CritiCall

Overview

CritiCall is a computer-based pre-employment test for 911 and public-safety dispatchers, call takers and telecommunicators. It is part of the TestGenius suite from Biddle Consulting Group, and the publisher states it is used by more than 1,500 agencies, including half of all US state police agencies. There is no single national CritiCall exam: each hiring agency licenses the software and picks which modules its applicants take, so the test you sit depends on the agency you apply to.

The current version, CritiCall 3D, measures three dimensions in one sitting: operational (hard skills such as data entry and multitasking), behavioural, and situational.

Who can apply

You take CritiCall when a dispatch or emergency communications agency invites you to test as part of its hiring process. Eligibility for the job itself (age, education, background checks) is set by that agency. The test measures basic skills you need before any training, so no dispatch knowledge or prior training is required.

Exam pattern

Agencies build their own battery from the CritiCall module list. The modules the publisher offers are:

Agencies may also add a dispatcher personality test, a behavioural and customer-service situational judgment test (Logi-Serve), and language assessments.

Syllabus

Most batteries test some mix of the following, according to the publisher's candidate guide:

• following rules and directions, and deciding quickly by those rules

• typing names, telephone numbers, addresses and licence plates that you read or hear

• listening to a short spoken story, then summarising it or answering questions on it

• finding entries in lists, such as a name in an alphabetical phone book

• spotting whether two addresses or names are the same or different

• remembering descriptions and short strings of numbers

• working out routes on a simple map using left, right and compass directions

• choosing the correctly spelled word where a misspelling would change the meaning

Decision rules. Emergency-message items ask you to choose which service to send within 15 seconds. The guide sets four rules you should learn beforehand: police for actual or threatened harm to a person or damage to property; fire for visible fire or smoke, a sounding fire alarm, or someone trapped who needs rescue; emergency medical service for a medical emergency needing trained staff; and the public utility company for faults in water, electric power (including streetlights and traffic signals), home gas or blocked sewers. Use only these rules, not knowledge of any real agency.

Marking and results

Practice items at the start of each section do not count towards your score, and you can skip them. Skipping real questions is penalised unless the instructions for that section say otherwise. Emergency-message items earn no credit if you pick the wrong service or answer after 15 seconds. Keyboarding is scored in words per minute. Pass marks are set by each hiring agency.

How to apply

Apply to the dispatcher or call-taker vacancy with the agency; it will tell you when and where to test. Some agencies use TestGenius's remote proctoring, which records your screen and webcam, so you may be able to test from home.

Preparation tips

• Learn the four decision rules until you can apply them instantly.

• Practise typing names, addresses and phone numbers from print and while someone reads them aloud, aiming for speed with accuracy.

• Have someone read seven-digit phone numbers to you and type each from memory, about five seconds apart.

• Practise giving directions from simple maps using left, right, north, south, east and west.

• Get used to single left-clicks and to moving between fields with Tab and Shift+Tab. Many test takers find it helps to keep Num Lock on.

• Expect most text entry to be in upper case only, as on real dispatch systems.

• The publisher offers free sample tests for keyboarding, proofreading and spelling on its applicant page.