IT Staff competency test.

Hi,

Self Assessment.

Its far better if they rate themselves as it means they're thinking about their own strengths and weaknesses.

Also if you know them well personally, then when it comes time to discuss their own assement with them, they wont be in much of a position to bullshit. And at the end of the day they have to happy with their assessment.

Make sure they use plenty of verifyable examples in their assessment to backup whatever claims they make about themselves.

Hope that gives you some ideas anyway...
Cheers,
Tim.

We do this as part of our employee development process. We have the employee give us their perceived strengths and weaknesses(areas for development), and find that its usually pretty accurate for people who are mature individuals. The process is that the employee writes them down, then meets with the supervisor to agree them between the two. The employee also has to give an intermediate and long term goal, and part of the exercise is to identify what weaknesses they need addressed in order to be able to achieve those goals.

Then the employee and supervisor work together on a plan to help address those issues. It can be training, coaching/mentoring, job swapping, taking on a new type of project to get some experience etc.

You have to agree the planb and review the progress, preferrably every quarter.

James

What you have to do is come up with a large list of professional and technical competencies. Then both the employee and the manager need to select 3-4 that need to be addressed, and come to agreement on those, and then upon each assessment then there is both a management assessment and a self assessment. As each of the weaker competencies become stronger and more well rounded, then you can focus on other competencies.

Be careful on how you do this, because if people really get wind that you are all of a sudden looking at everyone's competencies that usually means that you are looking at eliminating people.

You have to present it in a manner that demonstrates that this is a plan whereby the employee can achieve a desired goal.
Get rid of the meets exeeds outstanding does not meet, unsatisfactory chart - either you are making it or you aren't, either way there has to be a plan. A goal. Present it always in the manner of here's how you can better yourself - I think most people want to better themselves.

You could also try, purely to complement the suggestions in the other answers, using some online testing, like www.brainbench.com

Gary

m generally against evaluating people based on tests (written or otherwise) Tests, cab only be measures of how well one understands a subject or how well they are prepared for that test. This is good for schools, certifying boards or other examination boards. Some companies have battery tests they give employees once or twice a year etc. Then some companies interview processes is a day long of taking behavioral tests and solving quantitative problem.
Still non of these tell you how well a person performas their job. If you are serious about building a winning team, you put in place a winning vision and a culture that builds winners.
If aperson meets the basic qualification requirements testing them over and over, is time wasted, which can be used to make them independent and contributing winning employees. It is a chanllenge fora lot of us. But, trust me the best lawyers, are not necessarily those that score high marks at the Bar, The best soldier does not necessarily know how a gun works. The Best pilot is not an aeronatical engineer. The best IT person will definitely not be a computer wizard and a politically correct individual. However It is a business and cultural change agaent, the best IT people and leaders of tommorow,will understand change and learn to reject status quo, and, are continiously challenged to reach the best performance in deployment of business enbling technologies. This concept has very little to do with testing. It is a whole lot to do with your leadership skills, how to lead, provide a vision and make winners out of everyone.

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