The Study Instrument and its Application
The test was facilitated by John and administered on line (it only takes about 30 minutes) and in all cases, it was conducted in English, although the questionnaire has been translated into some 17 languages. The candidates were required to fill in a work preference questionnaire that required them to rank 8 different work statements in a Group according to their natural work preferences; this was repeated throughout for 16 groups. Each statement was repeated later and compared against another 7 different work preferences in a different Group.
An example of the Behavioral Assessment Score vs. our customized Research Template based on our study of 28 successful Project managers mentioned earlier is shown in Figure 1. This part of our survey instrument illustrates the Essential Traits. The candidate's name, by the way, is fictitious! The score after the trait name is the candidate's score on that trait. The box to the right of each trait indicates the potential impact of that trait on performance. The colored area within the box indicates the probable impact on performance of the candidate's tendencies (i.e. their score) for that trait.
Figure 1: Example of Essential Traits Assessment Score
A second grouping of traits in this customized position template of Project Manager is referred to as Desirable Traits and is shown in Figure 2. As with the Essential traits they are listed in descending order of importance. So if a person scored low, it would detract from their overall suitability score. Put another way, it was not important for them to scored high in these traits, but rather that they did not score low, since this could have a potential negative impact on the overall probability of them being successful as a Project Manager.
Figure 2: Example of Desirable Traits Assessment Score
As you can see, the report is graphical. It also has its own optional narrative describing each trait and its effect in detail. While the names are fictitious, examples of such personal project manager narrative descriptions can be downloaded as follows:
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Objective of the Study
