“We have some great psychologists involved in creating our tests”
Criteria is one of the key providers of web-based pre-employment testing services. Their mission is to make high-quality pre-employment testing solutions accessible to companies of all sizes. Their testing system, HireSelect, is a SaaS (software as a service) solution that empowers organizations to better handle their most valuable asset — their human capital — by offering state-of-the-art assessment tools to enhance the effectiveness of the worker selection and retention process. HireSelect highlights aptitude, personality, and skills tests.
Criteria are based in Los Angeles, CA, and were established in 2006 and have quickly developed into one of the fastest-growing organizations in the talent management sector. They have thousands of customers in all 50 states and 18 countries internationally. HireSelect delivers a service that demystifies the employee testing process while simultaneously adhering to the highest scientific standards. Their product development efforts are governed by the twin goals of developing some of the most precise and innovative testing IP in the world — while delivering it in a highly accessible and user-friendly format. To do this, they rely on the Scientific Advisory Board, which is made up of leading psychologists and test development experts from Harvard University, Penn State University, Stanford University, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Josh Millet is the Founder and CEO of Criteria. He incorporated the company in 2006 with a vision to build a SaaS-based pre-employment testing service that would make the greatest quality employee assessment tools available to companies of all sizes. “We have some great psychologists involved in creating our tests,” Millet says, pointing to personalities like company co-founder Dr. Eric Loken, who has a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard, in addition to a robust Scientific Advisory Board that promotes their product from simple personality quizzes to retrospective assessments with a strong scientific resolution.
The company works with hundreds of companies in a variety of fields, from the Allstate Insurance, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Domino’s Pizza. HireSelect is a web-based pre-employment testing system that offers personality, aptitude, and skills tests created by some of the world’s leading testing specialists, an intuitive, user-friendly service that requires minimum training and makes implementation simple real-time scoring, and no per-test fees.
Incorporating a successful employee testing program starts with choosing rigorously verified, job-related tests. HireSelect assists with test selection by promoting the right tests based on the US Department of Labor’s O*Net database of over 1,100 job profiles. Users can customize these test batteries by adding or removing tests based on the specific job requirements at their organization. HireSelect consists of a variety of aptitude, character, and skills tests and allows users to test candidates either remotely or at their place of business. Organizations can set up a link for testing candidates on-site, or link to the tests from an online job section or the careers section of their company’s website.
Tests are scored in real-time, and the score reports are emailed to users and also saved in the Results section of an individual’s HireSelect account. Here the results can be viewed, filtered, archived, and exported. Currently, the company is researching ways for providing more specific personality and skill evaluations with a shorter test-taking window; providing the same effects in a five-to-ten minute window, rather than a full-fledged 45-minute test.
The firm is now making strides in this field with one of its latest test options, known anonymously as “G.A.M.E.” — short for General Aptitude Mobile Evaluation. This five-to-six-minute papers may look like a list of “brain games” to applicants but can provide a rich trove of data to likely employers.
