What CMQ Does

Identifying valid worker requirements is a critical need for employers when screening job applicants, and for vocational experts involved in making disability and vocational-rehabilitation decisions.

CMQ allows practitioners to take two different strategies for linking the "two worlds" of person-side worker characteristics and job-side work activities and demands.

Skills-Based Person-Job Matching

Although there is no shortage of definitions of the term "skill," we prefer a time-honored and direct approach. A skill is the capacity of a worker to perform each of the detailed work activities required by a job.

The CMQ job description lists the general work activities (GWAs) that are performed. If you assess your job applicants to determine whether they are able to perform the GWAs required for a job, a very straightforward person-job matching process results.

Construct-Level Worker Specifications

However, implementing a detailed skils-based person-job matching system can require significant effort. Not surprisingly, many organizations instead focus on matching people to jobs using abstract person-side constructs (e.g., ability, personality traits).

Unfortunately, abstract worker traits are hypothetical constructs that are not amenable to direct observation. Although some "job analysis" methods do attempt to directly rate personal-trait requirements — e.g., the holistic ratings in the O*NET — the serious psychometric and validity problems associated with holistic ratings lead many practitioners to seek more empirically defensible methods.

The CMQ Approach

CMQ implements the job-component validity (JCV) method of "synthetic" validation to link job-side work activities to worker-trait specifications. Although JCV is not a panacea that provides a turnkey solution, many believe JCV provides useful empirical guidance to practitioners who need to infer abstract worker-trait requirements.

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