May
23
Psychological Testing has become rampant across industries, more so in
the case of Information Technology, BPOs and ITES companies. These
tests are used to ‘throw up’ personality profiles and competency
descriptions that would help companies recruit the ‘right’ candidate.
The Human Resources department in most organizations is responsible for
the administering of Psychometric tests.
The International body that sets guidelines for testing is the
International Test Commission ( ITC ) which stipulates guidelines for
adaptation and usage of tests. ITC has issued guidelines to cover the
following -
Professional and ethical standards in testing
Rights of the test candidate and other parties involved in the testing
process
Choice and evaluation of alternative tests
Test administration, scoring and interpretation
Report writing and feedback.
ITC has defined competence in test usage as, ” A Competent test user
will use tests appropriately, professionally and in an ethical manner,
paying due regard to the needs and rights of those involved in the
testing process, the reasons for testing, and the broader context in
which the testing takes place.”
There are many reasons why a test can be fallible -
1. Inappropriate usage of Tests
The norms for which the tests have been designed have to be considered
carefully. They cannot be administered to a population that is
different from the norm population ( Norm Population for example could
be, adolescents, Senior Executives; norms could be based on age,
occupation, gender, economic status etc. ). That is, a test designed
for adolescents cannot be administered on Senior Executives and vice
versa because the results of such administration would be faulty.
2. Culture Fair Testing
Another common flaw is in the usage of tests which are not culture fair.
Many psychological tests have been designed for the western population
and can be used appropriately only in that culture. Unfortunately many
of these tests are used on the Indian population giving rise to faulty
conclusions.
3. Design of Test
The psychological test can only be designed by professionals qualified
in psychometrics. Many a time lay people design tests using the help of
information accessed through the internet or sometimes even from their
own common sense. Such tests are not valid.
4. Validation of tests
Every test that has been designed has to be validated. The process of
validation would involve administering the test on a large population
over a period of time before it is certified as ‘ready for use’. This
cannot be done from tests that are fabricated overnight.
5. Downloaded Tests
Often tests are downloaded from the Internet and are used for purposes
other than for which they have been designed. For example, a
personality test being used to test the Emotional Intelligence or Team
Skills of a person.
6. Wrong Customization
Sometimes the items of a test are changed to suit the user. In such
instances the test cannot give valid results. For example an item ( a
question / statement in the test ) would state -
” Do you usually date on weekends ?” , could be changed to
” Do you socialize on weekends? ”
to fit the Indian scenario. The results of the test with such changed
‘items’will not be not valid.
7. Test Administration
The test administration should be systematically standardized, i.e., the
test should be administered under exactly the same conditions to all
users. This means that the actual test environment, the instructions,
the timing and the materials are the same on every test occasion.
Before administering the test the user must consider the following
guidelines -
What is the purpose of testing?
What outcomes will be achieved through testing?
Why are these specific tests being used?
Why are these tests relevant to the outcomes being sought?
What evidence is there that these tests are appropriate for the people
who are to be assessed?
8. Confidentiality of Test Results
All results of tests must be maintained by the administrator in strict
confidence. Revealing the results could lead to unfair discrimination
in the workplace. This happens when a test used for selection is
disadvantageous to certain ‘groups’ within the organization. In the US,
the use of IQ tests in employee selection has been prohibited. This was
due to the lack of confidentiality maintained by the administrators
which resulted in employees being unfairly discriminated. At present
any psychometric test has to be administered with utmost care and after
the requisite permissions is obtained.
To ensure confidentiality, the following guidelines should be
considered:
1. Ensure that test materials are kept securely
2. Ensure secure storage of and control access to test materials.
3. Respect copyright law and agreements that exist with respect to a
test including any prohibitions on the copying or transmission of
materials in electronic or other forms to other people, whether
qualified or otherwise.
4. Protect the integrity of the test by not coaching individuals on
actual test materials or other practice materials that might unfairly
influence their test performance.
5. Ensure that test techniques are not described publicly in such a way
that their usefulness is impaired.
9. Competence of Test Administrator and Interpreter
The personnel administering the tests have to be strict in following the
instructions stipulated by the test designers. The interpretations too
have to be done by qualified personnel who are psychologists.
10. Limitation of tests
The tests are ‘limited’ for the purposes for which they have been
designed. For a holistic assessment of an individual, it is required
that the test results are supplemented by information from interviews
and group discussions. In addition the test results are not valid after
eighteen months of its administration.
11. Test Copyrights
It is an offence to copy tests that have been copyrighted. They can only
be used after the necessary permission is obtained from the designers.
Otherwise this illegal copying may lead to lack of standardization in
Test conditions and poor control of materials.
12. Test feedback
Often times the guidelines for feedback are not followed by the Users.
The British Psychological Society has set out the following guidelines
for written and oral feedback:
Ensure that the technical and linguistic levels of any reports are
appropriate for the level of understanding of the recipients.
