Design teams are made up of people, and as we know, people can drive profits or create costly errors. When your design team is a mix of seasoned and newer individuals, and you add off-shore or subcontract service providers, understanding their individual skill levels becomes essential. Do you have experienced designers who keep making preventable mistakes? Or, do some of your 2+ year designers struggle to rise above tract or production home designs? The key to resolving these issues is testing and training.
Testing can include integrity assessments to gauge honesty and reliability, personality tests to evaluate cultural fit, and skills-based tests to measure what they know—and don’t know—about their assigned tasks and their potential for advancement. JobLine offers the latter (skills-based tests), and there are plenty of providers for the rest.
If you could only give one test to a truss designer or design manager, JobLine’s Truss Design Skills Evaluation would provide the most information for managing your design department or making a hiring decision. This test was developed by a team of industry experts—including technical support and engineering staff from multiple truss design software companies, as well as design managers, senior designers, and owners of truss companies already using some form of testing. Moreover, JobLine has continued to refine this skills evaluation ever since our first beta-test in the mid-'90s. The result is a Truss Design Skills Evaluation that covers eight areas of skills and experience, with the average score providing the benchmark against which individual results are measured. This test measures
- Basic Skills
- Intermediate Skills
- Advanced Skills
- Truss Design Skills
- Truss Layout Skills
- Math Skills
- Truss Design Concepts
- Speed
- Years of Experience (two areas)
- Overall Score
Over the years, the evaluation has been revised to provide a wealth of information to employers when evaluating potential candidates and their team members. Thousands of individuals have taken it, and part of our measurement is to compare each test taker’s results to the industry average curve. The “Curve” shows how an individual’s nine skill/experience scores align with industry norms, helping us determine whether someone’s skills need improvement or if they have exceptional strengths in key areas that signal potential for advancement.
In addition, we’re currently developing a matrix that analyzes why specific questions could have been answered incorrectly. Sometimes, even experienced designers miss a basic-level question. Why they missed that question and, more importantly, which wrong answer they chose shows a trait. While the reasons assigned to wrong answers are subjective, they were assigned by highly experienced design managers who are familiar with our evaluation. Those subjective causes include Needs Basic Training, Lacks Attention to Detail, Rushing, or Missing Advanced Skills. While we can’t guarantee accuracy when using the new matrix, employers can opt-in to help us further validate the results.
Even designers with 5+ years of experience can do well overall, but their individual answers may indicate a gap in expertise, which could explain why they repeatedly make costly errors. Other times, someone may miss a question due to a lack of attention to detail—they might have selected a mathematically correct answer based on their assumptions but missed crucial information such as asymmetrical overhangs or heel heights. The wrong answer reflects rushing or neglecting details. The same question may have an answer that is an easy choice but absolutely wrong, indicating a lack of training.
What can you do with the information generated by the JobLine Truss Design Skills Evaluation? For starters, you should discuss any concerns with your design manager. Together, you can confirm whether the lack of a specific skill is causing issues and whether an improvement program should be implemented through internal training or online courses. If the evaluation shows above-average strengths in an otherwise average curve, you can consider the individual for further development and promotion. When evaluating a potential hire, you can use it as a tool, along with the resume or JobLine Candidate Profile, to evaluate competing candidates.
JobLine developed this test because we needed to verify the skills a candidate’s resume suggests. Early on, we experienced some disappointing failures when a candidate with many years of experience turned out to have the skills of a one-year designer, if that. For example, some individuals can manage to retain their job by excelling at designing tract homes or making minor changes to production builder plans, but that may not indicate deeper competency. Today, JobLine uses this evaluation to assess truss design candidates and show prospective employers how they measure up to the industry average. It’s given us a significant advantage in placing truss designers, and our employers expect to see this graphic in their presentation packages.
After almost 30 years, we’ve decided to offer this tool to the industry and have transitioned the evaluation to an online version. It provides the same testing and reporting capabilities as our legacy version and includes our “curve” graphic tools for identifying areas of strength and needing improvement. Although we will not be offering this service to individual designers at this time, starting in January 2025, we will offer this evaluation to industry employers for $145 per test. When you’re ready to measure your design team’s strengths and weaknesses, or if you would like more information, contact testing@thejobline.com.