4 Assessment Background


Making judgements about the communication skills of potential employees is a key element of any recruitment process. It is particularly important when recruiting staff who do not have English as their first language. This section suggests different ways in which this assessment can be carried out so that the support needs of new staff are identified and ideally included a personal development plan.


As part of the Skills for Life strategy a set of free assessment tools were


assess levels of literacy and numeracy. However, they are used mainly by colleges and independent learning providers and whilst some versions of the tools were designed to reflect general workplace


developed to


needs,


most do not reflect the demands of particular workplaces. Employers involved in the AIMER project indicated that they preferred to use contextualised materials that reflected the job roles of their staff. Essentially they wanted to find out quickly if staff could cope with a job rather than identify a specific level in a national curricular framework. They therefore either developed their own resources or adapted existing tools developed by the Care Skillsbase website (see later in this section).


Carrying out a Skills Audit - what is it? why bother?


If you are planning to interview and employ migrant workers, it can be useful to carry out a quick 'skills audit'. A skills audit involves identifying in a systematic way the key areas of a job role in which literacy, language and numeracy skills are required.


This audit will enable you to -


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