The Achiever Pre Employment Assessment

The Achiever is an in-depth pre employment assessment that measures the following six mental aptitudes (cognitive abilities) and ten personality dimensions exhibited within an individual as they relate to the job the individual is being assessed for:

Mental Aptitudes

• Mental Acuity - learning, judgment, problem-solving and reasoning ability
• Business Terms - knowledge of basic business terms
• Memory Recall - knowledge of current events
• Vocabulary - general English vocabulary
• Numerical Perception - ability to handle numerically related tasks quickly and accurately
• Mechanical Interest - interest in the mechanical area

Personality Dimensions

• Energy - energy and drive level; how tension and stress are handled
• Flexibility - integrity, reliability, dependability and work ethics
• Organization - ability to plan and utilize time wisely
• Communication - individual's desire to meet and interact with people
• Emotional Development - level of self-confidence and ability to handle pressure
• Assertiveness - whether a person is a leader or a follower
• Competitiveness - whether a person is team-spirited or individualistically competitive
• Mental Toughness - ability to persevere and deal with obstacles in life without giving up
• Questioning/Probing - desire to ask questions and probe
• Motivation - whether person is security-motivated or recognition, incentive and commission oriented

The Achiever assessment tool, noted as one of the most in depth and comprehensive pre employment assessment reports in the American and Canadian marketplace, contains the following segments:

• The narrative segment, which explains each mental aptitude and personality dimension that is being assessed in the report and how the individual has scored in each compared to the job.
  
  
  
• A pictorial analysis comparing the individual's actual scores to the desirable benchmarks for the job. These job benchmarks may be derived for an individual company based on their own successful people in the job, based on the job description, or the person can be assessed against Candidate Resources' data base of people who are successful in those jobs.
  
  
  
• Leadership Analysis identifying the person's strongest areas and areas the person could benefit from developing in, based on the following five elements of leadership skills:
  
  
  1. Planning
  2. Organizing
  3. Directing
  4. Staffing
  5. Controlling

  
  

• Sales Analysis is a sales assessment which identifies the person's strongest sales skills and areas the person could benefit from developing in, based on the following five elements of selling:
  
  
  1. Developing rapport
  2. Identifying a need or desire
  3. Presenting the product/service to fill prospect's needs
  4. Dealing with objections
  5. Closing the sale

  
  

• Personal Development Plan compiled as a result of the overall assessment of the individual.  The Personal Development Plan compares the mental aptitudes and behavioral traits required to successfully perform the job and an identifies those actions that the individual can take on a daily basis (books they can read, etc.) to become more proficient in the job.
  
  
  
• Behavioral interview questions that can be asked in a secondary interview process, which are created as a result of the comparison of the individual to the requirements of the job.  In addition, responses are given that the interviewer might look for in the candidate's responses, in relationship to the person's job fit.

The Achiever's most prominent use is in employment testing for the screening and evaluation of applicants, or objective evaluation of existing employees who are being considered for promotion, transfer or annual performance review in job categories which include:

• Inside and outside sales
• Customer service skills
• Supervisory skills
• Management skills
• Administrative
• Technical
• Engineering

Organizations who make an investment in their employees are concerned about matching the person with the job generally use some type of aptitude testing, personality testing or profile testing.  Employees who are appropriately matched to their jobs have higher levels of job satisfaction and overall job performance than their "unmatched" co-workers.  Higher levels of job satisfaction result in lower employee turnover and improved retention.  

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The Achiever is a Quality Pre Employment Assessment

The Achiever is indeed a quality pre employment testing instrument.  It is so much more than just personality profile testing.  It is both a cognitive assessment and a behavioral assessment.  How effective can any emotional intelligence or other aptitude testing be without a measure of cognitive ability.  Anyone looking at employment testing should strongly consider this employment aptitude test.

The personality assessment portion of the Achiever measures core behaviors.  As far as behavioral testing is concerned, it is the finest and most accurate assessment tool that I have ever found that is still classified as an employee assessment.  Combining the behavioral assessment measures with the cognitive assessment measures on one instrument produces a very powerful effect.  Not only do you know what the candidate's problem solving and intellectual abilities are, you also gain a much better understanding of how those abilities relate to the behavioral factors (personality dimensions).

For example, if a person scores low in Organization, that in itself does not define the overall characteristics of the individual.  If the person has an accompanying high score in Mental Acuity, then we do not have to worry so much about the lower score in Organization because the higher level of intelligence will help to balance out the score in Organization.

However, if the person scored low in both Organization and Mental Acuity, then we would have a point of concern if the job requires higher levels of organizational skills and planfulness. In this case the low score in Mental Acuity would have a compounding effect on the score in Organization. As in the case cited above, personality testing alone would not give you a clear picture of the applicant's abilities.  You really need to combine that information with an evaluation of the cognitive abilities to get an accurate assessment of the applicant's potential.  The Achiever accomplishes that goal very effectively and it does it with style without being classified as a psychological profile test.

The Achiever is also used for customer service testing, as a sales assessment test, and as a career assessment test. 

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