Developing an experience register for engineers

Using specific descriptive phrases about experiences, it is possible to classify a group of people into categories. The fewer the number of these experiences used in the classification, the less likely an individual's ¿personality¿ will be preserved. The greater the number of items involved, the greater the information processing-problem. This is the situation of the manpower administrator who in order to maintain individualities is forced to cope with quantities of information. One solution for the administrator is to transform his personnel information into a form compatible with the use of high-speed data processing equipment and take advantage of equipment's ability to perform complex operations with speed and skill. This requires that the information be descriptive enough to be meaningful and that it be organized so that it can be coded. This paper develops a technique for handling one segment of personnel information ¿ experience. The technique is to describe a person through information related to his work experience. The study covers the development of such an experience matrix and shows that such information can be reasonably classified in this form. Two factor analyses were carried out. The direct factor analysis developed factors of combinations of work experience which have a reasonable degree of independence. The inverse factor analysis because of the complex method of interpretation was less satisfactory.