http://www.nwfusion.com/careers/0419man.html Taking inventory Skills assessment can help you hire the right people the first time and make the best use of your staff. By LISA MORGAN Network World, 04/19/99 ICG Communications needs to hire five WAN administrators, but Kael Loftus would be happy to find just one. The network operations center (NOC) team recently hired an administrator who had an impressive resumˇ and did well in a technical interview, but who failed on the job. Loftus and his fellow NOC managers at ICG's San Jose division realize the results of the interviews they conduct may not necessarily be indicative of performance, so they are developing a standardized written test to administer to job candidates. The test is all about skills assessment, a burgeoning category of tools and practices. Assessing employees' skills will help companies: Hire the right people the first time. Compare their employees' skills. Spend IT training dollars more wisely. Deploy skills-based project teams. In its most basic form, skills assessment reflects traditional human resources and management practices, such as reviewing resumˇs, conducting interviews and monitoring employee performance. Today, though, companies are developing their own methods - or buying third-party tools - to more accurately gauge the skill sets of job applicants, consultants, employees and teams. Talking technology ICG (formerly Netcom) knows that resumˇs and employment interviews don't tell the whole story about an individual's skills, so the company also relies on technical interviews to assess aptitude and knowledge. ICG managers spend 1 to 2 hours asking candidates about everything from the basics of the Open Systems Interconnection model to the functional differences between the Border Gateway Protocol and the Open Shortest Path First protocol. The length and depth of an interview are scaled according to the candidate's background. The forthcoming written tests will be used as another skills assessment tool. Other companies are embracing even more formalized skills assessment programs for recruiting, training and the creation of project teams. For example, Don Harris, staff development manager at Belks Department Stores in Charlotte, N.C., says his firm decided several years ago to capitalize on its employees' skills. The retailer tried to create an inventory of workers' skills, but there was no quick way to navigate through the paper-based system whenever a specific need arose. "We ended up with too many useless forms," Harris says. Harris then turned to SkillView, a suite of client-server and Internet-based skills assessment tools that lets employees profile themselves. SkillView allows the company to identify skills gaps, training needs and proficiency levels of job applicants and employees. As a result, Belks is getting more out of its training budget and is now in a position to implement skill-based staffing. GE Capital Consulting is another company that recognizes the value of skills assessment. "In the past, we found that some individuals interviewed well but were no good on the job. Over time, we realized we needed an unbiased, standardized method," says Wanda Brooks, recruiting director at the St. Paul, Minn., consultancy. The IT consulting firm still conducts interviews and reviews resumˇs, but hiring managers also use self-assessment forms and TeckChek, a skills assessment tool designed to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in more than 100 IT areas, including NetWare, Windows NT and Lotus Notes administration. TeckChek evaluations are administered in a monitored environment, which usually consists of one or more computers, one or more test takers and an administrator. TeckChek proficiency profiles include seven raw scores, percentiles that compare the test taker to others and a detailed list of strengths and weaknesses. GE Capital Consulting uses the data to select the most qualified workers for client projects and to build skill-based teams. "Vendor certification isn't enough," Brooks says. "Someone once applied who had been through five popular certification programs. This person looked great on paper but scored 1% on the TeckChek evaluation." While vendor certification enhances an employee's qualifications, it doesn't provide an accurate measure of skills because each worker's knowledge base and experience is different. Skills assessment may become an integral part of human resources practices, training and IT project management as a means of streamlining resources. In the meantime, ICG's Loftus says: "We haven't found a replacement for the good old-fashioned test drive."