What is the Critical Attention Skills Test (CAST)?

The Critical Attention Skills Test (CAST) is designed to assess a candidate’s ability to multi-task or concentrate on two or more things simultaneously, maintain concentration on a task for a sustained period of time, focus on important information, and ignore irrelevant distractions, while responding quickly. Therefore, the assessment distinguishes between candidates who have a superior ability to remain responsive and highly focused over sustained periods, while ignoring distractions.

The CAST measures a specific component of cognitive aptitude, which is related to improved job performance, productivity, and training outcomes. The CAST enables you to assess for a candidate’s “mental fitness,” reaction times, concentration, and focused attention skills.

Because of its ability to measure concentration skills, the CAST helps predict employee success in a wide variety of positions ranging from skilled manufacturing jobs to casino gaming dealers to video surveillance workers.

High attention and concentration levels are also strongly correlated with low operator error, so the CAST is used to help predict job performance for pilots, delivery drivers, and truck and bus drivers.

The questions do not contain any English language; only the instructions require English comprehension. Tutorials provide the opportunity for candidates to practice and ensure they understand the instructions before beginning each scored section of the assessment. The assessment is streamed randomly: each candidate receives the questions in a different order. This means the assessment offers a relatively unique experience for each candidate, while maintaining the same number and complexity of questions.

We have been using the Critical Attention Skills Test from Criteria for many years and we are pleased with the results, as are our clients.

Fermion specialises in psychometric testing for recruitment. Please contact Fermion to discuss how the Typing and/or Data Entry tests, or any other psychometric test, can help with you your recruitment decisions.