JOB DESCRIPTION

Job title

Technical Officer

Class title

Field Assistant

Reports to

Site Engineer

Supervises

Supervisors, Masons, Drivers, Laborers, Technicians

Summary

Technical Officer carryout duties assigned by the

Site engineer and manages the staff to meet the
deadlines and complete the project

Qualifications

- He should have a good personality and attractive

communication skills
- He should be great at solving immediate problems
- He should have a national diploma or equivalent in
civil engineering.
- One year experience in road building projects is
preferred
- Willingness to travel and reside at quarters given
- Hard working, ambitious individual

Job location

Coastal line from Colombo to Jaffna where the

worksites are commenced.

Duties

- Assist the site engineer in planning, managing and

maintaining the worksite
- Carryout any task assigned by the site engineer
- Obtain daily work schedules from the site engineer
and assign each group of workers to desired work.
- Assign workers to do Over time and maintain their
records
- Prepare weekly reports of the work progress
- Organize weekly progress discussion meetings and
identify the methods to speed up the work progress
- Prepare quality control presentations to inform the

workers about safety of the site and quality

- Obtain the required material to the site

Resources Required/ Used

Performance evaluation criteria

- Road building materials (Tar, sand, boulders etc)

Trucks, bulldozer, Concrete mixers etc..
Tar pouring trucks

- At the end of each sub project performance

evaluation will be done by the project engineer.
- Meeting weekly building targets is a must and
and is a responsibility of the technical officer
- Workers safety is of high priority and is a
responsibility of the technical officer. At the end
of each week, workers safety is evaluated by the
site engineer

JOB SPECIFICATION
Job title

Technical Officer

Qualification

National Diploma in Technology awarded by University

of Moratuwa
National Diploma in Engineering Sciences awarded by
IET Katunayaka
Advanced diploma awarded by IESL
HNDE awarded by Sliate
and any other equivalent qualification

Experience

No experience needed, 1 year experience in road

development projects is an added advantage
any previous experience in construction projects is
a plus

Special attributes

Computer literacy, Ability to make reports in MS Excel,

Presentation preparation skill in MS power point.
Good interpersonal skills and communication skills

Physical Attributes

Should be fit to handle the dusty environment of the

road, non allergic to tar and other chemicals, hard
working and passionate to work.

Job profiles

- Looks after overall progress of the worksite

- leads the constructors to run the process at max
efficiency
- assigns different functions for each worker
- Assigns workers to do overtime
- Maintains daily, monthly and annual work reports
- Collects and manages the materials at the worksite
- Holds responsibility for the instruments at the
workplace
- Conducts workplace meetings to evaluate the
progress

Reporting to

Site Engineer

Alternative selection methods

1.

Resume
Resume is unarguably the first impression of a candidate to the selection
committee, so plays a huge role in selection process, almost every selection process
demands resume from candidates. But the time company takes to consider each resume
is very small, maybe it is low as averaging 11 seconds. Definitely a good resume tells a
lots of things about the attitude of the candidate towards the certain job. Also we can
say if the guy targeted the job and is passionate to join the work. But as the resume is a
prepared one at home and sent, it may have been prepared by someone else other than
the candidate. So may be the organization of the resume may be from a different
person. So it may not be very justifiable to judge a person from his cv. But for a hiring of
1000 field assistants, it is hard to spend a lot of time on each individual candidate. So
definitely The CVs are going to play a huge role in cutting out the under qualified
candidates and filtering limited number of them in to the next selection processes.
2.

Cognitive ability test

Cognitive ability test is a test carried out to identify the intellectual ability of a
person. It may include subject wise tests which test the knowledge the specific
candidate achieved by doing his or her former education, and his or her ability to take
good decisions, or take decisions under pressure. When hiring a huge number of
individual it is usually a good practice to conduct a competitive written exam and filter
out the candidates who lack the knowledge on the subject. And also it may include an IQ
test to test their ability to take good decisions. In the case of selecting 1000 field
assistants this will be a crucial and determining factor because it is practically impossible
to interview 1000 candidates thoroughly.
3.

Physical ability test

Physical ability test is a test given to candidates to ensure they are fit and
strong and physically capable of carrying out the duties vested on them. These may
include a medical examination or a questionnaire to get information about the
candidate. In the 1000 field assistant selection process, it is not very necessary to
examine each individual for physical abilities that much because the job doesnt require
much physical strength or ability. So a candidate who is capable of attending an
interview with good physical abilities and face it would be more than fit for the job.

4.

Personality test
The personality test is the method of checking the characteristics of a
candidate related to the future job performance. Usually personality test may include
group tests or individual interviews. These usually try to identify the type of personality
the specific candidate has, whether it is a sociable, forceful, respectful, sensitive, etc..
The personality tests are subjective, that the person interviewing or evaluating the
group test tends to select candidates with personalities of his or her liking. For an
example some managers may think that people who have done group sports or
activities are better candidates than others in personality test. But when it comes to
work it may be different, because work rather depends more on knowledge and
experience.
Group activities are a great way to observe peoples personality. In such an
activity the employer may identify different personalities and categorize them. But also
there is a disadvantage as the applicant tends to show different personalities in order to
get selected. Altogether it is an essential method of selection in selection process.
When we are selecting 1000 field assistants it will be hard to do personality
test however. Somehow we may group them and allocate some time to test their
personalities. But for a job like an field assistant personality performance in an interview
would be more than enough and would be a waste of resources and time to conduct a
different personality test.
5.

