Basis of the 50 questions

1. What this paper is

Career Fit is 50 timed work problems. The form in the public bank and in the scorer is 2026.08-C. The counts on that form are executive reasoning 9, quantitative 8, verbal 8, visual pattern 8, workplace judgment 9, and procedural sequencing 8. Hiring Fit and Federal Fit use separate stems on freeze 2026.08-B-keybalance-v2. Those sittings count quantitative 9 and workplace judgment 8. The 12-page sample is Hiring Fit on that freeze. It is not this form. The one-page office sample is Federal Fit on that freeze. A career direction is a later map from those six scores onto occupational demands. The map is not a separate test.

Two kinds of key sit in that bank. A closed item has one answer entailed by the stem: the rate, the percent, the series, the fold count, the sentence’s actual commitment, or the order the dependencies require. A judgment item has one keyed response because it follows a stated work rule: protect the binding constraint, keep an external promise, correct a fact a client will use, refuse personnel rumors, and do not decide outside the authority the stem gives you. Judgment items ask what a person should do. They are knowledge instructions, not “what would you do” instructions (McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel, & Grubb, 2007).

This paper does not print stems, options, or keys. Each public item page states the construct only. The worked arithmetic and the keyed rule for every item are held in the house file, not on the site.

2. Hardware record for this form

On 6 October 2026 Advanced Learning Academy ran one circuit on IBM Quantum hardware for this form. Backend ibm_marrakesh, a 156-qubit Heron r2 processor. Job db2mihvr11fs739715n0. 2,048 shots. The score verification does not name this job. This section is the record. Qiskit Runtime, optimization level 3, open plan. The job finished the same day.

The circuit uses 8 qubits. The first byte of the SHA-256 of the public bank file is applied as an X gate on those qubits. That byte is 1e, so the mask is 00011110. Qubits 0 through 5 then take a Y rotation of pi times that domain’s item count divided by 9, in this order: executive reasoning, quantitative, verbal, visual pattern, workplace judgment, procedural sequencing. Every qubit takes a Hadamard. A controlled-phase ladder follows. All eight qubits are measured.

SHA-256 of career-fit.public.json for freeze 2026.08-C-v1: 1e1ddba3aee2fbc916c8b4a2342de9f7edd9f10741ba785210b85f0c4a798060. A buyer can hash the public file and compare. The file has no answer keys.

The hardware returned 2,048 shots and 253 distinct outcomes. The Shannon entropy of that measurement is 7.6258 bits. That number describes this run. It does not score a person, and it is not a Career Fit validity coefficient. IBM supplied the processor. IBM did not review or endorse Career Fit. The full construction note is on the quantum page.

3. How the scorer counts

The running scorer adds 2.0 accuracy points when the chosen index matches the key and the response time is 60 seconds or less. It adds 0.2 speed only when that same answer is also 40 seconds or less. A wrong answer adds nothing. A response after 60 seconds adds nothing. Fifty correct answers inside 40 seconds produce accuracy 100, speed 10, and composite 110. These three numbers are an Advanced Learning Academy design lock. They are not a formula copied from a paper. A fast wrong answer cannot outscore a slow right answer.

4. What each domain is, in O*NET’s words

The six names are ours. The abilities they sample are the O*NET Content Model, published by the National Center for O*NET Development. Definitions below are theirs.

Our domain	Items	O*NET element	Their definition
Executive reasoning	9	Deductive reasoning, 1.A.1.b.4	Apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
Quantitative	8	Number facility, 1.A.1.c.2, and mathematical reasoning, 1.A.1.c.1	Add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly. Choose the right mathematical method.
Verbal	8	Written comprehension, 1.A.1.a.2, and memorization, 1.A.1.d.1	Read and understand information presented in writing. Remember words, numbers, and procedures.
Visual pattern	8	Inductive reasoning, 1.A.1.b.5, and visualization	Combine pieces of information into a rule. Imagine how something looks after it is moved or rearranged.
Workplace judgment	9	Situational judgment as a method, not an O*NET ability score	A work situation and several responses. The key is the response that best fits the rule in the stem.
Procedural sequencing	8	Information ordering, 1.A.1.b.6	Arrange things or actions in an order according to a rule.

