To help our lawyers deliver exceptional client service, Baker Hostetler HR managers and trainers focus on hiring and developing highly-skilled secretaries.  With 600 lawyers to support in 10 offices coast to coast, we need a fast, consistent way to assess the document production skills of prospective secretarial hires and target new-hire training opportunities.

Skills assessment tools can determine a prospective hire's strengths and weaknesses accurately, minimizing the risk of making an unqualified secretarial hire while also individualizing training.  And targeted training helps a new employee come up to speed quickly, making the most of limited new-hire class time.

Jumpstarting Skills Assessment
In developing our program, we learned that our document production vendor had a solution that would jumpstart our skills assessment efforts.  Their consultant collaborated with our senior PC application specialist for about three days to create a customized new-hire skills assessment test based on our document production environment and best practices.  The consultant led the development of five document analysis rules and customization for the "before" and "after" test documents.  This rules-development knowledge was then transferred to us so that we would be self-sufficient going forward.

Comprehensive testing of our new firm-specific document analysis rules showed that they accurately assessed four document skills testing categories:  clean-up, page formatting, styles and tables.

Next, we developed a report with an overall score for the test document and more detailed scoring tied to each document category for each person tested.  Using a completely automated grading and reporting of the skills assessment test, we can quickly and precisely determine a current or prospective employee's document skills.

Obtaining HR Buy-In
Our senior PC application specialist also worked with the consultant to tailor the test instructions and provided our HR managers a document listing simple steps for administering and scoring the assessment.  This step was key to the success of our skills assessment program.  We knew if the skills assessment test was difficult to administer, our HR managers wouldn't use it.

The document analysis capabilities make it possible for our HR managers to receive a scored test in minutes.  Since launching the skills assessment test, our firm has been averaging five assessments per month.  Our HR managers have embraced it as a valued step in our new-hire process.

Results to Date
With the Baker Hostetler skills assessment test, our human resources and training professionals now have a better picture of each prospective new secretary's Word skills and can provide training opportunities as they relate to our document environment.  Comprehensive measurement of Word skills reduces the likelihood and associated costs of a bad hire.  With the skills assessment test, our human resources managers have information in hand that can validate or refute a new hire's potential and professed Word skills.  In several instances, a low test score was a factor in the decision not to hire a candidate.

Because the skills assessment is based on our document production environment and objectively evaluates adherence to the firm's document best practices, the results also produce a training roadmap for each new secretary.  As a result, our trainers can deliver the appropriate material more efficiently when preparing new secretaries for their positions.

Expanding Our Skills Assessment Initiative
During the next phase of our skills assessment program, we intend to create a more advanced skills assessment test for new hires that will include complex numbering and tables of contents creation.  We also plan to use our skills assessment capabilities to identify targeted training opportunities for our existing secretaries.  These skills assessment capabilities will make it possible to offer any appropriate training needed, which in turn will make our future document production environment and Microsoft Word upgrades successful.

About our authors . . .

Carol Creagan is PC Applications Integration and Training Manager at Baker Hostetler, where she leads the firm's skills assessment initiative in addition to her training and applications integration responsibilities.  Carol can be reached at ccreagan@bakerlaw.com.

Brian Hall is Vice President of Knowledge Partnership and Marketing at Microsystems, where he is responsible for ensuring that Microsystems' customers best use Knowledge Partnership to create and maintain high-performance document production environments.  Brian can be reached at brianh@microsystems.com.