67	Sc
2. SOLVING PROBLEMS
2.1. Level of thinking for problem solving	B	-	Ie
2.2. Breadth of thinking	M	5	In
2.3. Willingness to change, flexibility of thinking	Q1	35 / 61	Fx
3. PROCESS/PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
3.1. Impact/Leadership Level	E	40	Do
3.2. Control of incoming information	L	6	Sc
3.3. Autonomous decision making	Q2	45 / 2	Ai
4. COMMUNICATIONS
4.1. Depth of communications	A	8"5 / 03	Sy
4.2. Influence and activity of communications	H	40"3 / 2	Py
4.3. External/internal communications	N	03	Gi

Special competencies	Method
1. DESCRIPTION OF THE WORK
1.1. Hierarchical position level	Test, resume
1.2. Job responsibilities (functions)	Test
1.3. Content of required knowledge	Summary
2. EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
2.1. Minimum required level of education	Summary
2.2. Minimum required work experience and skills	Summary
2.3. Impact on business economic efficiency	Test, resume
3. WORKING CONDITIONS
3.1. Working conditions	Psychophysical and medical readings
3.2. Harmful work factors

1 Ballantyne I., Pova N. Centers for assessment and development. M.: HIPPO; 2003.

2 Lunev P. A. The role of psychological tests in personnel assessment. Handbook of Human Resource Management 2003; No. 8.

3 Tatsuoka M. M., Cattell R. B. Linear equations for estimating a person’s occupational profiles. The British journal of educational psychology 1970; No. 40: 324–334.
Cattell R. B. Handbook supplement for form C of the sixteen personality factor test. Institute for personality and ability testing. Champaign, Illinois. 2nd edition; 1962.

4 Sobchik L. N. SMIL (MMPI). Standardized multifactorial method for personality research. SPb.: Speech; 2009.

"Personnel officer. Personnel records management", 2009, N 2

We create an electronic test to assess the competencies of document specialists

The modern economy places increasing demands on the professional training of personnel involved in documenting the activities of both commercial and non-profit organizations. Choosing an effective method for assessing personnel qualifications becomes a vital task for the organization. Assessment of business and personal qualities is carried out during hiring, training of personnel, as well as in the process of personnel control and strategic personnel planning. The article describes the principles and methods of developing computer testing of knowledge in documentation support of management.

Successful management of any process, enterprise, or business is impossible without the use of modern technologies for document management support (hereinafter referred to as DOU).

Preschool education as a field of activity exists in a developing information society under the influence of information technology (hereinafter referred to as IT) and scientific and technical achievements in the field of informatization.

With the development of new forms of economic relations, managers increasingly began to realize that they can only entrust a preschool educational institution to an organization (firm) to a professionally trained specialist. This understanding of the role of the preschool educational institution came in market conditions, when incorrect actions of employees of preschool educational institutions can lead to significant economic losses. In order to select the right personnel for the preschool educational institution service, the manager must have in his hands a “tool” for assessing them.

It should be noted that all employees of the organization work with documents. Documents are always created solely for some purpose: either to consolidate information when performing assigned tasks, or at the request of regulatory authorities.

A specialist working with documents must have professional competence, defined as a combination of theoretical and practical skills.

Competence should not be opposed to professional qualifications, but also should not be identified with it. The term “competence” serves to designate the integrated characteristics of the quality of a specialist’s training, the category of the result of his education.

A competent document specialist must not only know the essence of the organization’s preschool education problem, but also be able to solve it practically using the current regulatory framework and the most suitable IT. In addition, competence presupposes constant updating of knowledge, mastery of new information for successful application in specific conditions.

We must strive to ensure that the language of competencies and their “nomenclature” (composition, list) are understandable to various professional and social groups and are clearly perceived by all participants in business relations.

To find out the opinions of employers about the importance of certain competencies among employees involved in preschool education in various organizations, you can offer a questionnaire (Fig. 1).

