VALIDATION and LEGALITY

1. Has this assessment been validated?
2. Has the Achievement Tec System ever been challenged?
3. How does this system compare with evaluations done by
   industrial psychologists?
4. How many years have you been in business?
5. How many people, over the years, have been assessed on your system, and how many are currently being assessed on a monthly basis?
6. How can I tell for myself that your results are accurate?
7. Has this system ever been used by the federal government or
   in public or private schools?
   

BENEFITS

1. Why do most companies use assessments?
2. We survived for all these years without them, why add them now?
3. Is there any advantage to using assessments in the legal sense?
4. What are some of the other benefits of using assessments?
5. What kind of effect will a consistent assessment system
   have on our turnover?
   
6. What kinds of cost and/or savings will a program like this produce?
7. How can we measure the effectiveness of this assessment system?
8. Can this system be used for post-employment decisions, such as promotions, or is it only used for selection?
   

OPTIONS

1. What are the options available to us if we want to
   implement such a system
2. In what format are the assessments published?
3. With all of these options, are there any options in the purchase price?
4. If we opt to score the assessments ourselves,
   what hardware would we need?
5. What types of assessments are available for different job levels?
   

THE HIRING PROCESS

1. At what point in the normal hiring process should the
   assessment be given?
2. For what job levels should we use assessments?
3. How many people should be assessed for each job opening?
4. How does the company know what traits are important
   in a particular job?
5. How long do the assessments take, and what is the
   best way to administer them?
6. How will you help us to understand the assessment results?
7. How can we be sure if the applicant's responses are valid?
   

Has this assessment been validated?
The Achiever, as well as the other assessment instruments published by Achievement Tec, has been validated in accordance with standard psychological procedures.

The collective assessments, known as the Achievement Tec Assessment System (ATAS), have been validated in accordance with the construct validation process, which is considered to be the superior method of validation. This means that the ATAS assessments have been administered to people, along with other standardized assessments, such as the 16PF® of IPAT, MMPI, Wonderlic, Stanford Binet and other well-known instruments, and through comparison, have determined that this assessment system does measures what it professes to measure.

Additionally, Achievement Tec, for the past 25 years, has maintained an ongoing procedure of concurrent validation for individual job categories within industries and specific companies.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance reviewed these assessments, and stated that they found nothing discriminatory about the usage of this system, nor is there a need for any individual company to separately validate for a job category. The reason behind this statement is that Achievement Tec's reports do not offer a 'hire / no-hire' decision, and we consistently suggest that the results should be taken into consideration along with other hiring factors, such as interviews, drug screens, references, etc., before making the total hiring decision.

Has the Achievement Tec System ever been challenged?
Yes, in Federal court in Tyler, Texas in the late '70's. Said challenge was administratively dismissed, however, based on the evidence and data prepared by Achievement Tec, and submitted by the court on behalf of Fikes Chemical Company.

On numerous occasions, when complaints have been filed, and were under investigation by the EEOC, Achievement Tec, has provided the respective construct and concurrent validation study data to establish that its assessments were not discriminatory in the hiring process. This data has been accepted by the EEOC repeatedly, with never an adverse finding or an out-of-court settlement against any employer for the use of Achievement Tec's assessment systems.

If there is a legal challenge, Achievement Tec will involve itself directly in presenting the appropriate evidence of validation.

How does this system compare with evaluations done by industrial psychologists?
In our first twenty years, we were comprised of industrial psychologists who bought and administered the standardized assessments, such as the MMPI, Wonderlic, Stanford Binet, The Thurston, Strong Campbell, etc. Our psychologists administered the assessments, scored them, often interviewed the candidates, and then dictated their reports, just as industrial psychologists do today.

Many of our clients felt they needed something quicker and more economical, but with the same accuracy and professionalism. As a result, we created, validated and copyrighted our own assessments to be job-related instruments. During that era, most assessments available were either educationally oriented or clinically oriented. We, in fact, initiated and brought into the American marketplace the first assessment that combined mental aptitudes and personality dimensions, written specifically for use in the business environment.

With our years of experience, and the breadth of information for which we assess, our assessments are considered to be the most professional business-environment assessments on the market today. Our client's quality surveys have graded us to be 92.4% accurate.

How many years have you been in business?
We have been in existence for over forty years. Operating the first twenty as industrial psychologists using standardized tests, we moved in to the second twenty years developing and utilizing our own high-tech computer software approach to the assessment industry. And most recently, harnessing the power of the Internet to become a leader in the human resource selection and screening industry.

