Why test employees with the achiever?
A recent study by Deloitte Research concluded that employees are becoming increasingly disaffected. Successful organizations find ways to engage employees in ways other than the bigger paychecks or better benefits that competitors can easily match. But, how does an employer determine the best way to engage employees? By testing them with The Achiever.
Testing employees with The Achiever provides the following benefits:
- Insight into the best way to manage an employee
- Find other positions within an organization an employee may perform well
- Provide objective analysis of candidates for promotion
- Determine whether a candidate for transfer is well suited for the new environment
- Determine areas in which the employee needs training or development to improve performance
- Team building
The Achiever provides an employer with information about an employee in six mental aptitudes and ten personality dimensions. Analysis of these aptitudes and dimensions makes management and team building more effective. Additionally, The Achiever provides Benchmarks against which an employee may be compared. The Benchmark represents the range of scores required for successful performance of a particular job. The Benchmark provides a “picture” of how the employee’s scores compare to the job requirements, making promotion, transfer or other employment decisions easier.
The Achiever report is available in a version to be given directly to the employee to aid in training, development, and team building. The following notable organizations utilize The Achiever to select “A” performers and jump-start their performance:
- American Fidelity Assurance
- Brink’s Home Security
- Cendant Corporation (Avis)
- Crown Lift Trucks
- Federal Express
- Gemological Institute of America
- Hard Rock Cafe
- Haverty’s Furniture
- McGraw Hill
- North American Lighting
- Scottrade
- TALX
- TAC Americas
- Toyota
- Universal Computer Systems
- University of Phoenix
Nextel – CRI utilized the Achiever to assess Nextel’s most successful salespeople to establish success benchmarks. CRI then assessed over 500 customer service people to determine which met the benchmark aptitudes and behaviors for success in sales, thus enabling management to make more objective decisions as to which customer service people to move into sales.
Cendant Companies – Wide user of the Achiever technology. Cendant Companies include Avis, Fairfield Communities, RCI, Century-21, CitiTravel, Budget and many others.
The Achiever
The Achiever is a unique test in that it combines mental and personality measurement in one instrument. It also has a scoring system that provides scores on a scale that can be related to the Normal Distribution and that easily relates scores to the job requirements by means of a benchmark of successful performers.
The Achiever measures the following aptitudes and traits:
Six Mental Aptitudes:
- Mental Acuity – learning comprehension, judgment, reasoning and problem-solving ability
- Business Terms – knowledge of basic business terms
- Memory Recall – knowledge of current events as they relate to the job
- Vocabulary – general English vocabulary skills
- Numerical Perception – ability to handle numerically related tasks quickly and accurately
- Mechanical Interest – measures interest in the mechanical area
Ten Personality Traits:
- Energy – energy, drive, tension and stress levels
- Flexibility – integrity, reliability, dependability and work ethics
- Organization – personal orientation to plan and utilize time wisely
- Communication – innate ability to meet and interact with people
- Emotional Development – ego, self-esteem, self-confidence and ability to handle pressure
- Assertiveness – strength and determination to get one’s way
- Competitiveness – team orientation versus individualistic competitiveness
- Mental Toughness – psychological stamina to deal with life and job problems
- Questioning/Probing – instinct to question and probe rather than accepting things at face value
- Motivation – security-motivated or recognition, incentive and commission oriented
The Achiever also contains two validity scales to assess the accuracy of The Achiever report:
- Distortion – frankness of the respondent as related to the statistical validity of the personality dimensions
- Equivocation – consistent decision-making of the respondent as it relates to the accuracy of the personality dimensions measured
The Achiever uses the Stanine scoring system to compare an individual’s scores to a benchmark and the Normal Distribution. To learn more about the Stanine system and Benchmarking with The Achiever, please contact Strategic Essentials, Inc.