Fragment of the questionnaire

for assessing document specialist competencies by employers

Questionnaire to assess the importance of competencies of a preschool educational service employee
	Competencies of a preschool educational institution employee	The importance of competencies for an employee DOW services
1. Professional competencies
	Knowledge of government information policy and its impact on working with documents
	Ability to apply regulatory legislative basis for general office work
	HR database
	Ability to apply normative methodological archival database
	Ability to create local regulatory base in the organization (instructions for office work, album and report card unified forms of documents, regulations on department, job descriptions)
	Ability to initiate policy in the area work with documents and make it practical
Date of filling out the form: _______________ The position of the person answering the questionnaire (indicating the full names of departments and organizations)

Core competencies are related to the strategic priorities and values ​​of the enterprise in the field of preschool education and are applicable to all office staff.

Of the many methods for assessing office staff, testing is the most cost-effective. The rapid development of IT has caused a wave of interest in computer training and testing. Testing is one of the most technologically advanced forms of automated control with controlled quality parameters. In this sense, none of the known forms of monitoring students’ knowledge can compare with testing.

Currently, quite a lot of knowledge testing systems have been developed. To assess the knowledge of subjects, the following types of test tasks are usually used:

Open form, when the task requires the subject to give an arbitrary answer to the question posed;

Closed form, when the subject is asked to choose the correct answer from several possible ones. Varieties of closed form include tests for compliance presented in a certain way and tests for establishing the correct sequence.

Computer-based testing most often uses closed-form, single-choice tests, as well as matching and sequencing tests. The use of one form or another of test items, their presentation (for example, the use of graphics in questions and answers) and methods for assessing test results are related to the capabilities of the software shell.

The widespread use of computer tests is hampered primarily by the need to include components in the software that ensure user communication with the system in a professional dialect of natural language. As is known, to date the problem of creating such components has not found a final solution, primarily due to its great complexity.

To reduce the test taker’s familiarity with the test, open-type questions can be used in tests that require a definition of a term that is uniquely understood in the subject area. The most important terms and their definitions are presented in regulatory documents at various levels, primarily in federal laws and GOSTs. For example, the terminology of the preschool education sector includes terms that denote everything related to the processes of creating documents, their processing, retrieval, storage, and use. They are enshrined in a number of federal laws, primarily in the Federal Law of July 27, 2006 N 149-FZ “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection” and in the State Standard fixing the terms in the field of general office work (GOST R 51141-98) .

In order to ensure control over the memorization of terms, you will need a simple set of questions on this topic. There is quite a lot of experience of this kind at the moment. There are many test programs offered, the questions of which for the most part fall into the closed category.

However, what is more important when learning in any subject area is understanding rather than rote memorization. Although if we consider this problem more broadly, the learning goals can be divided into 6 large groups (B. Bloom's classification scale (taxonomy): 1) memorization; 2) understanding; 3) application; 4) analysis; 5) synthesis; 6) assessment.

Moreover, the complexity of the tasks that a student can solve increases as he moves from the level of simple memorization of factual material to the ability to assess the factual validity of various points of view. These 6 groups of learning goals constitute a ladder to complete mastery of theoretical knowledge.

To ensure a more competent assessment of knowledge of terms in any field, it is necessary to monitor the degree of implementation of all of the above learning objectives by choosing the most effective method of presenting knowledge.

One of the main problems is the optimal combination of two contradictory concepts: the generality of the knowledge representation system and the efficiency of its use. The fact is that the more general the knowledge representation model is used, the less effective it is in terms of the speed of finding a solution.

All knowledge representation models can be divided into the following classes: declarative; procedural; special. Each class of models has certain properties that distinguish it from others. Each class of models can have its own subclasses (Fig. 2). The task of implementing automated control of knowledge of the terminological basis can be solved using a database (hereinafter referred to as the DB).

Classification of knowledge representation models

┌───────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐

│ Declarative │ │Procedural│ │ Special │

└───────┬───────┘ └───────┬──────┘ └──────┬───────┘

┌───────┼────────┐ │ ┌──────┼───────┐

│ │ │ │ \│/ │ \│/

\│/ │ \│/ \│/ ┌──────┴─────┐│┌──────┴─────┐

┌──────┴──────┐│┌───────┴──────┐┌──────┴─ ────┐│Using││ │Using│

│Production│││ Reduction ││ Planner ││ relational│││ algebra │

└─────────────┘│└──────────────┘└──────── ────┘│ algebra ││ │ fuzzy │

│ │ │││ sets │

│ └────────────┘│└────────────┘

│ ┌──────┴───────┐

\│/ \│/ \│/

┌────────┴────────┐ ┌──────┴──────┐┌──────┴─────┐

│ Predicate │ │Semantic││Frame networks│

│ │ │ networks ││ │

└─────────────────┘ └─────────────┘└────────────┘

For this reason, in recent years, a direction that was the subject of active research in the late 70s - early 80s of the last century has developed - semantic, or conceptual, modeling in databases. Its main goal is to organize the end user interface with the information system at the level of software ideas, and not at the level of data structures. Interest in this area has increased due to the development of computer-aided database design tools based on CASE technologies.

