General
Circular No. 001303
To: Heads of State Agencies and Human
Resource Directors
Subject: New Clerical Selection Procedure
Issue
Date: November 18, 1997
Background:
As stated in General Circular No. 001294, the General Clerical test, series
4000, was
one of
the tests stolen from our Alexandria center in August. We have developed replacement
parallel
forms which we began using November 1, 1997.
However, separate and apart from the
test
theft, we had planned to do an updated job analysis on these jobs and develop
new selection
procedures
that would include not only an assessment of abilities such as reading, English
and math
but
other areas as well, such as work interests and preferences that are related to
job performance
but are
not usually assessed on the typical multiple choice written test. Consequently, Civil Service
has
contracted with Darany and Associates, a California based firm with extensive
experience in
developing
and validating clerical selection procedures, to develop and validate a new
testing
procedure
for our series 4000 classes.
The new
test will consist of multiple-choice tests of clerical skills some of which may
be speeded
(i.e.,
with short time limits) plus a biographical inventory. A biographical inventory is somewhat
like a
written test version of questions that might be asked about an applicant's
background in a
job
interview. It consists of
multiple-choice written questions assessing applicant interests and
preferences
as well as factual information about an applicant's work history. The biographical
inventory
is validated by administering questions to a large group of incumbents. These same
incumbents
are also evaluated on some job performance criterion such as supervisory ratings.
These
are compared in order to develop the scoring key for the biographical
inventory. There is
no one
"correct" answer on the biographical inventory questions. Every answer gets some points.
More
points are assigned to answers chosen most frequently by incumbents who
received high job
performance
ratings. In that way, the biographical
inventory is scored to predict who will be
successful
when hired.
We will
need help from agency personnel office staff and incumbents to develop and validate
the
procedure
as follows:
Phase
1:
Administer
task inventory questionnaires to a significant percentage of the 7,400
incumbents in
either
December or early January: Based on meetings already held with clerical
supervisors and
managers
over these classes, as well as existing job analysis data, Darany and
Associates have
compiled
a list of approximately 150 tasks covering all jobs in series 4000. They wish to have
many of
the 7,400 incumbents fill out a questionnaire and evaluate each task on two
rating scales
(importance
and time spent). Although some
questionnaires may be mailed to incumbents, most
will be
administered in assembled sessions similar to a test administration. We will be contacting
agencies
to try to arrange facilities and personnel offices to arrange to send employees
to
centralized
sessions in various locations throughout the state. We will also be asking agency
personnel
office staff to help us administer some of the sessions after receiving
training. We will
try to
conduct some sessions at the work sites to minimize the need for incumbents to
travel. We
estimate
the time to administer each questionnaire session to be approximately one and a
half
hours. We realize this will be a heavy burden on
agencies, but the consulting firm believes it vital
to get
task data from everyone to make the procedure valid.
Phase
2:
Pre-test
clerical skills test, biographical inventory, and administer criterion measure
of work
performance:
Darany and Associates will analyze the task inventory ratings to determine the
content
of the written test of clerical skills and the biographical inventory. They may require some
meetings
with small numbers of supervisors or managers in January or February, 1998 to
develop
performance
measures such as supervisory rating scales.
Then in March or April (these dates are
rough
estimates) we will again need to get personnel officers and incumbents to help
us. We will
need to
administer the written skills test and biographical inventory to about 1200
incumbents.
We will
also need to collect supervisory ratings on these same incumbents to compare to
test and
biographical
inventory scores to validate the procedures.
We
expect the new procedure to be installed in May or June of 1998. Because it is so different
from
the current exam, we will need to cancel all existing registers. The new procedure grades
cannot
be merged with current 4000 grades. We
will coordinate the change so that the transition
is as
smooth as possible and agencies do not have to delay filling vacancies while we
build up the
new
lists.
Why we
are doing this: Although the current 4000 series does a good job of testing
cognitive
abilities
such as verbal and numerical reasoning and certain knowledges such as English
grammar
and
word usage, it does not assess other areas that are job-related such as
attitudes, interests, and
preferences. Part of the department's strategic plan is
to improve the quality of selection and
assessment
of applicants by searching for alternatives to traditional paper and pencil
tests and
Experience
and Training ratings (E&T's) that can be used in addition to the more
traditional
measures. We hope the biographical inventory will give
added value to the selection process for
clerical
jobs. If it works well there, we will
consider doing biographical inventories for other job
classes
in the future.
We look
forward to working with agency personnel on this project and wish to express
our
appreciation
in advance for your assistance.
Sincerely,
Allen
H. Reynolds
Director