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A fair amount of evidence has been amassed concerning the reliability, validity and fairness of assessment centres when used for selection purposes. Selection‐oriented assessment centres provide valid predictions of managerial performance and success, and seem not to generate significant adverse impact against black or female candidates. Assessment centres increasingly, however, seem to be used for purposes other than immediate job selection. In particular, they are often used for the identification of long‐term managerial potential, and for the diagnosis of training and development needs, perhaps as a part of an overall audit of managerial strengths and weaknesses or as a part of a wider organisational development effort. Two studies of participants′ reactions to development centres are presented. These are followed by two longitudinal studies of the impact on a range of career and organisational attitudes held by participants of two development centres run by two major UK financial services organisations.

I begin by examining some ways in which organisations have attempted to improve their recruitment and selection procedures to minimise bias and unfair discrimination, and focus on the assessment centre as a potentially useful technique in this respect, especially for managerial selection. I go on to examine the assessment centre in more detail, including its origins, construction and uses, before discussing the strong evidence for its validity as a selection and assessment procedure. I then describe some recent British innovations in assessment centre design and practice, especially in its use for management and organisation development purposes, before discussing some of my own recent research, in collaboration with Ivan Robertson and Usha Rout, on participants' attitudes towards the use of assessment centres for selection and development purposes, including gender differences in attitudes.

This study seeks to examine the extent to which the use of career center services results in the significant incremental prediction of career outcomes beyond its established predictors.

The authors survey the clients of a public agency's career center and use hierarchical multiple regressions in order to examine the extent to which it achieved its goals.

Career center usage predicted career resilience and action as well as perceived management commitment to employee development beyond established predictors for these variables. Employees' belief that they were personally responsible for their careers was the prime predictor of career center usage.

The primary limitations of this research are the cross‐sectional research design, the self‐selected sample, and the single source of survey data.

Making a career center available to employees can help them adjust to the new protean career model and an environment of considerable downsizing. Using the career center leads to positive results with respect to the perceptions of management.

Although the cultural barrier to career center usage is likely to be resolvable only over time, supervisors could be encouraged to offer more support and coaching to employees. Also, employees' jobs can be developed by increasing the extent to which supervisors provide feedback to employees, allow employees to work autonomously, and require the use of multiple skills.

Aims to explore factors which are thought to relate to the effectiveness of development centre processes. Studies a variety of attitudinal and motivational aspects concerned with attendance at, and benefit from, a development centre. The research was carried out using an instrument which was completed by 60 managers who had attended a development centre organized by a major British company. Hypothesizes a model which links development centre benefits to process validity, pre‐centre factors, and biographical factors. Results show partial support for the model, confirming the strong link between benefits and process validity, but fail to demonstrate the importance of support from a participant’s manager. Factor analysis demonstrates three distinct sets of benefits which have been labelled: personal development; career development; and organizational commitment.

In the time of social and technological challenges and in the perspective of recent global crisis, the ability of students to perform on the labour market to get their first job and to make significant, fulfilling career, is very important. The aim of this paper is to examine some aspects of counselling students in higher education to develop their competencies as future employees. This article discusses similarities and differences in organised counselling forms for students in some neighbouring European countries.

The survey was conducted as comparative study desk research on the basis of internet data – higher education institutions (HEI) web pages. Authors defined a set of 28 items by which they evaluated each individual HEI, and developed a dislcloser index Career Centre – DICC. For 246 HEI entities involved in the research the authors developed and tested research hypothesis. The authors applied descriptive statistics and bivariant statistics – non‐parametric Kruskal‐Wallis test and the Chi‐Square Test.

The results show that there is a statistically significant difference between the countries regarding DICC. Correlation between the existence of the Careers Centre at HEI and the country is confirmed. There is no correlation between range of Career Centre users and the State.

For the purpose of examining the problem of Career centres at HEI, an dislcloser index Career Centre – DICC was developed. Significant difference between countries regarding DICC index was confirmed. The future research will include and will explore students points of view regarding their expectations and satisfaction with the existing career counselling offer at HEI.