Dictionary of personnel records management. CASE technology is a software package that automates the technological process of analysis, design, development and maintenance of complex software systems.

CASE technology supports teamwork on a project through:

Using the capabilities of the local network;

Export/import of any project fragments.

Frame (English frame - frame, frame) - in the most general case, this word denotes a structure containing some information in web design: an area of ​​the browser window for presenting a separate web page.

Dictionary of personnel records management. Modern CASE tools cover a wide range of support for numerous information system design technologies: from simple analysis and documentation tools to full-scale automation tools covering the entire software life cycle.

Typically, CASE tools include any software tool that automates one or another set of processes in the software life cycle and has the following main characteristic features:

Powerful graphical tools for describing and documenting information systems, providing a convenient interface with the developer and developing his creative capabilities;

Integration of individual components of CASE tools, ensuring controllability of the information systems development process;

Using a specially organized repository of project metadata.

When it is necessary to control not just memorization, but understanding of definitions (terms of the professional field), then when organizing testing it is important to take into account the semantic relationships that exist between the terms.

Any terminological standard consists of a set of definitions of terms that have different semantic connections. When building a semantic network to represent knowledge about terms, semantic connections will connect individual terms rather than expressions, unlike, for example, representing knowledge using frames. This means that with the help of the semantic network, building an automated testing system aimed at testing knowledge of terms and their relationships will be most convenient.

If you analyze the definitions of terms, you will notice that they consist of 3 fragments: 1) the terms themselves, which are established by the normative act; 2) words that are not defined in this normative act, but are essential for understanding the meaning of the term; 3) words that are necessary to construct a phrase.

Thus, the tops of the network should be terms that are established by a normative act (law, standard), and words that are not considered in it, but which are also fundamental and without them it is impossible to clearly convey the meaning of the definition. Let's call these vertices terms and auxiliary concepts, respectively.

The semantic connections between terms can also be classified.

The definition of one term may include a concept that is established by a normative act, i.e. another basic term. These are, for example, the terms “document” and “media”. The term "documented information carrier" is defined by the standard and participates in the definition of the term "document". We will call such a connection a connection of the “includes (on)” type.

Along with this, the definition may include a concept that is not defined in the standard, but which is fundamental, i.e. auxiliary concept. For example, "document" and "information". The concept of “information” is involved in the definition of the term “document” and is fundamental, but is not considered in GOST R 51141-98. We will call such a connection a connection of the “means (omn)” type.

There are cases where a term is defined as part of another term. Here we are talking about basic terms, such as, for example, “props” and “document”. By definition, a prop is part of the document. Therefore, we will call such semantic connections connections of the “included (in)” type.

Based on the content of the normative act, we can conclude that some terms are synonyms, thus, when determining the relationship between terms, you can use the “synonym (syn)” relationship. So, for example, concepts such as “office work” and “preschool educational institution” can be distinguished as synonyms.

If to describe a term it is necessary to use additional terms or auxiliary concepts that are an integral component of the term being described, it is advisable to use the connection “has (it)”. This type of connection exists between such concepts as “office work”, “documentation”, “organization of work with documents”.

Finally, several terms may be variations of a single term. So, for example, the terms “visual document”, “graphic document”, “audiovisual document”, “film document”, “photo document”, “iconographic document”, etc. are variations of the term "document". We will call such semantic connections connections of the “maybe (maybe)” type.

In table 1 shows the types of semantic connections that are proposed to be used in the network, and their designations when constructing the structure of the network.

