The Client
Doormark is one of the leading manufacturers of high-quality thermofoil cabinet doors and drawer fronts in North America. Established in April, 1994, the company has 100 employees and is based near Miami, Florida. Approximately 50% of Doormark’s employees communicate exclusively in Spanish.
The Solution
Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT): The 50-question WPT, which has been used by thousands of organizations since 1937, is a 12-minute timed test that accurately measures a candidate’s ability to learn a specific job, solve problems, understand instructions and apply knowledge to new situations.
This test provides hiring managers with objective information about candidate aptitude, and based on minimum test scores, automatically eliminates a significant portion of the applicant pool enabling recruiters to focus their time on those candidates most likely to succeed.
Wonderlic Productivity Index® (WPI®): The WPI is a short-form measure of personality as it relates to productive behavior in the workplace. Based upon “Big 5” research by personality experts Murray Barrick, Ph.D. and Michael Mount, Ph.D., the WPI focuses on the fundamental factors that affect success in entry-level positions.
The WPI has been fine-tuned for entry-level positions, assessing an individual’s willingness to perform productively and cooperatively on the job, and avoid engaging in counterproductive behavior.
Wonderlic Tests Help Evaluate Spanish Speaking Candidates
Half of J.R. Mencarelli’s employee population speaks Spanish. They come from 14 different countries and when they come to him looking for work, they are usually new to the country, which means they often speak little English. Mencarelli is the Human Resources Manager for Doormark, a 10-year-old kitchen cabinet manufacturing firm with 100 employees based near Miami. And while he is working hard at learning Spanish, Mencarelli is far from fluent, which makes interviewing potential candidates tricky. He hires unskilled labor, but admits that employees have to have basic cognitive skills to learn how to work on the machines. Employees must also have a strong work ethic and a willingness to comply with safety rules if they are going to succeed at Doormark.
Many of the candidates have limited education, and because they are new to the country they have no verifiable work history or criminal record, which makes background checks difficult. On the other hand, Mencarelli says that most of them make phenomenal workers. “They are hard working, committed and happy to have legal work. That’s the kind of employee base I want.”Most of his applicants are referrals from existing employees, but even that, he admits, doesn’t give him a lot of useful information. “Having someone tell you ’he’s a good guy’ isn’t that helpful. I need more to go on.” To determine if candidates have the ability and attitude to do the job, Mencarelli relies on Spanish language versions of the Wonderlic Productivity Index (WPI) to assess workplace behavior, and the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT) to assess cognitive ability. “We do the testing so we know what we are getting into with employees,” he says. That gives Mencarelli a competitive edge. “The tests help us be more selective. If the tests only came in English it would eliminate half of my employee population.”
The WPI is especially important to him because it measures willingness to perform productively and safely. “Safety is so important for us.” Many of his applicants are young men, who sometimes have an attitude of invincibility that can translate into recklessness. “We don’t want people getting hurt or injuring others.”
If WPI scores show a red flag in safety, Mencarelli doesn’t automatically dismiss them. Instead he goes back to the candidate and may spend several hours with him, discussing his attitude toward safety, using a translator from his existing staff if necessary. He may also place his new hires who are “at risk” into safer positions until they prove themselves.
The WPT tells him whether applicants have the ability to follow directions and learn a new job, which is also key to success at Doormark. “Even though it’s an unskilled position, they are still working with $300,000 machines,” he says. “They need to be able to learn how to operate and maintain them safely.”But most importantly, Mencarelli wants to know which candidates are willing and excited to work, and which ones are not-the Spanish language Wonderlic tests allow him to do that. “If a person has a strong work ethic, a good attitude and a willingness to learn that’s more important than experience,” he says. “The test scores tell me that.”
