Like Vista, many companies now subject not only entry-level applicants but also managers to testing. Testing is sufficiently widespread today that a cottage industry has developed to help people prepare perusing the site of one such firm, JobTestPrep, I saw sample exams for jobs at Amazon, Ford, UPS, and others. Vista is an especially enthusiastic proponent of testing in the workplace, but it is not alone. He likes to tell rags-to-riches stories: senior employees who began as a mail-room worker, a roofer, a shelf stocker. Smith describes Vista as a pure meritocracy, where high performers succeed regardless of their background, race, or gender. Testing, Smith says, helps his companies find talented people-people the competition has overlooked because their résumé lacked certain credentials or because of the inherent biases of managers. Applicants to Vista companies, from the entry to the senior-executive levels, are subjected to a timed standardized test. Vista’s marketing materials tout its “talent and performance management,” a key element of which is a kind of assessment many people find harrowing. On one subject, however, Smith has been relatively open, even chatty: the firm’s knack for hiring and promoting the right people. He rarely gives interviews-the recent cover story of Forbes’s “World’s Richest People” issue was an exception-and he guards Vista’s secrets closely. Smith is not the household name that Oprah is, and he seems to prefer it that way. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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