How many people, over the years, have been assessed on your system, and how many are currently being assessed on a monthly basis?
Since we have been using automated computer scoring over the last twenty years, we have assessed somewhere in excess of two million candidates. Currently, our offices across the country assess thousands of candidates per month, depending on the time of year and hiring mode.

How can I tell for myself that your results are accurate?
We suggest you assess two people whom you know well. Allow us to review the results with you and compare what we determine to be the personalities with your knowledge of the two individuals.

Has this system ever been used by the federal government or in public or private schools?
The Achievement Tec Assessment System has been used by the US Naval Weapons Control Centers for down-sizing career personnel back into the public workplace. We have also provided assessment technology to state governments for welfare-to-work programs.

In the last three years, we have begun providing assessments to trade and vocational schools, for their use in determining what courses of study their students should pursue and, subsequently, choosing a career path for which they are best suited. Through this technology, they are compared to proven successful people in the same job types.

Most recently, we have begun to install a Career Direction program into the Dayton, Ohio public schools, to assist the counselors in determining more reliable college and career choices for graduates. A Texas independent school system is currently using the Achiever in their hiring process for senior level educators.

Why do most companies use assessments? We survived for all these years without them, why add them now?
First of all, the job applicants of today are quite different than they were a generation ago. Then, they could all read and write if they graduated from a high school, most were drug free and honest, they usually gave a good day's work for a good day's pay, and generally most people expected to support themselves through their own labor.

Currently, many educational institutions are graduating students who read and write rather poorly. In addition, the social and economical pressures of today create disadvantageous situations, thus producing a workforce with fewer skills, but more expectations. And the advancement of technology is increasing the need for skills that were not even thought of a generation ago. Thus the incompatibility between job and worker becomes more pronounced.

Secondly, most companies have begun to realize the high cost of hiring the wrong person, or putting a good person into the wrong job. Either situation inevitably results in turnover, at a cost. For instance, the cost of turning over a commissioned sales person, who makes $50K, is somewhere in the vicinity of $25K - $100K. Therefore, it has become very important to recognize whether a particular applicant is suited for your company. . . or the competitor's.

Thirdly, it has become perilous to dismiss employees in today's litigious society. The best answer to that problem is to hire the right person for the job in the first place. And finally, assessing all applicants will lead to lower turnover, higher productivity and morale, and higher bottom line profits.

Is there any advantage to using assessments in the legal sense?
Often during the screening process, personal observations and feelings come into play. Many hiring discrimination lawsuits have been filed simply because a hiring decision was made on a purely personal level. The business environment has been looking for a non-discriminatory, totally unbiased procedure to help remove the threat of this type of litigation. Using assessments that incorporate a leveling device such as Stanine scoring, comparing your candidate to the general population, reduces the subjective approach to hiring, and therefore the threat of litigation. Not only that, your candidates will be compared directly to proven success stories, further removing the subjective decisions.

Remember, litigation commonly evolves from hiring the wrong person, putting them into the wrong job and then treating them differently!

What are some of the other benefits of using assessments?
Generally, because you will now have the ability to identify the right applicants, and thereby discontinue hiring the wrong ones, the overall morale and productivity will grow commensurately. When you are not wasting time and money on hiring and training the wrong people, and your productivity improves, obviously there should be a conspicuous carry-over to the bottom line.

In addition, you can use the assessment results to ensure correct job placement, manage and train the new employee much more proficiently and expeditiously, and even get a glimpse of the career path that individual should pursue.

What kind of effect will a consistent assessment system have on our turnover?
In most industries, there is a standard accepted turnover ratio. For example, in the retailing industry, 100% turnover at the store level is fairly common. Over the years, our clients from all industries, have indicated that a comprehensive hiring process, which employs performance or behavioral assessments, over a period of time, will inevitably result in a turnover rate considerably better than their industry average. The assessments, however, have to be utilized in concert with other important parts of the due-diligence hiring process, such as interviews, drug screens and reference checks. No single instrument is intended to be used as the exclusive decision-maker in the hiring process.

What kinds of cost and/or savings will a program like this produce?
If you can give us a breakdown of your hourly to salaried employees, and the approximate turnover in each category, we can project your cost for the first year quite accurately. When you consider the cost of turning over any employee (the Labor Dept. quotes the cost of turning over an hourly person at somewhere between $3K and $6K, and for a salaried person somewhere between 50% and 150% of their annual salary), the cost of an assessment program pales. In other words, based on these statistics, your cost virtually disappears, in a manner of speaking.