Table 1

Introduced types of semantic connections and their designation

┌──────────────────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐

│ Designation of the type of connection │ Explanation of the designation │

││ Term │ on │ Term ││Relationship “includes” - definition│

││(auxiliary├─────>│(auxiliary││of the term includes │

││ concept) │ │ concept) ││basic term │

├──────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤

│┌────────────────┐ ┎ - │

││ Term │ meaning │ Term ││the definition of the term includes │

││(auxiliary├─────>│(auxiliary││auxiliary concept, │

││ concept) │ │ concept) ││describing term │

│└────────────────┘ └────────────────┘│ │

├──────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤

│┌────────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐│ │

││ Term │ in │ Term ││Communication “in” - one term │

││(auxiliary├─────>│(auxiliary││is defined as part of another│

││ concept) │ │ concept) ││term │

│└────────────────┘ └────────────────┘│ │

├──────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤

│┌────────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐│ │

││ Term │ m.b.│ Term ││Connection “maybe” - several│

││(auxiliary├─────>│(auxiliary││terms are │

││ concept) │ │ concept) ││varieties of one term│

│└────────────────┘ └────────────────┘│ │

├──────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤

│┌────────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐│ │

││ Term │ im │ Term ││Connection “has” - one term │

││(auxiliary├─────>│(auxiliary││contains a mandatory │

││ concept) │ │ concept) ││component │

│└────────────────┘ └────────────────┘│ │

├──────────────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤

│┌────────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐│ │

││ Term │ syn │ Term ││The connection “synonym” means │

││(auxiliary├─────>│(auxiliary││that one term is │

││ concept) │ │ concept) ││synonym of another term │

│└────────────────┘ └────────────────┘│ │

└──────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘

Having studied the main problems of the organization and technology of preschool educational institutions, the semantic model of concepts can be built according to four main concepts: a semantic model with the key concept “Document” - concept, classification, types; a semantic model with the key concept of “Office work”, which, according to GOST R 51141-98, includes the concepts of “Documentation” and “Organization of work with documents”.

The relationship of terms with different types of connections is shown in Fig. 3 and 4.

Fragment of the semantic network with the “Document” vertex

┌──────────────┐

┌────────────────────┤ Document │<────────────────────┐

│ └───────┬──────┴───────────────────┐ │

\│/ \│/ \│/│

┌────────┴───────┐ ┌────────┴───────┐ ┌─────┴─┴──────┐

│ Information │ │ Media │ │ Props │

└────────────────┘ └────────────────┘ └──────────────┘

Fragment of the semantic web using

"maybe" connections

┌────────────────┐

│ Document │

└───┬┬┬──┬──┬┬┬──┘

┌───────────────────┐ m.b. │││ │ │││ m.b. ┌────────────────────────┐

│ pictorial │<────────┘││ │ ││└───────>│ electronic document │

└───────────────────┘ ││ │ ││ └────────────────────────┘

┌───────────────────┐ m.b. ││ │ ││ m.b. ┌────────────────────────┐

│ photographic document │<─────────┘│ │ │└────────>│ phonological document │

└───────────────────┘ │ │ │ └────────────────────────┘

┌───────────────────┐ m.b. │ │ │ m.b. ┌────────────────────────┐

│ sound recording │<──────────┘ │ └─────────>│ video document │

└───────────────────┘ │ m.b. └────────────────────────┘

┌──────────┴─────────┐

│ text document │

└────────────────────┘

The concept of “document” includes two terms: “props is a mandatory element of the design of an official document” and “a carrier of documented information is a material object used for fixing and storing speech, sound or visual information on it, including in transformed form”, defined terminological standard, as well as the concept of “information”, which is not defined by it. All these concepts are an integral part of the concept of a document and are defined by the “has” relationship.

The documentation process is defined by GOST as recording information on various media according to established rules.

Documentation includes such concepts as the procedure for drawing up documents (requirements for the text of documents), requirements for the execution of documents (requirements for document forms, the procedure for addressing, agreeing, signing, approving, putting marks on a document). In many cases, documentation is mandatory and required by law (Figure 5).

