How fast their simple-decision response is at baseline.
The floor of how quickly they convert a stimulus into a response when there's nothing else competing for it.
§ MEASURE / 04 · Processing Speed
Accuracy without speed
is a queue
you can't clear.
Processing speed is how quickly a candidate takes in a stimulus, decides what it means, and responds. In a comm center, it's the difference between a queue that drains and a queue that backs up at peak. Slow-and-careful candidates pass training and then bottleneck the whole console.
§ Why it matters Every second is a second the unit isn't moving
The clock starts the moment the call connects.
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An obvious call. The decision tree is short.
Confirm location, send unit. The candidate who hesitates on the easy ones is the candidate the queue piles up behind for the rest of the shift.
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Three calls hold. Pick up the next, classify in one read.
Each second of dead air on hold is a second a caller is deciding whether to hang up. Slow triage doesn't just feel slow — it shapes whether a call gets answered at all.
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Five inputs in twenty seconds. Each demands a one-second read.
Console alarm, radio chatter, screen update, second line, supervisor. Speed is the substrate the rest of dispatch sits on. Without it, every other ability runs at half rate.
§ What it tells you Three reads on the same candidate
What you'll know about a candidate's processing speed.
ReadyFirst doesn't time how fast a candidate clicks through onboarding. It measures decision speed under controlled conditions and reports it against the accuracy that came with it.
Whether their response stays usable when the choice gets harder.
Anyone can be fast on a binary. The question is what happens to their response time when the decision tree branches three ways.
Whether they buy speed at the cost of accuracy, or hold both.
Two candidates can post the same response time and produce very different error rates. The tradeoff curve is what predicts the candidate the floor can trust at peak.
Response times are captured server-side at millisecond precision and never trusted to the candidate's browser. Practice rounds precede every scored task so first-time test-takers aren't penalized for unfamiliarity.
What you can show your CSO, your counsel, and your CIO.
Validated, not invented
Built on cognitive task families with decades of peer-reviewed evidence behind them. Your civil service analyst can defend the methodology under the SIOP Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures.
Designed to WCAG 2.1 AA
Semantic markup, keyboard navigation, screen-reader compatibility, and contrast tuned for the dispatch console. Every candidate gets the same shot at the assessment.
SAML SSO, 2FA, full audit trail
Per-organization SAML identity. 2FA on admins. Every action logged with IP, agent, and outcome. Tenant-isolated data via Postgres row-level security.
CJIS applicability statement
Pre-hire cognitive scores aren't Criminal Justice Information under FBI CJIS Security Policy. We give your CJIS Security Officer a one-page applicability statement that documents the data flow and answers the boilerplate question without forcing a full attestation.
§ Next
See who clears
your peak-hour queue.
30-minute call. We map your current funnel, walk you through what ReadyFirst tells you about processing speed, and quote you in writing.