Resources & FAQ

Yes, you and your test takers will receive free technical support. Your test takers are provided with Help Desk contact information and a link to Testing FAQs. Contact our dedicated technical support staff to receive answers for any of your questions.

Yes. Our assessments go through an extensive creation and review process to ensure compliance with EEOC guidelines. For more information, please review our validation summary or request our free complete validation study.

Technical assessments have an average of 50 questions each; most other assessments have between 25 and 30 questions. You can decrease the number of questions on Staff Testing assessments by using the Customize a Test feature that is found within the Test Administration area of your Administration Center.

How long a candidate takes to complete an assessment can be determined by different factors, such as the candidate's familiarity with the subject matter, the number of questions on the assessment, and the testing computer being used. On average, technical assessments take between 30 and 60 minutes to complete; software, call center, skills, and industrial assessments can take between 10 and 25 minutes to complete.

Setting up a testing session is quick and easy. Just follow these step-by-step directions:

1. After logging in, select the “Set Up Testing” option. Or, if you are within your Administration Center select Set Up Testing from the Test Administration area.
2. Your account's Staff Testing assessments, customized assessments, and/or assessment batches are in a list on the right-hand side. Select at least one item from the Available Tests list.
   1. View its description by clicking the Test Description button.
   2. Add it to your selected tests by clicking the Add button.
   3. Remove a mistakenly selected item by clicking on it's name in the left-hand side and clicking the Remove button. The item is not permanently removed; it's only removed from this testing session.
3. Enter the number of candidates that will be taking all the assessments you selected.
4. Click the Continue button.
5. Choose how you want your candidate(s) to receive the Test Session ID(s).
   1. I have one candidate taking this session:
   2. Click the Begin Testing button to proceed immediately to the test entrance screen. This option applies if the candidate is in your office and is testing from the computer used to set up the session. - OR -
   3. Click the Email button if you want to email the test session ID and step-by-step directions to your candidate. This option works best for remote candidates.
   4. I have more than one candidate taking this session:
      1. Each candidate must be given a different test session ID.
      2. Click the Print button to print a list of the different test session IDs. This option is ideal if you will be testing candidates in your office. - OR -
      3. Click the Email button if you want to email the test session IDs and step-by-step directions to your candidates. This option works best for remote candidates.

That's all there is to it! You can view a list of your current test sessions, set up another test session, or make use of the other features within your Administration Center. If you need more help please contact us.

The answer depend on which platform you will be using.

With our eSkill platform you can customize the assessments. You cannot change the content of the questions or answers however you can include or exclude specific assessment questions to build customized assessments.

With the IBM Assess platform you will not have the ability to customize tests.

For additional questions please contact an account manager at 866-271-8378.

Yes, by creating a batch, or group, of assessments. Here's some step-by-step directions:

• Login to your Test Center and select either Create Batch or New Test, depending on the vendor you have selected.
• Give your batch of assessments a descriptive title.
• Select the assessments you want in the batch from the Available Tests.
• After selecting all the assessments you want in the batch, click the Continue/Save button.

Your assessment batch(es) will appear in your list of Available Tests when you set up testing for your candidates. In addition to selecting a batch or batches of assessments for your candidates, you can also add individual assessments to your testing sessions.

Once a batch has been created it can be edited as well. If you need more help with test batches please contact us.

Please review our complete list of available tests; the assessments you're looking for may be in a package that's different from the one you purchased. If this is the case, please contact a Staff Testing sales representative.

Yes. The option to display test results to the candidates can easily be turned on or off in the administration area.

Data is collected data from thousands of companies using the assessments in order to formulate general scoring benchmarks. While these numbers have nothing to do with cut-rate scores or validation, and should not be used in such context, you can refer to them as scoring guidelines until you have enough experience working with this testing system and your candidates to determine acceptable scores for your organization. How candidates' results are interpreted will vary depending on the purpose of testing. Therefore, it is possible that every position within a company would have different levels of acceptable scores. Should you wish to determine cut-rates for our tests, it is your responsibility to set up a separate study in a position-specific context in order to comply with EEOC guidelines.

Generally, a score of 60%-80% indicates a basic knowledge of the subject being tested with scores above 80% indicating an advanced knowledge of the subject being tested. However, simply because a candidate scores less than 60%, it does not follow that the score is unacceptable. A score of less than 60% may be acceptable if the candidate is not required to have mastered all of the material tested; for example, most legal secretaries do not use the mail merge feature of WordPerfect in their job duties and tend to answer these questions incorrectly. Hence, an overall lower score resulting from incorrect answers to mail merge questions does not indicate that the candidate does not have those skills required by the position. In addition, many tests are optimized for users with two or more years of experience. A candidate with one year of experience may score well under 60%. For this reason, your test score reports include question-by-question results. To ensure that you are using all tests in a valid manner, please check individual question results and compare them to your needs. For instance, if you are placing someone in a position that requires Lotus skills but does not require Lotus graphing skills, then you should not include those test questions on the test to disqualify an applicant from a job.

You may encounter test results that are unusually low. If most of your candidates score between 60% and 80%, an unusually low score might be 20%. In our experience, there are several reasons that this might occur. Poor scores may result if the candidate fails to follow directions, is distracted, is tired, does not have a grasp of the material presented, or leaves the test before it is completed. For best results, make certain the candidate reads the questions carefully and performs all of the keystrokes that correspond exactly to the task required.