Make clear that the test data represent just one source of information
and should always be considered in conjunction with other information.
Explain how the importance of the test results should be weighted in
relation to other information about the people being assessed.
Use a form and structure for a report that is appropriate to the
context of the assessment.
When appropriate, provide third parties with information on how
results may be used to inform their decisions.
Explain and support the use of test results used to classify people
into categories (e.g. for diagnostic purposes or for job selection).
Include within written reports a clear summary, and when relevant,
specific recommendations.
Present oral feedback to test takers in a constructive and supportive
manner.
http://alliancebschool.org
Share This
May
22
So, you know what a brand is. You know what makes up a brand and which parts of your company you might be able to exploit - I mean use, to define and manipulate your brand and the way you are perceived by the public. But, well, how?
The combination of a successfully developed brand and the implementation of a great marketing campaign will do wonders for your business. Think of the TV advertisements that stick in your mind - what makes it so? What have they done differently? If you make a list, you’ll notice that each and every one of them has taken advantage of creative and innovative ideas. It is not enough to only have a great logo, or great radio ads. The entire marketing package, when done properly, is your key to building your business into a wonderful success.
There are a great number of business tools that are widely accepted as forms of advertising. The key here is to put your brand on everything. That might not even mean to put your logo on everything (although in most cases it is advisable), but just to make sure that all of your business material fits in with the business image that you’ve already determined. For instance, if you have a particular corporate colour that’s fairly unique (that is, it’s not black), you can use that to your advantage by putting all of your correspondence in colour coded envelopes. If your brand is a particular scent or perfume, make sure you’re always wearing it when you meet with your potential suppliers or customers. Brand everything.
You should have two main ports of call, depending on your industry: your business card and your website. These are the first places your customers will look for your information. If your brand isn’t apparent through these two mediums, you’re probably in a bit of marketing trouble. Stop reading, find a brand developer (I know one you could use! ho ho) and have them redone. Right now. No excuses.
You should use your logo, or some manifestation of it, on your business card. Your business card is your little personal identity that people can carry about with them. A piece of you is written in to your business card. Work on it and work on it until it’s exactly right, or you’ll regret it as soon as it comes back from the printers. You should be proud to hand your business card over - it’s even better if people go “oooh” when they see it. Aim for “oooh”.
With regards to your website, above all else it should be nice looking and easy to navigate. It really need not be flashy, but chances are that people will be keener to take an interest in it if it’s not ugly. So if you have an ugly website, you’ll want to fix that too. It doesn’t need to be beautiful, but it needs to be inoffensive. If you want to do it yourself, there are tens of thousands of tutorials out there on web design that you might find useful. Otherwise, employing a web designer or developer to create an effective site for you is your best bet. Just make sure you check out their previous work, to make sure they can actually provide what you need. Web designers seem to be a dime a dozen these days, and it can make it difficult to choose one that is actually skilled!
Now go away and come back when you’ve got your business cards and web site sorted out. I’ll wait here.
Once you have your initial points of contact sorted out, you can look at everything else. There are so many options for marketing your product or service, I couldn’t possibly cover them all, even if I wrote a book about it. So let’s talk options and examples. I’ll use myself as an example, then I can disguise brainstorming as writing an article, and feel accomplished afterwards.
The most obvious form of marketing seems to be print advertising. Print advertising is available through different mediums: magazines, newspapers, letterbox drops, flyers, brochures, annoying bits of paper under people’s windscreen wipers.
There are benefits to all of these, depending on who your target audience is and how much you want to spend. For instance, a quarter page colour ad in a magazine might cost you $1500, but it might also give you more opportunity to target your specific audience (if, for example, you were a brand developer, you could advertise in a start-up company magazine). Obviously the benefit here versus in a newspaper is the specific audience reading the magazine. But the newspaper might only cost you a couple of hundred dollars, so there is benefit in that.
Letterbox drops are fairly inexpensive to develop (especially if you do the photocopying and dropping yourself), but you might find that the majority of people just throw your flyer out. And then the people who do actually read your flyer might not be interested, which can make it a big waste of time. On the other hand, if you have a low-sales, high-profit sort of business with big mark-ups, even a few sales from your drop may make it profitable, so it could well be worth the time and money you put into it.
Brochures allow you to display your full range of products, but they’re expensive to produce and like letterbox drops, a lot of people just throw them in the bin - at $4 a pop, that’s nothing to laugh at. If you stick your flyer up at your local supermarket, it will probably only cost you 20 cents for the photocopy, but it may be detrimental to your professionalism. Annoying bits of paper under the windscreen wipers are, well, annoying, and should probably be reserved for door to door salesmen.
It’s not just about advertising though, of course. As I’ve discussed previously, your brand is made up of so many more components than just advertising material. Get creative with your marketing - when you sell a product, add your own personal flair to it. Make sure your packaging material has your logo on it. When you’re out and about, wear a t-shirt or earrings in the colour of your company. If you do these sorts of things often enough, people will start to take notice. Every minute of the day is an opportunity to have your brand recognised.
