IDENTIFYING SKILLS BY MEANS OF PERSONAL PROFILE ANALYSIS University College Arteveldehogeschool - Ghent Office for study and career

guidance

My name is Eva Booms, I work at the University College Arteveldehogeschool in Ghent where I am responsible for our last year students and alumni when it comes to career guidance. We are participating in the Leonardo Da Vinci project with two of our degree programmes namely our bachelor in secondary education and our bachelor in physiotherapy. It is within this perspective that Mr. De Vlieger from EPOS invited me to come here today and speak about how we are preparing our students for their placements abroad. We are using an instrument called the PPA, Personal Profile Analysis and I am going to explain you shortly what this test is about. Personal Profile Analysis PPA is not a personality test! behavioural analysis of a person validated, positive and non-critical emphasis on strengths and capabilities

What is it? The personal profile analysis is used primarily as a part of an extended and structured appraisal system developed for managers wishing to recruit new employees. Other use include appraisal for training and development, career guidance, benchmarking, team analysis, executive feedback and planning for change. In each of these human resource applications, PPA has a contribution to make The analysis finds its theoretical origins in the thought of Dr. William Moulton Marston. In 1928 he draw up the theory that human behaviour depends on the situation where one finds himself. It was shown on a scale with a vertical and horizontal axis. The vertical axis represents the situation from hostile to favourable and the horizontal axis shows human behaviour form active to passive. Using this scale he came to 4 basic characteristics of interaction between the individual and his environment. Those 4 characteristics are Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. Dominance stands for a pro-active, positive person in a unfriendly atmosphere Influence stands for a pro-active, positive person in a friendly atmosphere Steadiness stands for a re-active, pleasant person in a friendly atmosphere Compliance stands for re-active, careful, undecisive person in a controversial situation to help disappear the existing antagonism

I will not go into the technical background of the analysis but for those who are interested, i have brought some copies of the technical resource book. The analysis nowadays belongs to Thomas International. In our University College we are mainly using the instrument for our human resource department for recruiting new employees and in our office for study and career guidance we are using it for our last year students to help them making the step to the working world. Open form PPA (see attachment) What we see here is an inventory of words describing personal qualities. The words are presented in blocks of four. Participants have to choose two out of four words that represent different personal work styles. One word is chosen as most like me and another as least like me. The other two words are left blank. Each blok of words is counterbalanced for social desirability. Personal Profile Analysis may be delivered as an interview using paper and pencil or by using a computer as an interface. We advice our students to fill it in spontaneously, and to think of their school situation or traineeship (stage) because they do not have very much work experience yet. They have to fill it in without interruption, the exercises should take about 8 minutes to complete From the individuals pattern of response, a graphical representation of the degree of preference for types of job behaviour is given along four dimensions called Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. We see 3 graphics, the third graphic gives us 70% of the information about a person, this is the basic graphic, and then we are going to compare it with graphic nr 1 en 2 and see what removements have happened. High factors = above the midline give: strenghts, basic fears, motivators and value to the organisation Low factors = below the midline and they give a nuance of the high factor, so its not negative, those are not weaknesses but limitations The high factors prime the low, give most of the information. What does it mean when your result is a high I? Open PPA Checklist (see attachment) The significance of the profile is contained in an individual report, generated from a set of standard statements. These include commentary about likely work behaviour, contexts for maximum job satisfaction, and suggestions for questions to ask as the interview proceeds. There are no scores derived from norm tables. I have some examples with me but they are in Dutch.

There are several reports you can choose but we are using 4 different reports for our last year students called: Candidate Feedback: summary Strengths and limitations Career guide: also other professions besides their education / bachelor programme, competences/or profile that will fit with the following jobs Interviewers guide: questions the interviewer might ask, critical

What more can I say? We have good experiences in using the instrument. Our students are satisfied and enthusiastic. For them it is a nice help to see descriptive adjectives that they would not so easily attribute to themselves. We advise them to use the descriptive adjectives in their letters applying for a job or in their cv. After a feedback conversation they always leave with a smile. To help students discover their talents is our drive.