By Ellen Neuborne (USA Today)

When Lori Miller had to hire 40 child-care workers in four weeks, the task was enormous. The risk of making a bad hire was, at best, expensive; at worst, a danger to the 194 children ages 6 months to 6 years about to start day care at a center at Boeing.

"We had to have a staff on board for opening day, but it had to be the right staff," says Miller, director of the Boeing Family Center in Everett, Wash., managed by Corporate Family Solutions. "I was not going to be able to observe each of the 200 candidates in interaction with young children."

Miller turned to a method more and more employers are choosing to help them in hiring: pre-employment testing. Miller used a test designed for child-care workers as a first screen and then following up with personal interviews.

"The test helped give me some organization to the task," she says.

Once a euphemism for drug screening, pre-employment testing has boomed, into a more than $2 billion industry and has seeped into almost every job category, from tow-truck driver to chief financial officer.

Employers are embracing testing as a tool for putting the right person in the right job.

Because gut instinct isn't always the most effective hiring tool, Jerry Lightner, head of APG Electric, an electrical contracting firm in Clearwater, Fla., found that years in the business still didn't make him a foolproof hirer. "I'd say my success rate was about 20% -- that's how many would last longer than a year. That's a pretty poor hit rate," he says. A custom-designed pre-employment test developed by Scheig Associates has upped the hit rate to 80%, he says. "Plus, now it doesn't tie up my whole day. Now, my assistant, who is not an electrician, can interview candidates, because she has a tool to assess their skills."

Lightner says just having a test as part of the job application process helps weed out workers who lack what he calls "hustle".

"If I get someone who says, 'No, I'm not taking a test for you,' that says
something to me about the person. I feel the test did its job there, too," he says.

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