Primary Use – Selection and Development
Assessment Type  – Cognitive
Job Level – Professional, Manager, Supervisor
Number of Items – 40 (Short form 20)
Estimated Time – 85 minutes/Short Form 45 (timed)
Administration Format – Proctored

Selecting a high-quality workforce is one of the greatest challenges in business. Organizations depend on their management teams, and need to hire individuals who will learn the business quickly, solve problems, communicate effectively and exercise good judgment. To accomplish that, they need a selection instrument that is not only economical and effective, but also defensible under challenge.

PSI’s Professional Employment Test (PET) is that instrument.

The Professional Employment Test was designed to represent cognitive abilities that are important for successful performance in professional, administrative, and managerial jobs.  Items were developed to represent the four item types, reflecting a wide range of difficulty, and on language and situations that are commonly encountered in business and government work settings.  Items were written at a reading level no higher than grade 6.  Special attention was paid to ensure that questions do not contain material that might be offensive to members of any racial, ethnic, or gender group.

The PET was specifically designed to measure cognitive abilities required for successful job performance in professional and managerial positions. These abilities are well established in the assessment literature and include:

Verbal Comprehension – The ability to understand and interpret complex information imparted through language. It includes the ability to read and understand written materials.

Quantitative Problem-Solving – A special form of general reasoning – the ability to apply reasoning processes to solve mathematical problems.

Reasoning – The ability to analyze, evaluate information and to arrive at correct conclusions. It includes inductive and deductive logic.

Research shows that cognitive ability predicts job performance and that the validity of cognitive ability tests increases with the complexity of jobs.

Before you make your next hiring decision, consider PET’s effectiveness:

Job-related – Test items are based on language and situations that are commonly encountered in business, industry and government.

Variety of Applications – The PET is proven to be a practical and reliable tool for identifying candidates for management training programs, evaluating college recruits, and selecting entry-level professionals and individuals for promotion.

Fast, Simple Administration – The PET is available for either web-based or paper-and-pencil delivery. This 40-item test has an 80-minute time limit (and a shortened version is available with 20 items and a 40-minute time limit). The instructions for the test administrator and the examinee are straightforward and easy to follow.

Easy to Interpret – Tests administered online are automatically scored and the results are available immediately after the candidate completes the test. Scoring templates are provided for the paper-and-pencil versions of the test. Norms for professional occupational groups facilitate the proper interpretation of test scores.

Fairness – Test fairness studies demonstrate that the PET is unbiased with respect to race.

Reliability – Test content and scoring are objective and consistent.

Efficiency – The PET can help reduce time evaluating candidates that do not have required abilities, so you spend your time interviewing those who are more likely to succeed on the job.

Validity – The PET has been documented to predict job performance in professional and managerial occupations. Validity link-up studies are also available to demonstrate the relevance of the PET for positions in your organization.

 

TOP EMPLOYEES ARE MORE PRODUCTIVE

Your competitive edge depends on the quality of your management team. The valid, objective evaluation of job applicants will result in improved productivity. A survey conducted for an insurance company indicated that a gain of $6,475 in productivity was achieved annually per management trainee. If this company hired 10 management trainees a year, it could be expected to realize a gain in productivity of $64,750 in the first year. Similar results were achieved in a state civil service department where the average per-employee gain in productivity from the use of the PET was $4,750.

DEMONSTRATED VALIDITY

Criterion-related validity studies and generalization literature support the validity of the PET for predicting performance in professional and managerial occupations. Scores on the PET have been shown to correlate strongly with supervisors’ ratings of job performance and to performance on standardized work samples (validity coefficients ranged from .24 to .59). These correlations show conclusively that the PET predicts job performance.