The Client
The New Orleans Pipe Trades apprenticeship program for Plumbers and Steamfitters Local Union 60 is a five-year training program in which apprentices receive education and work experience in their field of choice.
At the end of the program, each graduate receives journeyman status in plumbing, pipe fitting, or HVAC and can work on his or her own in the field. Courses begin twice a year. Applicants must have a diploma or GED to be considered for application.
The Solution
Wonderlic Basic Skills Test (WBST): The WBST measures a candidate’s basic verbal and math skills based upon job requirements helping recruiters verify that candidates have the necessary job-related verbal and math skills.
Available individually or as a set, the WBST Verbal and Quantitative tests quickly and accurately measure skills required to succeed in nearly every occupation. WBST content and results are directly tied to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) General Educational Development Scales (GED).
The powerful combination of these resources allows users to establish work-related optimal score ranges for more than 12,000 job titles. A grade level equivalency score is also provided.
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 candidates, and based on minimum test scores, automatically eliminates unqualified candidates, enabling recruiters to focus their time on those candidates that are most likely to succeed.
Wonderlic Raises the Bar For Pipe Trade Apprentice Program
For forty years, the New Orleans Pipe Trade’s apprentice training program has sent potential candidates to the state of Louisiana for aptitude testing as part of its selection process.
So, when D.J. Berger, Training Coordinator for New Orleans Pipe Trade, got ready to send a batch of apprentice candidates in for testing, he was surprised to find out the testing program had been eliminated. “The state decided that they weren’t going to validate the tests anymore,” he says. “That put me in a real jam.” The pipe trade’s five-year apprentice program prepares participants to be journeymen in plumbing, pipefitting and HVAC, and like most construction trades, it relied on state testing to help identify candidates with the cognitive ability and math skills to make it through this math-heavy program.
Berger called around to other pipe fitter unions, in Louisiana and other states, and heard the same story: the testing had been cancelled and they suddenly had no way to evaluate candidates. Frustrated, he called the pipe trade arm of the National Inspection, Testing and Certification Corporation (NITC), a third-party personnel certification agency, and asked if they’d be willing to build one for him. “They told me they could do it, but that they’d heard that another local union with the same problem had found a solution at Wonderlic.”
Building a brand new test would have cost the Pipe Trade a lot of time and money, he says, so he was relieved to hear there was an alternative. He called Wonderlic that day, and shortly later added two Wonderlic tests to his selection criteria that more than made up for the loss of the state testing. “All the state test gave us was a single rating of high, medium or low for each candidate,” he says, noting that it wasn’t much to go on. “The Wonderlic tests tell us whether a candidate has the ability to learn.”
He now uses the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT), which is a short, timed measure of cognitive ability; and the Wonderlic Basic Skills Test’s (WBST) Quantitative Test, which measures a candidate’s basic math skills based on established requirements for the position. “The Wonderlic test scores give us a baseline to go by,” he says. “Knowing what score they got gives us a picture of the candidates before they walk into the interview.” That baseline math skill is critical in Berger’s selection process. Even though candidates must have a diploma or GED to be considered for the program, many of them have terrible math skills. “Sometimes I wonder how they made it through high school,” he says.
Currently, he doesn’t cut candidates based on their Wonderlic scores, however the scores play a big role in the overall interview grading process. A six-member selection board meets with each candidate—three members from the Pipe Trade union, and three contractors interested in hiring the apprentices. Each board member rates the candidates on five criteria: education, attitude, interest, physical factors, and personal traits. Scores range from 0-20 for each category and the total scores for each board member are added up and averaged together to get a final interview score. Candidates must have a minimum of an 80 to even be considered for the program. They are selected based on the highest scores, with a set number of slots available every term. This semester he has 35 openings and 75 applicants.
“A low Wonderlic score will have a big impact on their education rating,” Burger says, and that impacts the whole score. “This is a math-heavy program. If they score really low on the Wonderlic tests, we know we’ll have a hard time teaching them.”
That theory was proven true with his most recent batch of candidates. They were the first group to take the Wonderlic tests as part of the selection process, and Berger noticed a remarkable difference. “For the first time we don’t have anyone in class who is having problems with the math,” he says. “It’s amazing.”
He’s always had one or two people who struggled to keep up, and even with extra help, many ended up failing the program. “Using the Wonderlic test has helped the whole class move forward,” he says. “It’s helping us raise our standards and turn out better journeymen.”
Berger is so pleased with the new tests, he plans to move them online next year and use Wonderlic scores as a preliminary elimination tool. “It will save time on interviewing and help us make sure people don’t get in just because they interview well.”
