Autumn 2006 Activity: WorkKeys Personal Skills Assessment Provides Insight About Likely On-the-Job Performance

The WorkKeys jobs skills assessment system has helped employers in a wide range of business and industry settings hire, keep, and invest in the right people, through measurement of foundational skills. The Personal Skills Assessments, the latest addition to the WorkKeys suite of services, will offer insight into how applicants are likely to behave on the job. They provide information about their “soft skills”—such matters as attitudes and behaviors that are relevant to the workplace.

The Personal Skills Assessments are intended for prescreening, to be administered before a candidate is given serious consideration. They cover three key areas—Performance, Talent, and Fit.

The Performance assessment covers one’s tendency toward counterproductive work behaviors and attitudes toward work. It measures general work performance, such as theft, absenteeism, and resilience to work-related stress, as well as unsafe work behaviors, such as accidents, working under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and verbal or physical aggression.

The Talent assessment measures skills such as dependability, assertiveness, and emotional stability, to provide insight into the extent a person is reliable, strives to follow through on commitments, and tends to think before acting.

The Fit assessment examines interests and values to assess the goodness of fit between a person’s particular attributes and the characteristics of the organization or of a given job.

The new Personal Skills Assessments will be introduced over the course of the coming year.