The professional demands on school leaders have changed drastically and have become highly complex in the last few years. The professionalization of school leaders is high on the agenda. Human resource management includes different aspects of professionalization. One major domain is the preparation, induction and continuous professional development of individual leaders and leadership teams. Another is personnel marketing and selection, which includes the question of attracting capable future leaders and of appointing the right candidates. Among other approaches, computer-based assessments for career development and career guidance show to be useful (Kirbach et al, 2004; Kirbach & Wottawa, 2009, Montel et al., 2005). Suitable instruments providing feedback beyond interest questionnaires or intensive occupation information systems are still scarce (Boerlijst, 1998). That is even more the case for the context of school management positions. Competence Profile School Management CPSM (German: Kompetenz Profil SchulManagement; KPSM) is the first online-based self-assessment in German language, which has been designed to fit the school context and is based on psychometric principles (Kline, 1993). It offers participants the possibility to reflect their strengths and weaknesses in different requirement areas of school leadership; and to compare their individual results with peers from the school context, thus gaining valuable information on their individual profiles when planning their professional development and careers. Reflection is seen important to the development and learning of school leaders and has become useful in improving their performance (White et al, 2002).

To summarize, CPSM is a fruitful inventory for improving feedback conditions for potential school leaders’ learning process.

In our paper, we highlight first the value of giving any feedback to potential school leaders by a self-assessment inventory. Normally, the feedback culture in educational environment is rare and hence, such a feedback inventory is highly needed (see Huber, 2009). 

Secondly, we present preliminary results of our evaluation on this inventory. Our evaluation underlines the value of an online-based self-assessment inventory for potential school leaders.

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