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Psychological assessment refers to the process whereby different methods and techniques are used to test hypotheses about people and their psychological characteristics. Understanding employees' psychological makeup is key to allow effective human resource management, from hiring to retirement. However, the gap between scientific evidence and organizational practices dealing with psychological assessment is still great.

General review along with case study

This paper shows the differences between research and practice, i.e. between what scientific evidence suggests to assess people from a psychological point of view reliably and what practitioners do when they want to reach the same goal.

At the end of the article, two examples of integration between research and practice are presented. We discuss how methods and techniques of psychological assessment can be developed to both respect scientific criteria and meet specific organizational needs.

This study aims to test the effectiveness of a training intervention based on the psychology of perception, delivered to young Italian workers and employees, with low education, hired with an apprenticeship contract and involved in a compulsory training course (duration 32 h; the training intervention reported in the paper covers the first 8 h) whose aim was to let them develop such relational competencies as communication and cooperation with others.

By making use of optical-geometric illusions and ambiguous figures, participants were accompanied through a training intervention with the dual purpose of undermining their naive certainties about why they see what they see and increasing their awareness of how the perceptual processes work. At the beginning of the intervention, at the end of the 32 h (that is, after about a month) and after about one year from the end of the course, participants were administered a questionnaire to monitor the results of the training course by measuring their “perception awareness”.

“Perception awareness” increased from the beginning to the end of the course and still scored higher after one year. “Perception awareness” was positively related to communication and cooperation.

Although the literature is full of training courses delivered to improve communication and cooperation with others, little research has been carried out on perception-based training interventions delivered to young adults with low education hired with an apprenticeship contract for which this kind of training is compulsory.

Given the exponential and massive technological disruption in work that Industry 4.0 will lead to, nowadays, authors and practitioners within the field of education and training are witnessing increased attention on the features of and threats to employability and integration in current labor transformations. The purpose of this paper is to address current education and training challenges as related to the fourth industrial revolution by investigating which skills and competences will be crucial for the 4.0 era.

A qualitative field study with semi-structured interviews has been conducted. Qualitative data on a sample of N = 16 vocational training experts has been analyzed via the grounded theory approach for a bottom-up perspective on Industry 4.0 competences.

Data analysis revealed a partial consensus between current scientific literature and practitioners' views on skills and competences for Industry 4.0. Indeed, practioners support the need for a mix of competences comprising the broad group of disciplines of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), technical skills and transversal competences. Moreover, the perspective of practitioners supports a multilevel comprehension of the needs of Industry 4.0 for education and training. Drawing on these findings, an evaluation tool for an applied field intervention for inclusion in the labor market is proposed.

The paper advances current knowledge within the field of education and training by proposing a novel perspective to address market integration as a means to tackle the risk of technological disruption.

Given the instability and volatility of the labour market and the global talent scarcity, placing more attention on job employability is fundamental. In this context, the literature has already extensively examined employability as a crucial individual aspect, identifying some significant antecedents, including the applicability of training on the job. The present study aims to examine the impact that teaching employees to craft their job may have on the levels of applicability of training and if, in turn, this improves self-perceived employability.

The authors involved three private organizations that followed three workshops on job crafting behaviour. To empirically assess the intervention, the authors asked participants of the workshop to complete four quantitative diaries on a weekly basis, i.e. one per week, one before the intervention and three after the intervention. The diaries comprised measures of job crafting behaviours, applicability of training and self-perceived employability.

Multi-level analysis of data collected provided support to the positive associations between job crafting behaviour and self-perceived employability with the mediating effect of applicability of training. Notably, the applicability of training improves when individuals search for challenges, which indirectly affects perceived employability in terms of organizational sense.

In the present study, no control group was used with which the results of our intervention could be compared. However, this does not affect the overall results, given the amount of intraindividual variability.

The paper proposes initial avenues for promoting employability at work via the use of behavioural job crafting intervention.

In the current labour market, the competence to adapt is becoming significantly relevant for career development and career success. The construct of career adaptability, i.e. the capability to adapt to changing career-related circumstances and predict advancement in career development, seems to provide a fruitful scientific base for successful career intervention. The purpose of the study is exploratory, with the aim of providing new findings about the key predictors of this meta-competence that are relevant for career development.

