Promotional Processes

Promotional Processes

Custom Exam Development

Promotions play a pivotal role in shaping your agency's people and culture. Conducting a fair, transparent, and psychometrically sound promotional process is critical to how the process is received, perceived, and embraced within your agency. We understand the importance and emotional weight that promotions carry and approach them with the utmost sensitivity and professionalism.

We collaborate with agencies to identify the foundational sources that make up the content domain. This includes agency-written directives, legal updates, pertinent statutes, and other materials that directly align with the job being promoted. Additionally, we work closely with agencies to identify and exclude content areas where recognized policy-practice disconnects exist, ensuring fairness and relevance.

Our team can leverage our leadership text, and other selected readings for test question development. We ensure all assigned readings align with the job requirements of the position being evaluated.

To further enhance fairness, we take a proactive approach to post-test item analysis, providing candidates the opportunity to review their exams and offering a structured process for submitting challenges.

Process and Components

Our promotional processes typically include:

1. Written Exam: Featuring a cut-score to determine eligibility.
2. Scenario-Based Assessments: Utilizing “in-box” exercises to simulate real-world tasks.
3. Scenario-Based Oral Assessments: Testing situational judgment and decision-making.

We recommend involving outside assessors to enhance impartiality but can also adapt to agency policies or contractual requirements.

Assessors and Interrater Reliability 

For optimal results, we recommend using external assessors who hold a rank one level higher than the position being tested. However, we acknowledge that agency policies or labor agreements may dictate assessor panel composition.

Our experience shows that an assessor consensus approach, coupled with anchored rating scales, delivers the most reliable and equitable outcomes. This method ensures interrater reliability and consistency in evaluations.