Validation and Legality
Is testing legal?
Has this assessment been validated?
The Achiever, as well as the other assessment instruments published by Hire Level, has been validated in accordance with standard psychological procedures.
The collective assessments, known as the Achiever Assessment System, have been validated in accordance with the construct validation process, which is considered to be the superior method of validation. This means that the 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, Hire Level, 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. The reason behind this statement is that Hire Level’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 final hiring decision.
Has the Hire Level 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 Hire Level and submitted to the court on behalf of Fikes Chemical Company. On numerous occasions, when complaints have been filed, and were under investigation by the EEOC, the respective construct and concurrent validation studies have been submitted. These studies establish the assessment as non-discriminatory in the hiring and selection 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 Hire Level’s assessment system.
How many years have you been in business?
How many people, over the years, have been assessed on your system and how many are currently being assessed on a monthly basis?
How can I tell for myself that your results are accurate?
Has this system ever been used by the federal government or in an academic setting?
The Achiever Assessment System has been used by the US Naval Weapons Control Centers for downsizing 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 select 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.
Benefits
Why do most companies use assessments?
You’ve 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. Moreover, 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.
Lastly, 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. 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, 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 use of assessments have on our turnover?
What kinds of savings will a program like this produce?
How can we measure the effectiveness of this assessment system?
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
Options
How do we set up an account?
How will my candidates take an assessment?
How do we receive the final reports?
That depends on the type of service you prefer.
- Full Service Program: As your need arrives, you simply give your candidates your unique company codes and the name of the assessment you would like them to take. You email Achievement Tec the candidate’s name and position so we can include the appropriate benchmark when we score the assessment. We then email a completed report to your authorized contact and follow up with a call to offer a complete and comprehensive discussion.
- Self-Scoring System: If you prefer, we can direct the system to you allowing you access to all of the administrative functions. This gives you better control of your reports; however, it eliminates the opportunity to discuss the results of your reports with our staff members.
Is there a difference in pricing?
Yes, there are differences in prices. Prices are determined by the assessment you use and the program you prefer. First, let us determine the available programs.
As stated above, there are two programs available to fit your company’s budget and frequency needs.
- The Full Service Program: This format allows you to use the assessments as needed, and we bill you for only those assessments you use within each billing period. The price includes the assessment, as well as the verbal consultation. This allows for a consistent and professional analysis of your applicants.
- Self-Scoring System: Our Self-Scoring system allows for volume discounts. It does reduce the price of each assessment, and the discounts do increase with the quantity of the purchase; however, the verbal consultation is no longer available. In this situation, you are billed for the total purchase at one time. We do recommend that you begin with the Full Service Program to learn the ropes, and convert to the Self-Scoring System when you become more confident in your analysis of the results.
Additionally, we offer a complete menu of assessments each priced based on the information included and the level of employment targeted.
If I opt for the self-scoring system, how do you know what assessments we will use and what to bill us?
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 informed hiring decision. Although you are welcome to use any of the assessments for any level of employment, we have developed assessments that capture the needs of various job levels. All incorporate the 10 personality dimensions, but each assessment differs in the aptitudes tested and the various report elements included. Each of the assessments are priced differently, based on the configuration of the reports.
The Achiever/ Sales Achiever were designed to assess senior level positions, including all management, professional sales, salaried and some administrative personnel.
The Executive Achiever focuses on those elements necessary for strong leadership in your most senior positions. It incorporates management competencies and delivers information on accountability, collaboration, enthusiasm, and strategic thinking.
The Guardian was created to evaluate mid-level employees: administrative, first line supervisory, technical, and skilled hourly workers. This is the pool of employees from which most employers promote and where the ‘can-do’ and the ‘will-do’ are important to success and advancement.
The Performer is utilized for entry-level, semi-skilled or unskilled workers, who are often mis-hired. They are 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 focuses on the personality of the employee and the potential for success in unskilled jobs. This assessment allows the employer to determine the candidate’s job stability, dependability, work ethic, possible advancement and more.
The Hiring Process
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 a select few, 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 and experience. An assessment would be administered about the same time you also perform a drug screen and a background check. You are not obligated to evaluate every applicant that applies, but you must equally evaluate those who are seriously in contention for a job.
However, in very large companies, 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. In addition, 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 was not right and ,therefore, should not have been interviewed at all.
For what job levels should we use assessments?
How many people should be assessed for each job opening?
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. There are three approaches available to establish the data needed to create a valid job hiring pattern or ‘benchmark’:
- 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.
- Industrial Database – You can use and adapt any of the hiring patterns already established. Over the past twenty plus years, we have assessed vast numbers of employees, who have proven their success within their own companies or across an industry. By compiling these assessments, we have amassed a sizable database of concurrently validated benchmarks.
- Job Function Requirements – You can create an interim hiring patterns based on the job description, until sufficient numbers of successful people populate a specific job.
How long do the assessments take?
How can we be sure if the applicant’s responses are valid?
We are one of the few assessments that address the candor with which applicants respond and rate the accuracy of the resulting reports. The mental aptitudes are considered valid if they are timed accurately. As for 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 second 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.
