Research Cell Article

Communication ability is a key criterion for recruitment in many profiles across industries. Some profiles like those for Call Centers, Hospitality, Sales and Service, Education and Training etc require candidate to be excellent in communication skills, specially spoken English. In order to evaluate a candidate's spoken English capabilities, Aspiring Minds has developed and launched SVAR^®, an automated spoken English evaluation tool that uses advanced voice synthesis technology and accurate predicts a candidate's scores on pronunciation, fluency, listening & language anticipation and spoken comprehension skills.  SVAR^® follows international standards of reliability and validity and test scores are mapped to CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment).

The tool works equally well with Neutral, Indian and Foreign Accents and can be easily delivered over telephones and cell phones. SVAR^® follows international standards of validity and reliability and has been designed keeping Indian candidates in mind. The tool can predict job suitability of a candidate by evaluating his/her spoken English on the following parameters:

• Fluency
• Active listening
• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Spoken English comprehension
• Pronunciation

The SVAR^® Feedback Report would give an overall English Proficiency score of the candidate based on the above mentioned parameters. The report will also mention the score mapping to CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment). Based on this the SVAR^® Feedback Report predicts the Job Suitability (Hirable/Trainable/Not Hirable) of a candidate for different profiles like International Voice Profile, Domestic Voice Profile, Direct Customer Interaction Profile, Backend Processing Profile etc.

Some key features of SVAR^® are:

• Automated evaluation using advanced voice synthesis technology with scores generated on the basis of standard rubrics with very high correlation
• Accurate prediction and scoring of pronunciation, fluency, listening & language anticipation and spoken comprehension skills
• Works equally well with Neutral, Indian and Foreign Accents with separate scores on Indian and foreign accent
• India Contextualization: SVAR specifically includes phonemes which are mispronounced due to particular regional or mother tongue influence in India.
• Easy delivery over telephones and cell phones, option to resume the test in case of call drop.

SVAR^® when combined with AMCAT English, Logical and AMPI (personality) becomes a powerful predictor of one's client centricity, sales acumen, customer servicing ability, etc. For more details please mail at svar@aspiringminds.in . Article comments powered by Disqus