The purpose of this article is to explore career development programs for the sales force including benefits, implementation and managerial implications.

Career development programs are viewed through a conceptual model consisting of assessment, direction and development.

This paper provides a comprehensive list of the benefits of a career development program for sales forces.

The conceptual model can serve as a checklist for sales managers to evaluate, add to or modify their programs. The conceptual model also provides a framework for tying together many disparate areas of career development that have been handled separately or ignored in the sales management literature.

This paper provides a comprehensive conceptual model of career development that has not been present in the sales management literature. This should be useful to sales managers in evaluating their own career development efforts. The framework should also be useful to sales management scholars who teach and do research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the experience of women working in New Zealand call centres after finding contrary evidence in the international research which suggests call centre work does not offer career opportunities for its mainly female workforce. The research seeks to explore the career progress of women in a selection of call centres to determine whether the New Zealand employment relations context contributed to outcomes different to those reported in the international research.

Case study methodology and six different call centre types were used to find 32 women who had experienced career progress. Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews were held with the women and senior management representatives at each organisation. Analysis of interview transcripts identified common themes and patterns across the case studies. Insights were gained from survey responses from 60 entry‐level workers, many of whom were return‐to‐work mothers, new immigrants or students.

The findings demonstrated that women were achieving considerable career success in the call centres investigated. Management practices accommodated their different labour market needs and respondents spoke about their passion and enjoyment of call centre work. The entry‐level workers reported that being part of the call centre workplace, allowed them to meet people, develop new skills and confidence while enhancing their career prospects. At many levels, call centre processes seemed to have enabled respondents to become competent, connected and confident workers.

Contrary to the international portrayal of call centre work and the career prospects for female workers the paper highlights the need for researchers to link employment outcomes to particular employment contexts.

This paper explores the careers of four Research Centre Directors located in university art and design departments in the UK. It examines on a case by case basis the relationship of cause and effect during critical moments of career progression. The research reinforces previous findings that suggest that promotion within Higher Education is greatly enhanced by research performance over teaching. The study goes much further in exploring the underlying relationships between the “entrepreneurial” and “autonomy” career anchors of Research Centre Directors and the corresponding impact on power relationships as their personal capital grows. In conclusion, the paper reports that a Research Centre Director’s career trajectory may be determined not only through responsibilities and research reputation in the field, but also through skilful application of political nous, strategic awareness, and tact in marrying internal research agendas with that of the Research Centre.

This study documents a new case of the further commercialization of the university, the rapid adoption of corporate partnership programs (CPPs) within centralized university career services departments. CPPs function as a type of headhunting agency. For an annual fee they facilitate a corporate hiring department’s direct access to student talent, allowing the company to outsource much of its hiring tasks to the university career center. CPPs are a feature found predominantly, though not exclusively, on campuses where there is a highly rationalized logic around the economic benefits of academic science. Further, CPPs represent a commercialization of practice that is in tension with the student-development mission of traditional career counselors. Using an inhabited institutionalist approach, we show how the models differ and how staff on each side attempt to negotiate their competing roles in the multiversity environment. We also discuss some of the potential impact on students, on the career services profession, and on college-to-work pathways.

Examines the use of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) in the analysis and improvement of a “messy” HRM problem in Nationwide Building Society (NBS). Describes SSM in outline and relates it to a case study application of the methodology in the area of career management and career counselling. At the time of investigation, there was a growing awareness of career problems among managers of all levels in NBS increasing the impetus for change. The problems identified in career management did not lead to clearly defined objectives: the “right answer” was not yet known and variables involved were bound up in values, motives and decisions of human beings with a significant amount of free choice. Develops and analyses a Rich Picture taking account of subjective data as well as objective facts. The understanding gained about the management of careers is used to generate possible improvements and solutions following the stages of SSM. Makes recommendations, a number of which have already been implemented within NBS.