How can we measure the effectiveness of this assessment system?
One easy way to measure the effectiveness of an assessment is to compare the assessment results with the annual performance reviews of those previously assessed. Usually, if someone is performing below standard, a glance back at his or her assessment results will indicate why.

By comparing an individual's annual review to the original assessment, you can also determine whether or not the users of the system are intentionally disregarding the assessment when they make their hiring decisions. Remember, it is very possible to hire the right applicant, but not using all the components of the assessment, may result in the individual not performing up to their potential.

Can this system be used for post-employment decisions, such as promotions, or is it only used for selection?
With several different instruments, all developed for differing job levels, our system has the capability of being used for any normal human resources transaction. All of the instruments can be customized to fit any of these needs:

• Selection
• Training & Development
• Placement
• Management
• Career Pathing
• Succession Planning
• Out placement

What are the options available to us if we want to implement such a system?
There are three different avenues you might take to install this system into your hiring procedures:

1. You can administer the assessments on your site, and fax the answers to our offices for scoring and analysis. The turnaround time will be no longer than four business hours for a verbal report, and the hard copy goes in the mail that day;
2. You can purchase computer scoring diskettes and score the assessments yourself, in a matter of minutes. The disks can be pre-customized with your hiring patterns, in addition to a selection of generic hiring patterns from our extensive database;
3. All instruments are available via the Internet, which also includes the extensive database of our concurrently validated hiring patterns. Your applicants can access your own coded site at their convenience, anywhere, anytime.

In what format are the assessments published?
The assessments are available in the following manner:

1. All assessments are available as pen and paper assessments in English and Spanish;
2. All assessments can be accessed via the Internet through secure coded sites.

With all of these options, are there any options in the purchase price?
Yes, we offer a full service program, as well as volume discounts. Quantity-purchase discounts apply when a company opts to score and review the assessments in-house. This option is available either by purchasing scoring diskettes or using the Internet system.

When using the online system, each assessment type is given a value based on a “credit” unit. This allows flexibility in both the selection of the assessments and the volume discount, giving the company greater control of their testing needs, as well as their budget needs. The scoring diskettes are configured and sold in quantities of 10, 25, 50 or combined to equal 100 or more assessments; however, only one assessment type is available per disk. As in all quantity purchases, the volume of units purchased determines the price. These options require advance payment, but can reduce the cost of a single assessment considerably. The prices have been established to reflect comparable costs, regardless of the system you prefer.

However, the advantage of allowing our office to score the assessments is two-fold: one, no up-front payment is required as in the above two options, and you are only billed for the actual number you use in any given month. And the added advantage of talking with, and asking questions of, our trained personnel, often makes up for any cost savings, and allows for a consistent professional analysis of an applicant's strengths and weaknesses.

If we opt to score the assessments ourselves, what hardware would we need?
If you intend to administer or score any of the assessments on the Internet, no additional hardware is needed other than your current connection. Your browser can be MS Internet Explorer 4.0 or better or Netscape 4.0 or better.

In order to execute any of the Achievement assessments on diskette, you would need:

• An IBM PC, PC-XT, PC-AT or 100% compatible;
• One DSDD 3.5" floppy disk drive, two floppy drives if utilizing Client Data Disks;
• An 80 column color or monochrome monitor;
• At least 640K Random Access Memory (RAM);
• An 80 column dot matrix, daisy wheel or laser printer (optional).
• Note: It will support both parallel and serial printers.

What types of assessments are available for different job levels?
Your options extend to the depth of information needed and the features required to make an intelligent hiring decision.

The Achiever was designed to assess senior level positions, including all management, professional sales, salaried and some administrative personnel. It measures six mental attributes and ten personality dimensions, plus a host of features, all designed to help selection, placement, management and training of your most valuable and costly employees.

The Guardian, with three mental attributes, combined with the ten personality dimensions, was created to evaluate mid-level employees: the administrative, 1st line supervisory, technical, skilled hourly workers, etc., where the 'can-do' and the 'will-do' are all too important to success.The Guardian also incorporates a series of employment risk questions, designed to aid in negligent hiring situations. Remember, this is the pool of employees from which most promotions are made.

The Performer contains two mental attributes, the ten personality dimensions and the employment risk questionnaire. The entry-level, semi-skilled or unskilled worker is often mis-hired. They are often the walk-in applicants applying for, and being hired for any opening, whether they fit the job or not, creating the company's highest turnover problem.