Although there are not time limits imposed on tests, we do record the amount of time spent on each individual question as well as the test overall. This information is found on every detailed test result. The time-taken figure is best used selecting between two candidates who scored similarly on a test, if necessary. If efficiency in the test area is a job requirement, then it would be appropriate to choose the applicant who completed the test faster, all other things being equal. Our customers have indicated to us that their strongest candidates typically complete Prove It! tests in less time then weaker candidates. Any use of time as a factor in hiring decisions may lead to the violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Please seek the advice of your legal counsel before including times information among your selection criteria.

Data is collected data from thousands of companies using the assessments in order to formulate general scoring benchmarks. While these numbers have nothing to do with cut-rate scores or validation, and should not be used in such context, you can refer to them as scoring guidelines until you have enough experience working with this testing system and your candidates to determine acceptable scores for your organization. How candidates' results are interpreted will vary depending on the purpose of testing. Therefore, it is possible that every position within a company would have different levels of acceptable scores. Should you wish to determine cut-rates for our tests, it is your responsibility to set up a separate study in a position-specific context in order to comply with EEOC guidelines.

Generally, a score of 60%-80% indicates a basic knowledge of the subject being tested with scores above 80% indicating an advanced knowledge of the subject being tested. However, simply because a candidate scores less than 60%, it does not follow that the score is unacceptable. A score of less than 60% may be acceptable if the candidate is not required to have mastered all of the material tested; for example, most legal secretaries do not use the mail merge feature of WordPerfect in their job duties and tend to answer these questions incorrectly. Hence, an overall lower score resulting from incorrect answers to mail merge questions does not indicate that the candidate does not have those skills required by the position. In addition, many tests are optimized for users with two or more years of experience. A candidate with one year of experience may score well under 60%. For this reason, your test score reports include question-by-question results. To ensure that you are using all tests in a valid manner, please check individual question results and compare them to your needs. For instance, if you are placing someone in a position that requires Lotus skills but does not require Lotus graphing skills, then you should not include those test questions on the test to disqualify an applicant from a job.

You may encounter test results that are unusually low. If most of your candidates score between 60% and 80%, an unusually low score might be 20%. In our experience, there are several reasons that this might occur. Poor scores may result if the candidate fails to follow directions, is distracted, is tired, does not have a grasp of the material presented, or leaves the test before it is completed. For best results, make certain the candidate reads the questions carefully and performs all of the keystrokes that correspond exactly to the task required.

Although there are not time limits imposed on tests, we do record the amount of time spent on each individual question as well as the test overall. This information is found on every detailed test result. The time-taken figure is best used selecting between two candidates who scored similarly on a test, if necessary. If efficiency in the test area is a job requirement, then it would be appropriate to choose the applicant who completed the test faster, all other things being equal. Our customers have indicated to us that their strongest candidates typically complete Prove It! tests in less time then weaker candidates. Any use of time as a factor in hiring decisions may lead to the violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Please seek the advice of your legal counsel before including times information among your selection criteria.

Because we work with several testing platforms the exact system requirements will vary slightly depending on the platform you choose. Most of our tests are Web Based and utilize *HTML5 technology, the minimum system requirements are fairly uniform and can be administered with just about any computer with an internet connection and fairly up to date web browser.

*For the questions that include audio files, you need to have Adobe Flash Player 10 or later installed, or use a compatible browser that offers support for HTML5.

Examples of browsers that support HTML5 are the following: Internet Explorer 9 (or later), Edge 20 (or later), Firefox 26 (or later), as well as Chrome 5 (or later) on a PC, and with Safari 8 (or later) on a Mac.

We are happy to provide your company with a free demo session to test system compatibility, please contact an account representative at 866-271-8378 to arrange your free demo session.

Because gauging writing skills is a highly subjective endeavor, we leave it to you to determine the level of writing effectiveness represented by a candidates writing sample. It is for this reason that we provide a controlled, immediate writing environment to help assess the skill of the writer, in context. This writing environment is not scored and provided to our customers free of charge. Staff Testing does offer Business Writing, a scored, multiple-choice test that focuses on such skills as brainstorming, grammar, organization, approaches to writing and letter writing. (Writing Samples are on IBM Assess platform only and not available with eSkill platform)

As each environment requires different thresholds of ability, it is recommended that you, the test administrator, determine the best benchmark for your candidates. An effective way to go about this is by administering the test to those employees that have already proven their abilities in the position for which you are testing. Through gathering their scores, you will have a good idea of a benchmark that will work well for your specific work environment. Please feel free to contact us If you need further assistance.

Yes, Staff Testing offers the ability to private label your own testing system, so that is mirrors your corporate website with your organization's logos, colors and fonts. The benefit is when your candidates' test remotely, it will seamlessly look as though they're using your company's personal testing system!

If you are using our eSkill platform you do have the ability to add a question or scenario to your assessment with the “Create Free Response Tool”. With the additional purchase of the "eSkill Editor" you can create complete tests with your own content and then integrate those tests with your existing assessments. You can also add picture, video and audio files if required.

Under the IBM Assess platform you will not have the ability to add questions to your assessments.

To request more information please Contact Us.

While a lower score does not necessarily indicate failure, it is an issue you should review. Review the following and make sure you are administering the assessments appropriately:

1. Are you administering an assessment that is appropriate for the position for which they are applying? Review the assessment, description, and outline; make sure the assessment is at an appropriate level of difficulty. If you find there are questions that are not appropriate, remove them from the assessment.
2. What is the testing environment like? Is their environment such that they will not be interrupted or distracted?