Resources
The Client
A worldwide men’s fashion brand.
The Products
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 a significant portion of the applicant pool enabling recruiters to focus their time on those candidates most likely to succeed.
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.
Comprehensive Personality Profile® (CPP®): The CPP® is an 88-question personality profiling system that describes a candidate’s character in terms of job-related strengths and weaknesses including emotional intensity, intuition, sensitivity, assertiveness, and recognition motivation. The CPP test data allow recruiters to match candidates’ personalities against a custom profile of their highest performers, optimizing the person-to-job fit. The assessment data are delivered to the hiring managers through summarized reports allowing them to quickly and decisively identify candidates who will achieve the greatest success in their culture.
Employee Reliability Inventory (ERI): The ERI is a risk management tool that helps recruiters determine which individuals are most likely to become valued employees rather than organizational liabilities. This risk management tool evaluates freedom from disruptive behavior, alcohol, and illegal drug use, as well as courtesy, emotional maturity, conscientiousness, trustworthiness, long-term job commitment, and safe job performance. The ERI also provides follow-up questions that recruiters use during interviews and reference checks to help clarify an individual’s assessment results.
Personality Characteristics Inventory® (PCI): The PCI forecasts job-related behavior in five areas enabling recruiters to select employees who are far more likely to stay with the company than candidates chosen based on interviews alone. Developed by personality experts Murray Barrick, Ph.D., and Michael Mount, Ph.D., the PCI links five key personality dimensions, known as the "Big Five," to successful job performance. The Big Five measure agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, stability, and openness. Regardless of job type, the core personal characteristics measured by the PCI are critical factors to the long-term achievements of employees.
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 Five research, the WPI focuses on the fundamental factors that affect success in entry-level positions. It 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.
A Few Hours of Testing Prevents Days of Legal Headaches
In the apparel industry, hiring employees with the right skills-set and personality to fit your culture is critical to creating a robust successful work environment.
In a close-knit work culture, attitude is as important as ability. That is why a large international apparel manufacturer implemented several Wonderlic tools to help identify and measure critical skills and characteristics of employees, before they are hired.
“It’s important that employees fit in,” says the HR Director. “If we hire the wrong people it affects the whole company.”
Fitting the culture is critical at the company, which prides itself on its cool, fun, and casual atmosphere where people work hard and play hard. "It’s important that employees fit in," says the HR director. "If we hire the wrong people it affects the whole company."
Four years ago, the company’s U.S. office was small and just beginning to expand. It had no formal hiring strategy or procedures for doing background checks or testing, and as a result, the recruiting staff made some important early hiring choices that didn’t work out.
Personality conflicts and an inability to perform the required skills caused friction in the company, and forced the HR director to take a serious look at how the company could improve its selection techniques.
“If someone is not a good fit, the Wonderlic tests tell us that. They’ve helped us avoid hiring people that just don’t fit our culture.”
A third-party human resources firm advised the company to add Wonderlic tests to its recruiting process to help screen out bad candidates and get a better feel for new employees’ strengths and weaknesses. The HR director liked what he saw and quickly added six Wonderlic tests to the hiring process. He selected the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT) and the Wonderlic Basic Skills Test (WBST) to measure cognitive
ability and basic skills; the Comprehensive Personality Profile (CPP) and the Personal Characteristics inventory (PCI), to assess candidates’ personality traits and likelihood of fitting the job and corporate culture; and the Employee Reliability Inventory (ERI) and Wonderlic Productivity Index (WPI) to measure reliability and productivity.
It took a while to get all of his managers used to the tests, but they now understand their value. Especially after seeing the consequences of hiring candidates despite their Wonderlic scores. “Whenever there’s a problem with someone they hire, the Wonderlic tests were always right,” the HR director says. “If someone is not a good fit, the Wonderlic tests tell us that. They’ve helped us avoid hiring people that just don’t fit our culture.”
He likes to give all six of the tests chosen to applicants he’s seriously considering. This process requires a time commitment, but it’s worth it to him. He’d rather spend the time up front weeding someone out who’s not right for the organization than go through the pain of hiring the wrong person. The costs associated with having to let someone go are significant, and he’s found that spending a few hours with the Wonderlic tests helps him avoid those problems.
Of all the tests, the company likes the combination of using the WPT and the WPI because together they define not only whether a person “can” do the job but also whether they “will” do the job. The WPT measures cognitive skills and the WPI measures candidate’s behavior in terms of productivity and work ethic. “Together, the WPT and the WPI are key indicators of skills and attitude. That’s a big help to us.”
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