The Scoreboard eliminates all of the timed mental attributes, but maintains the ten personality dimensions and the employment risk questions. It focuses on the personality of the employee and the potential for success in unskilled jobs. A matrix score sheet allows the employer to determine the candidate's job stability, dependability, work ethic, possible advancement and more.

At what point in the normal hiring process should the assessment be given?
Using assessments, for most small to moderate companies, takes place when the company has reduced the applicant pool to the one, two or three that would seriously be considered for employment. At this point, you would probably have conducted interviews, checked references and considered their skill-experience. An assessment would be administered about the same time you also perform a drug screen and background searches. You are not obligated to evaluate every applicant that applies, but you must equally evaluate those who are seriously in contention for a job.

In very large companies, however, which are constantly looking for good people, it is more cost-efficient to assess the candidates prior to interviewing. It is more expensive to have an executive spend an hour talking with a prospective employee than it is to assess them. Also, the quality of the eventual interview will be much improved, because the assessment results will help the interviewer spend more time probing areas of obvious concern. In many cases, the assessment may indicate that the candidate is not right, and therefore should not be interviewed at all.

For what job levels should we use assessments?
Our system can accommodate any level job, from unskilled, entry-hourly rate to professional sales and management. Because most companies have not used assessments previously, the tendency is to start at the management level, and gradually work down to the administrative levels and below. Ironically, most companies have their highest turnover on the lower levels, but do not see the need to use assessments where they need it the most. Eventually, we feel most companies will assess all final job applicants at all job levels.

How many people should be assessed for each job opening?
Usually, the rule of thumb is that the higher the job, and the more money you are going to pay, the more candidates you want to assess. Also, there is a time element. If only one applicant is assessed and otherwise evaluated, and something unfavorable is found, your second choice candidate might have moved on and is no longer available. By allowing more than one candidate, with truly hirable potential, to be evaluated simultaneously, you will have true competition for the job, and 'the best man will win.' Also, the higher the level, the more you want to know about them, such as drug screens, background checks, etc. which take time.

How does the company know what traits are important in a particular job?
Each individual job has specific requirements and skills that are needed for success. Achievement Tec will establish 'benchmark' hiring patterns based on the company's job description. There are three approaches available to establish the data needed to create a valid job hiring pattern, or 'benchmark':

1. Concurrent Validation - The most accurate benchmark is to assess 10 or more of the best performers in any given job. This will thereby establishing a hiring pattern, which not only reflects the needs of that job, based on your own successful people, but also reflects the corporate culture and work environment of the company;
2. You can use and adapt any of the hiring patterns already established by Achievement Tec. Over the past twenty years, we have assessed vast numbers of employees, who have proven their success within their own companies or across an industry. By compiling these assessment results, in specific jobs, we have amassed a sizable database of concurrently validated hiring patterns. For example, companies will use our 'receptionist' hiring pattern, because most do not have enough people in that specific job to sufficiently develop a valid pattern.
3. Finally, through the usage of a Job Function Requirements checklist, provided by Achievement Tec, you can create hiring patterns based on the job description. The manager, or 'job expert' can check off the particular aptitudes and behavioral traits required for the position.

How long do the assessments take, and what is the best way to administer them?
The Achiever and the Guardian each take just under an hour, the Performer should take about 40 minutes, and the Scoreboard about 25 minutes. The Achiever, Guardian and Performer have several timed sections dealing with mental aptitudes. If utilizing the Internet, each timed section will be automatically and accurately timed, regardless of the speed of the computer being used. If the company opts to use test booklets, then you can either have someone time each segment with a timer, or use our audiotapes, which will guide the applicant/employee through the assessments.

How will you help us to understand the assessment results?
First of all, if you fax or e-mail your assessment answers to our offices, or request we download your Internet answers for scoring, we will call you with a complete oral analysis of the candidate's strengths and weaknesses, before mailing the full written report. If you are scoring the assessments yourselves, our reference manual contains all you need to fully understand the results. We are one of the few assessment companies that publish a complete interpretative guide for your usage.

How can we be sure if the applicant's responses are valid?
The mental aptitudes are considered valid it they are timed accurately. As to the personality responses, there are two built-in scales in all of our instruments, to determine the accuracy level of the personality assessments.

One scale deals with 'distortion' or 'exaggeration', which measures the candidness of the applicant's responses. The other scale addresses 'equivocation', wherein the applicant may select too many indecisive or neutral answers, thus 'diluting' the results. These validity factors are included in the final report, both as narrative information and part of the Stanine numerical scoring.