Fragment of the semantic network with a basic concept

"Documentation"

┌────────────────┐

┌─────────────────┤Documentation├──────────┐

im │ └────────────────┘ │ im

┌─────────┴─────────┐ ┌───────────┴───────────┐

│Compilation procedure│ │Requirements for registration│

│ documents │ ┌──────┤ documents │

on │ └───┬────────┬─── ─────┬─┘

im │ \│/ │ \│/ on │

\│/ ┌───────┴───────┐ │ ┌─────┴─────┐ │

┌─────────┴─────────┐ │Document form│ │ │ Order │ │ on

│Text requirements│ └───────────────┘ │ │addressing│ │

│ documents │ on │ └───────────┘ \│/

└───────────────────┘ \│/ ┌─────┴───────┐

┌──────────────────┴──────┐ │ Marks │

│Agreement, signing,│ │on the document│

│ document approval │ └─────────────┘

└─────────────────────────┘

In the practice of documentation, general requirements have developed for the texts of documents. First of all, the test taker must know that the official document is intended to induce some action, to convince.

Requirements for the text of documents are displayed on the network (Fig. 6).

Fragment of a semantic network with a vertex

"Procedure for drawing up documents"

┌──────────────────────────────┐

│Procedure for drawing up documents│

└──────────────┬───────────────┘

┌──────────────┴───────────────┐

im \│/ \│/ im

┌─────────────┴─────────────────┐ ┌──┴──┐

│ Requirements for the text of the document ├─────┐ │ F │

└─────────────┬─────────────────┘ │ └─────┘

├────────────────┐ │

┌───────────────────┐ │ VKL \ │/ └─── parade

│Argumentation│<────┤ ┌─────┴────┐ вкл │

└───────────────────┘ │ │ Circle │ │

┌───────────────────┐ on │ └─────┬────┘ │

│ Logical │<────┤ м. б. ┌────────┴───────┐ м. б. │

└───────────────────┘ │ \│/ \│/ │

on │ ┌────┴────┐ ┌────┴ ────┐ │

│ Completeness │<────┤ │ Один │ │Несколько│ │

└───────────────────┘ │ └────┬────┘ └────┬────┘ \│/

┌───────────────────┐ on │ im /│\ im /│\ ┌────┴────┐

│ Objectivity │<────┤ ┌────┴────┐ ┌────┴────┐ │Структура│

└───────────────────┘ │ │ Simple │ │ Complex │ │ text │

┌───────────────────┐ on │ │ document│ │ document│ └────┬────┘

│Clarity in presentation│<────┤ └─────────┘ └─────────┘ │

└───────────────────┘ on

┌───────────────────┐ on │ \│/ \│/

│ Precision of presentation│<────┤ ┌───┴───┐ ┌─────┴───┐

└───────────────────┘ │ │Sections│ │Semantic│

┌───────────────────┐ on │ │ │ │ parts │

│Brief presentation│<────┤ ┌──────────┐ └───┬───┘ └─────────┘

└───────────────────┘ │ │Subsections│<─────┤ вкл

┌───────────────────┐ on │ └──────────┘ │

│ Reliability │<────┘ ┌──────────┐ │ вкл

│ information │ │ Items │<─────┘

└───────────────────┘ └──────────┘

The introduced types of semantic connections make it possible to link into a semantic network all the basic terms in the field of preschool education, which specialists involved in office work must know.

In addition, the structural features of the semantic network make it possible to construct from concepts corresponding to network nodes sentences that describe some of the processes that take place in preschool educational institutions of organizations and enterprises.

Such sentences can be considered as a condition for the occurrence of some event or as its result. To systematize information of such content, a model based on “if... then” rules (production model) can be used.

As an example, we will build a production model using the example of the process of processing incoming correspondence.

The nodes of the network are specific statements, which can consist of one or more nodes of the semantic model, i.e. contain one or more concepts from the semantic network.

Having analyzed the stages of processing incoming documents, it is necessary to group the selected nodes and additional statements into a table. Each node of the production network is assigned a serial number, depending on the sequence of execution of each of them.

In accordance with regulatory documents, work with incoming correspondence begins with checking the correctness of delivery. Erroneously delivered documents are returned to the post office for forwarding to the addressee. It follows from this that the first node of the production network is the statement: “Reception and preliminary processing of documents.” It should be assigned the number 2. Pre-processing, in turn, involves “checking that the document has been delivered correctly.” This statement is assigned number 3, etc. (Table 2).

table 2

Example of characteristics of network nodes simulating operation

with incoming correspondence

	Statement
	The document is incoming
	Reception and primary processing of documents is carried out
	The correct delivery of the document is checked
	The document was delivered incorrectly
	The document was delivered to the address
	The document is returned to the sender
	The integrity of the packaging is checked
	Packaging damage is detected
	The completeness and safety of attachments are checked
	A violation of the completeness or safety of attachments was detected
	Violations in the completeness and safety of investments are not discovered
	Documents are being registered
	Preliminary review and distribution is carried out
	Making a decision to submit a document for consideration to the head of the organization
	The document bears the resolution of the head of the organization
	Information about the performer
	A mark of execution is given
	Submitting the document to the file
	The document is being sent

It should also be noted that a feature of the production model is that when performing certain actions, a specific statement can be the result of these actions and at the same time is the basis for performing subsequent actions.