Biographical Questionnaire
This is a good method employed in selection process when large numbers of
applicants are available for a small number of jobs or when the number of vacancies are
huge. The applicants are given to fill out their data, such as educational qualifications,
experience, extracurricular activities, references from past employers, activities of
interests etc..
In the case of selecting 1000 field assistants this will be a good method because the
number of applications will be great and also the number of vacancies is high.
6.

Personal interview
Personal interview is when the employer conducts face to face meeting with
each individual and evaluate his or her suitability for the job. The personal interview
may consist of several interviews ranging from basic interview to the final interview
which may take whole day for each individual. Personal interview is a must in selection
methods as it allows the employer to get to know the individual questioning more
deeply about the person.
when we consider about individual interview for the selection of 1000 field
5

assistants, it is a must , because it is the basic selection method. We may divide the
applicants in to few groups and assign interview panels for each group and then conduct
interviews. But the well have to limit the number of interviews to one as the number of
applicants is large, it would be very costly to conduct many interviews and time
consuming.
7.

Assessment center
Assessment center is a variety of testing techniques designed to allow
candidates to demonstrate, under standardized conditions, the skills and abilities that
are most essential for success in a given job. One method of assessment centers is to
allow applicants to group in and engage in leaderless group discussions. But this method
is sometimes criticized as the group members in each group are different so the each
candidate would have to undergo different test circumstances. Also this is very hard to
do in case of large number of applicants as huge time and money has to be invested in
training the assessors. Role playing is another method of assessment centers. In role
playing a trained accessory is playing a role of a position in which the applicant will be
appointed to in future and simulates a real work environment situations and evaluate
real work responses.
In the case of selecting 1000 field assistants this method is not a very good
method as large number of assessors have to be trained for simulating environments
and takes a huge amount of time and resources.
8.

Reference checkIn this type of method what we do is ask the applicants for references and
with applicants permission ask for the previous workplace references to recommend for
the applicants and give feed back about the applicant. This method is somewhat
subjective and not a very effective method as the previous employer and workplace
may or may not be a good place and might have treated the employee badly or might
have favored the employee.
In the case of selecting 1000 field assistants this would mean a lot of
telephone calls and would be hard to contact those people as they are busy, and also as
we are recruiting people with little or no experience it wouldnt be an efficient method.
9.

Background investigationThis is a very important and effective method in a selecting process. Most of
the HR managers usually do background checking. How deep the background
investigation goes depends on the job type. For example for a job which involves lots of
driving an hr manager would have to check for the applicants driving records. Then if
6

the person is being hired for a position whichi involves handling a lot of assests HR
manager would have to dig up his criminal history to check whether the applicant has
involved in any burglaries and so on. Also the HR managers usually check for the
previous work experience and make sure that the mentioned work experience and
educational qualifications are true. Sometimes in an engineering positions they call IESL
and make sure the qualification is up to the standard.
Background investigation is an important method in selection process of
course. But it is hard to do background checking when we are selecting 1000 field
assistants. It would need tremendous effort as the number of applications we get for
1000 positions would be many thousands. So for this selection procedure we would
have to keep this method of selection out of the picture.
10.

Google
Nowadays with google a lot of information about a person can be found by
googling their name. such as if the person was engaged in any burglary or some news
event the chances are that they appear on internet and would be easy to find. Also it may
give an idea of their character with lots of social interactions getting public and tagged on
with photos.
In the selection of 1000 field assistants googling would be a great method as it
would highlight out any individuals who may have any criminal records or great
achievements and extracurricular activities and wouldnt need much time to do so.
11.

Graphology test
This method relies on predicting a candidates future job performance by
evaluating his handwriting. This is not a very efficient method as the persons
handwriting wont tell much about how the candidates skills for a job are. This method is
good if the person is selected for a job involves a lot of handwriting such as a clerk.
When we are selecting 1000 field assistants this method is not very necessary
as a field assistant only needs to write few things down. And his on the field job would
require more practical skills than written skills. So this method of selection is not
efficient for selection process.

Selecting 1000 field assistants is a huge task. As field assistants or the technical officers
are the people who are going to look after and handle all the situations on the worksite
assisting the site engineer their role for the road project is very crucial. So their job must
be selected very wisely. But as we are hiring 1000 of them at the same time the

interview process has to be brief and would have to be done with the aid of minimum
number of trained interviewers.
This demands for brief selection methods which are a simple resume and basic interview.
The resume can tell a lot about the persons educational background and abilities and also
work experience and also will be able to check their original certificates and a brief
personality test at the interview. It is a very wise choice to go for a cognitive ability test by
conducting a subject knowledge test and an IQ test and filter out the people with best
subject knowledge and then interview them. So the best selection methods for the
selection of 1000 field assistants would be to resume, cognitive ability test and an personal
interview.