Do you feel more positively about companies that are active in the community, or with charities? How would involvement in a campaign such as donating a percentage of your profits to a non-profit organisation reflect on your brand? Consider that if you sell children’s clothing, for example, donating part of each sale to SIDS & Kids may well encourage parents to think of your business as being concerned about children and involved in the community. And of course, you get a good feeling from it, and SIDS & Kids will benefit as well. Everyone wins.
Take advantage of free marketing opportunities. I recently purchased a book called Marketing Without Money (it’s not a bad book, worth a read!), and for irony’s sake put my business stickers on the front and back of it, with a little blurb about what I do. When people on the bus take an interest in what I am reading, they’ll also see an advertisement for my firm. Take your business cards everywhere and give them out at every opportunity, even if you don’t give them out during necessarily business-related conversations.
Make sure you’re well presented as often as you can be. I know we all have those days when our nose is a bit stuffy and we just want to roll out of bed and to the supermarket in our trackies to buy chocolate, but if you can give an air of sophistication and “I took the time to be presentable, because I care about my business image”, that will have a profound effect on anyone you happen to speak to. You can never be certain of when a business opportunity might arise - give yourself the best chance of making a good impression when it does.
Consider sign writing for your car, which is fairly inexpensive and can be very effective. People might not pull you over to talk about your company, but if you do a fair bit of driving in your local community and you have a well-developed logo, you will generate a sense of familiarity. Then complement your car campaign with a well designed logo in the Yellow Pages or in your local community directory. When your potential clients go in search of a provider, you will be able to trigger their memories and invoke that same sense of familiarity in them - they will choose you, not someone they’re completely in the dark about.
The key marketing features you should be conscious of, then, are:
- Consistency: consistency is absolutely the most important feature of well developed brand marketing. You want your customers to be able to recognise your brand in everything you put out there.
- Uniqueness: developing a campaign that brings something new will encourage people to investigate your company and find out what you do that makes you different. Obviously this isn’t always possible, but think outside the box whenever you can. Humour is great too.
- Overkill: definitely use overkill with your brand! The chances are that you will affect different groups of people with your different mediums, so use as many as you like. Make people become familiar with your company.
- Make it memorable: you want repeat consumers, and you want them to develop a relationship with your brand. Make sure your logo and other branding material has been well developed, with a key theme in mind, and can be reproduced easily. Some of the world’s most recognisable brands are also the most simple (like Nike).
- Think creatively: don’t limit yourself to the “usual suspects” when it comes to marketing your company. There is no reason why you can’t screen print a t-shirt with your logo on it and just wear it everywhere. Have some temporary tattoos made of it and plaster them on your children. Even when you’re sending very boring, impersonal letters to places like banks, include your logo on the envelope, or use colour-coded envelopes. You never know when the mail clerks might need to use your product.
- Marketing your brand need not be incredibly expensive or difficult. If you can understand that your brand is in everything you put forth to the public, you’ll become more and more in tune with the ways you can alter their perception of your business, or at least let them become aware that it exists.
Anna Spargo-Ryan is the Principal of Australian brand development agency Anna Clements. They specialise in brand consultancy, identity design, web development and copywriting. Visit their website at http://www.annaclements.com.au/
Share This
May
21
When trying to decide if Interior Design is right for you, it helps to know what that really means. Interior Design is not simply the profession that “makes rooms and places pretty”; it takes a little bit more than that. You need to know how to do some of the technical aspects of design also. Some of these technical things include:
Designing and reading blueprints: This is particularly for the projects that require a great change in the area’s structure like wall removal etc. This is also required in order to make additional rooms, build gazebos, and adding extra rooms. You will need to draw up blueprints of the entire house or read the originals copies, so that you can do your job without causing much disturbance to the rest of the house or environment.
Environmental Analysis: Once you can read blueprints, you will best decide where to go with your ideas. You need the ability to effectively create or remove space in a particular environment so that you can cause little or no disturbance the environment as a whole when making your changes.
Environmental Lighting: Many people forget that lighting is included in any space changing project. You must have knowledge of how lighting works, and have a general idea of what is needed to install light fixtures in areas that do not have them already. Many homes are not equipped with lighting fixtures in some rooms. Of course, if you wish to change the lighting fixtures from general lamps to say, track lighting, you may have a problem if you do not understand how to install it
Basic Plumbing & pipe structure: If adding or changing spaces in kitchens and bathrooms, plumbing fixtures are often changed or re-organized. You will need to understand their basic functions in order to effectively plan a change that involves them, or is to be done around them.
Rosemary Leake is an Independent Consultant with Southern Living at Home. Inspired by Southern Living magazine, our exclusive home d
Share This
« Previous Page —
Next Page »
