Introduction and History

Introduction

Achievement Tec provides accurate, job-related aptitude and personality assessments for pre-employment selection, training and team building. Our pre-employment tests are behaviorally based and have been fully validated. In more than 40 years of continuous use in a business environment there have been no findings of adverse impact. The Achiever system of assessments has been reviewed by both the EEOC and the OFCCP in the course of their field audits. The EEOC has stated that they find nothing discriminatory about the use of the Achiever assessments. After reviewing The Achiever’s Reliability and Validity data, the OFCCP stated that it meets or exceeds the OFCCP's requirements.

The Achiever assessments are unique, copyrighted and only provided by certified consultants. They are not psychological tests, which can create legality concerns when used as general pre-employment selection tools. In fact, our assessments are not tests at all since they do not produce pass or fail scores. Rather, they are aptitude and personality surveys and are properly referred to as job-fit assessments.

The Achiever was the first job-fit assessment developed specifically for use in the business environment. The Achiever remains the leading job-fit assessment for business use and provides both aptitude and personality testing in one behaviorally oriented assessment. Job fit assessments like The Achiever add much needed objectivity to the pre-employment selection process. Testing applicants with The Achiever provides concrete, job-related feedback by comparing an individual's scores to the established criteria for success in a specific job.

History of the Achiever

The products and services provided by Achievement Tec have their roots in a localized personnel testing practice formed by a group of industrial psychologists in Dallas, Texas in 1957. Dr. John L. Shirley and other psychologists used the prominently recognized psychological tests of the day to test people for potential leadership roles in organizations. They specialized in the following standardized tests: Wonderlic, Thurston, California Intelligence Test, Stanford Binet, 16PF of IPAT, MMPI and Strong Campbell. At that time, companies were required to bring job applicants to Dallas, where they spent one to two days in the psychologists' offices undergoing a battery of tests and interviews resulting in a report, which often took a week or more to complete.

As the years passed, clients pressed for a more economical and simpler way of testing applicants. As a result of this request, Dr. Shirley contacted Dr. Raymond Cattell, who developed the Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) - a leading psychological assessment. Dr. Cattell participated in the building of a new test along with Dr. James L. Moore from Purdue, Dr. Shirley and two other noted psychologists. Together, they built the first test to debut in America that measures mental aptitudes critical to any job, behavioral traits that were purely job-related and validity scales all in one instrument. Prior to the instrument's creation, there were no purely job-related tests that contained a measurement of aptitudes, behaviors and validity scales in the same instrument. Today the test they developed is known as the Achiever. All other similar tests are derivatives of the Achiever.

In the early 1970's, the assessment transitioned into one that could be used by employers across America. Dr. Max L. Fogel, a leading neuropsychologist, and Dr. C. Alan Siebenthall, began documenting the Achiever interpretive reporting process and the appropriate materials enabling trained laymen to administer and score the tests in a more effective and economical manner. During that time, an emphasis on benchmarking began to better identify specific aptitudes and behaviors of more successful employees. By the end of the 1980's over 2,000 benchmarked jobs had been established for use in selecting successful people.

In the early 1980’s, the assessment was first “computerized”. Test booklets could be scored using MS DOS software and made available within minutes of an applicant completing the test. Although a long way from today’s version, it did allow the assessment to be delivered to a broader audience and was being used across the country by the early 1990's. The advent of the internet revolutionized the use of the Achiever, enabling anyone, anywhere, to take an assessment online and have it scored and delivered instantly.