In other words, the same statement can appear in the model in the “THEN” part (i.e., be the result of a previous action), and then in the “IF” part (i.e., be a condition, the fulfillment of which generates a specific result).

When composing statements that are nodes of the network, key concepts are used that are the tops of the semantic network, auxiliary concepts that are not used in the network, as well as prepositions and conjunctions used to connect words (Table 3).

Table 3

Examples of definitions participating in the product network

Number lines	Concepts, statements, participating in semantic networks (A)	Auxiliary concept of "real" peace" (B)	Unions, prepositions, particles, intended for linking words (C)
	Incoming document	Implemented
	Reception and primary processing	Delivered
	Checking the correct delivery
	Checking the integrity of the package
	Preliminary review and distribution	Package
	Execution of the document	Damaged
	Execution mark	Reported
	Collection of information	Sender
	Registration of documents	The decision was made
	Outgoing document	Placing
	Referral to the case
	Sending a document	Intelligence
	Document
	Checking the completeness and safety of investments	Written response
	Transfer of the document to the contractor	Supervisor
	Executor	Attachments
	Control	Detection
	Coordination	Is

We construct each statement of the rule network using numbered words. For example, the sentence corresponding to node number 1 (“Incoming document”) corresponds to code A1, because the concept "Incoming document" is part of the concepts used in the semantic network.

The sentence “The document was delivered to the address”, and accordingly the network node 4a can be represented as the following combination: A15, B2, C1, B3.

This information is used later to build a subsystem for editing and updating knowledge in an automated knowledge testing system.

Analysis of the data obtained shows that to study a certain process in office work, knowledge and use of the basic terminology presented in the semantic model is not enough. In order to build with the help of terms, and then test knowledge of the logical chain of actions, it is necessary to use auxiliary concepts that are not enshrined in regulatory documents.

From the statements discussed above, a production network is created, which takes into account the logical connections between statements. The network consists of nodes and arcs. Nodes correspond to statements, and arcs are determined by cause-and-effect relationships between statements.

Thus, the use of a production model, or a rule-based model, which is based on the semantic network, allows you to create an automated testing system and test knowledge not only of definitions of terms, but also test the test taker’s ability to independently make decisions in critical situations related to preschool educational institutions , which will be included in the production model. A prerequisite for ensuring the ability to adapt the testing system to the required competencies is to establish a correspondence between the elements of the list of these competencies and subsets of the vertices of the semantic network. Depending on the importance of competencies, determined by the requirements of a particular enterprise, the order of activation of focuses during testing is formed, as well as the testing strategy for a specific employee.

Literature

1. Fionova L.R. On the issue of assessing the professional competence of specialists working with documents // Monthly professional magazine "Secretary Affairs", 2006, No. 2, p. 46 - 51.

2. Bidenko V.I. Competence-based approach to the design of State Educational Standards of Higher Professional Education: Methodological manual. - M.: Research Center for Problems of Quality of Training of Specialists, 2005.

3. Watersan D. Guide to expert systems: Trans. from English - M.: Mir, 1989. - 388 p.

4. Fionova L.R., Usmanova I.V., Khusyainova D.B. Intellectualization of professional testing of the level of training of managers of the XXI century // Training of management personnel in the XXI century: Proceedings of the II All-Russian scientific and practical conference / Ed. I.V. Rezanovich. - Chelyabinsk: SUSU Publishing House, 2004, p. 203 - 207.

5. Fionova L.R., Usmanova I.V. Application of the concept of competencies for the development of knowledge testing systems // In the book: "University education MKUO - 2007", XI International Conf., Penza, PSU, 2007, p. 202 - 204.

L. Fionova

Professor,

Head of Department

"Information Support

management and production"

Penza State

university

Signed for seal