Overview of TotalView™ Assessment System
The TotalView Assessment matches people to jobs through technology.

 

BACKGROUND
The TotalView Assessment, a psychometric assessment commissioned by ICES Assessment Systems Inc. and designed in 1994 by Dr. David Bartram of Newland Park and Associates, is a management tool used in the selection, coaching and development of employees. Dr. Bartram is a past Dean of the School of Life Science and a past Dean of the Faculty of Science and the Environment at the University of Hull, England.

The construction and validation of the TotalView Assessment was completed in the United States of America, Canada, Great Britain, Singapore and Malaysia. Approximately 4,700 employed people, in a variety of occupations, participated in the validation group. They worked for companies of all sizes and in government. The people in the validation study represent a true cross-section of the international workforce, giving the TotalView Assessment multiracial, multicultural and multilinguistic validity. Content, construct and job validation studies have confirmed the reliability and validity of the TotalView Assessment.

The TotalView™ Assessment Technical Manual provides details of numerous validation studies undertaken by Dr. Bartram and the Publisher.

The TotalView™ Assessment is a scientifically designed method of measuring work-related characteristics of people. It is an accurate, valid, and reliable psychometric assessment used for a wide variety of human resource requirements including assisting in the prediction of the job suitability of candidates for specific jobs, aiding the team building process and detailing specific information on employees' training and coaching requirements. Most human resource decisions will benefit from the use of the TotalView™ Assessment in conjunction with work history reviews and interviews. It is recommended that the TotalView Assessment should not constitute more than 30% of the decision-making process for selection of new employees and should be less when assessing existing employees where there is on-the-job information on file.

 

WHAT IS TOTALVIEW?
TotalView is a unique and powerful business management tool. In addition to the personality and interests scales found in many assessments, TotalView includes a validated and reliable General Abilities section. TotalView Assessment is at the leading edge of accurately and predictably assessing the whole person when it comes to asking: “Can and will he/she do the job?”

The TotalView Assessment General Abilities scales tell how quickly people learn. In other words, how quickly can people “get it” and think on their feet. It also tells how challenged – or bored – an individual will be in a job. Individuals who might be overly challenged require longer training periods, more supervision and coaching and tend to make more mistakes or miss deadlines and details when workloads increase or the complexity of the job increases.

The Motivation/Interests scales indicate whether a person has a desire to work with people, data and things and gives an evaluation of key personality characteristics based on the Big Five Model that affect job performance.

An employee evaluation is not complete without a way to tell if the candidate might have tried to fake their responses. The integrity of the TotalView Assessment Report is verified by four built-in self-validation methods. This makes the TotalView Assessment resistant to attempts to "fake it" or manipulate the results.

 

HOW DOES THE TOTALVIEW ASSESSMENT WORK?
The process begins with the completion of our valid and reliable TotalView Assessment, which measures Abilities, Interests, and Personality. The time required to complete a TotalView Assessment is between one half-hour and one hour depending upon the version of TotalView Assessment you require and the speed at which the candidate completes the assessment.

The main purpose of TotalView Assessment Software or Online Assessment Center is to prepare Assessment Reports that compare the job candidate to a given job description in a manner that is easy for a manager to understand. In short, the Software is a psychometric assessment report generator. Once a candidate completes the assessment, a number of reports can be generated that will aid management in making human resource decisions.

The reports graphically display the candidate's scores as a number ranging from 1 to 10 for each of the scales measured. Each line of the graph is a bell curve that has a normal distribution of ten. The majority of people, or 68% of the general working population, will fall in the middle 4-5-6-7 range of this graph. At the extremes, the likelihood of a 1 or a 10 score is approximately 2%.

 

THE TOTALVIEW BENCHMARK
The TotalView Assessment Software prints a "Job Description Survey" to be completed by management in order to relate the requirements of the job to the TotalView scales. It is imperative that the manager completing the Job Description Survey has a thorough understanding of the skills, responsibilities, attitudes, and abilities necessary to perform the job well. If there is more than one manager in your organization who has a thorough knowledge of the requirements of the job it is recommended that all such persons complete a Job Description Survey.

A preliminary benchmark is created when the completed survey is entered into the program. This process is based solely on management's understanding and assessment of the job. The Job Description Survey is to be completed by the immediate supervisor of the people doing a particular job. Once the benchmark is created, it is reviewed with management and adjusted as necessary.

It is then recommended that existing employees holding the position or who have held the position in the past complete the TotalView Assessment. Their reports are matched against the benchmark to confirm that the job profile management created accurately describes the Personality Traits, Interests and Abilities of the best performing employees.

Good hiring and promoting practices require that the job candidates should be matched to those required for the job for which the candidates are being considered. This can be accomplished by creating a Benchmark of the features that your experience has confirmed are required for the job. This requires that you give careful consideration to the actual requirements of the job before evaluating candidates, interviewing them, and filling the job.

The importance of establishing accurate job requirements can be better understood by example. Consider how uncomfortable you would be if the pilot flying your next flight was a risk-taker and disliked following detailed plans. How concerned would you be if your child's school bus driver was extremely assertive and very competitive? The job requirements must accurately reflect the traits desired in a candidate.

It is easy to define the technical requirements of a job such as the required professional qualifications or the ability to use a computer. It is more difficult to define a "people-person" or a "self-starter." The Benchmark is the method that graphically represents the desired characteristics for the job as an overlay in the various reports available from the TotalView Assessment System.

Each Benchmark is created and saved in the computer by job title. Thereafter, any job candidate can be compared with the specific job requirements reflected in the Benchmark. The Software emphasizes the areas where the candidate is not compatible with the criteria reflected in the Benchmark. In this way the TotalView Assessment matches people to jobs.

The Selection and Succession Planning reports yield an overall percentage of job suitability and a summary of each characteristic identified in the Benchmark. The overall percentage figure helps you rank candidates in respect of their job suitability. Additionally, if the candidate does not match a preferred characteristic in the Benchmark, the TotalView Selection Report suggests relevant interview questions and the TotalView Coaching Report offers training or directional tips. This information is designed to help the interviewer or the coach maximize on-the-job performance.

 

TOTALVIEW ASSESSMENT REPORTS
Your TotalView Assessment System will produce five types of reports for the following uses or applications:

Get 5 Reports for the price of one. Yes, that's right. Another unique feature of the TotalView Assessment System is that users are charged only for the first report – or you get 5 reports for one fee per candidate. Once a candidate is entered into the system, users are not charged again when they process additional report versions including the Succession Planning report which compares multiple candidates against the job profile or a single candidate against multiple benchmarks for career pathing and development opportunities.

 

TOTALVIEW ASSESSMENT USES AND APPLICATIONS
There are several uses or applications for the TotalView Assessment including the following:

    • Evaluating job candidates;
    • Evaluating present employees, to establish Benchmarks;
    • Screening candidates for promotion;
    • Evaluating employees to assess training needs
    • Building structured interviews
    • Linking personalities and abilities to core competencies
    • Providing coaching tips for managers

For more information or to qualify for a complimentary TotalView assessment, click here and complete our registration form. Please include "TotalView" in comment box.

 

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