In a recent letter, the United States Department of State commended Brainbench for their assistance in improving the Department's hiring process for Foreign Service Special Agents. As a result of using Brainbench assessments, the State Department was able to achieve all the goals they set when seeking to streamline their hiring process. These goals included increasing applicant pools and decreasing travel expenses. Below is the letter, which documents the Department's measurable successes in greater detail.

May 26, 2006

Mike Russiello
President
Brainbench
14425 Penrose Place, Suite 150
Chantilly, VA 20151

Dear Mike Russiello,

I want to commend Brainbench for the work that your firm as done to help the U.S. State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security improve our hiring process for Foreign Service Special Agents, a job vital to securing U.S. assets abroad.

The keys to hiring the best capable people have been to create a larger pool of applicants, use a more objective process for selection, and to streamline the process so that the Bureau can complete the recruitment process more expeditiously. These were my goals for this project and I appreciate what Brainbench has done to help us achieve measurable advances in each of these areas.

Before we started this project, the State Department would post a vacancy announcement once per year and attract on average 1600 applicants to hire 100 Special Agents. Applicants submitted their applications and qualification analyses were conducted to determine those who met the minimal qualification requirements. Those applicants who met the minimal qualifications were invited to the written and oral assessments administered by a Board of Examiner and two Subject Matter Experts. The Examiners travel to various cities to administer the written and oral assessments.

We asked Brainbench to develop an automated selection assessment process. Brainbench collected extensive data from over 1000 applicants; worked with the State Department psychologist, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security's Examiners and Subject Matter Experts; aligned the assessment to a job analysis; determined cut-scores, and consulted DS on the selection process.

The revised process now automatically administers an assessment to only those candidates that meet the minimum requirements. The results are instantly scored to segment the population based on likely fit and are immediately available for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security's Examiners to schedule interviews. The project has helped improve all three of my original project goals. Our applicant pool increased 370% to almost 6000 applicants in the first year. The assessment process automatically and instantly provides the objective information to our Examiners to determine which applicants should go to the next step, and the process takes far less time and effort to support.

As a result, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security is saving an estimated half million dollars a year in travel and in addition, we have eliminated much of the administrative work associated with pre-screening applicants. The Bureau is spending more quality time with fewer, better qualified candidates so we are obtaining people who are a better fit for the job. Brainbench has saved the Bureau hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost productivity associated with unnecessarily setting up and conducting hundreds of interviews with applicants who would not have been successful.

I appreciate your efforts and contributions to this important project. The quality of Brainbench's work on this project was superior and we are delighted with the results. We improved more than we originally envisioned and your staff continues to work with us to further improve our selection process.

Sincerely,

Pat Popovich
Executive Director, Bureau of Diplomatic Security
U.S. Department of State