Through a web-based survey, a convenience sample of 230 working participants completed an online questionnaire, including socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, education), professional status (role seniority, sector of employment, professional role), professional development-related features (training, new professional assignments, financial incentives) and psychological factors (work self-efficacy, search for work self-efficacy and job satisfaction). Four-step hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to understand which of these factors account for the most career adaptability variance.

Results highlight that work self-efficacy, search for work self-efficacy and education play a significant role in predicting career adaptability. Surprisingly, professional development-related features and professional status do not seem to have a relevant influence.

Training and career-development professionals can improve their understanding of which career-related skills and attitudes can increase one’s capability to cope with sudden changes and instability of the current labour market.

This study supports previous research, addressing the importance of career adaptability in times of dramatic change. It also provides some insight into the factors that could predict it.

This paper aims to link findings from laboratory-based decision-making research and decision-making competence (DMC) aspects that may be central for career-related decision-making processes. Past research has identified individual differences in rational responses in decision situations, which the authors refer to as DMC. Although there is a robust literature on departures from rational responses focused on heuristics and biases (H&B) in decision-making, such evidence is largely confined to group-level differences observed in psychology laboratories and has not been extended to the realm of career development and workforce behavior.

By first introducing the concept of DMC and contextualizing it within organizations and the work environment, the paper outlines a review on recent development concerning debiasing interventions in organizations and provides insights on how these may be effective with regard to organizational performance and individual career development.

The contribution presents a perspective to improve knowledge about career decision-making competence (C-DMC) by presenting an approach linking decision-making research to interventions aiming at managing H&B and systematic misperceptions in career processes.

This contribution is one of the few linking decision-making research to the applied context of organizations and of career competences. Moreover, while some research has treated decision-making skills as traits, this contribution provides support to consider them developable as competencies.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between organisation-based self-esteem (OBSE) and work engagement during a new strength-based intervention over nine months.

A sample of 82 workers composed of 70 sales consultants and 12 area-managers working in an Italian pharmaceutical company received a one-day training based on the FAMILY approach, three times for nine months, with a three-month lag between each workshop. Self-reported measures of OBSE and work engagement were collected before and after each workshop.

Results showed that final levels of both OBSE and work engagement were significantly higher compared to baseline. Moreover, results from a multiple mediation analysis showed that the direct and indirect relationships between OBSE and work engagement changed at different time points, which may have been related to the different contents of the workshops.

This study provides initial evidence suggesting that organisations could leverage on medium-term interventions to provide employees active guidance on how to use their strengths at work, likely to boost higher employees’ positive perceptions of themselves as organisational members and work engagement.

The alignment between the labour market and initial vocational education and training (IVET) is placing always more importance on technical knowledge and skills, whilst metacognitive competences such as critical thinking and media literacy are increasingly neglected. In the context of IVET, this results in authors and practitioners paying always more attention to how to devise possible training interventions, with the double aim of implementing their educational pathways and enhancing students’ critical thinking and media literacy. This paper aims to report the state of the art concerning such processes of enhancement in IVET students.

The study adopted the method of systematic scoping review to address the research questions on how to enhance critical thinking and media literacy in the context of IVET.

The paper presents the analyses of the n = 19 contributions collected. Then, it proposes an initial conceptualization of the dimensions of critical thinking and media literacy. Moreover, by combining evidence from various contributions, the review proposes implications for educational practices and strategies. Around these pieces of knowledge, further avenues of research and practice are proposed.

This study contributes to the literature on critical thinking and media literacy in the context of IVET by advancing initial comprehensive conceptualizations of the two dimensions. Moreover, the study advances initial practical implications for teachers and trainers for the development of training interventions.

The originality of the present review rests in its proposal of definitions of critical thinking and media literacy; moreover, it widens the discussion of practices on how to enhance such metacognitive competences. Indeed, the study identifies the teaching and training practices meant to enhance critical thinking and media literacy and proposes applied implications in the context of IVET.