One item in the quantitative count is a paper fold. The bank keeps that item in quantitative. The key is the hole count the folds and the punch produce. That count is in the house file, not on this page. The domain label does not move the item.

5. How a key is chosen

Executive reasoning. The keyed option is the one that acts on the constraint that binds the rest of the work, keeps a promise already made to someone outside the team, and leaves a dated record. Waiting, splitting effort with no owner, or deciding by popularity is not keyed.

Quantitative. The keyed option is the figure the stem’s arithmetic produces. Unit rate is total divided by hours. Percent change is the difference divided by the starting amount. Break-even units are fixed cost divided by price minus unit cost. A ratio kept after a headcount change is the same ratio applied to the new side. A weighted composite is each part times its stated weight.

Verbal. The keyed option is the reading that obeys every condition in the text. A refund rule that requires both “within 30 days” and “unused” fails when either condition fails. “Try to ship Thursday if QA is green” does not promise Thursday. A five-item list is scored by what the question asks you to retrieve, not by the first word.

Visual pattern. The keyed option is the next step of the stated rule. A tripled series is multiplied by three. Three clockwise quarter-turns land on the same orientation as one counter-clockwise quarter-turn. A checkerboard alternates. A left-right mirror reverses order and does not turn the word upside down.

Workplace judgment. The keyed option names the shared work, corrects a number a client will use, keeps personnel news off the rumor path, and does not grant a decision the stem says you do not own. Blame, silence while a customer waits, and rewriting someone’s work in secret are not keyed.

Procedural sequencing. The keyed order is the order the stem’s dependencies force. A backup comes before a schema change. A table comes before the login that needs it. An unchecked box is re-verified against the work. “Done” in chat is not done while the tracker, the customer note, and the runbook are still open.

6. What the published research supports

These studies are about classes of tests. They are not a validity coefficient for Career Fit. Career Fit has no published criterion study in this paper.

The abstract of Hunter and Hunter (1984) states a mean validity of .53 for ability tests on entry-level jobs, and .54 for work-sample tests when selection is based on current job performance. Schmidt and Hunter (2004, Table 2) report General Aptitude Test Battery results by job complexity, including .51 on the job for the band that covers 62.7 percent of the workforce. Schmidt and Hunter (1998) use that research line. Their 1998 abstract states three composites: general mental ability plus a work sample, .63; plus an integrity test, .65; plus a structured interview, .63. A correlation is not a success rate. None of these figures means a percent of people who succeed, and none of them is a Career Fit result.

Sackett, Zhang, Berry, and Lievens (2022) argued that many of those corrections for range restriction were too large. Their abstract says the revised estimates are lower by about .10 to .20 and that structured interviews ranked first. HumRRO’s 27 September 2022 summary of that paper states the revised cognitive-ability figure as .31, work samples as .33, empirically keyed biodata as .38, and job knowledge as .40. We cite both the 1998 abstract and the 2022 revision so the older number is not sold as current.

The judgment items are situational judgment items. McDaniel, Morgeson, Finnegan, Campion, and Braverman (2001) meta-analyzed 102 coefficients and 10,640 people and reported a criterion validity of .34, and a correlation of .46 with general cognitive ability across 79 coefficients and 16,984 people. McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel, and Grubb (2007) found that knowledge instructions, the “what should be done” form used here, had a corrected correlation of .35 with cognitive ability, against .19 for “what would you do” instructions. Instruction type had little effect on criterion validity in that review. Christian, Edwards, and Bradley (2010) showed that a situational judgment test is a method, not one construct, and that validity was stronger when the construct in the item matched the criterion. Our judgment items are written to interpersonal and priority constructs. That match is a design choice. It is not a local validity coefficient.

Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, and Johnson (2005) meta-analyzed 172 studies and 836 effect sizes. Person–job fit was positively related to satisfaction, commitment, and performance, and negatively related to withdrawal. Nearly all of their credibility intervals excluded zero. Career Fit’s job list is a demands–abilities comparison against O*NET, which is in that family of ideas. It is not the same instrument as the perceived-fit surveys in their tables.

Nye, Su, Rounds, and Drasgow (2012) reviewed more than 60 years of vocational-interest research, 60 studies and about 568 correlations. A published summary of their results gives interests and job performance near .20, and interest–environment congruence near .36 (British Psychological Society, 13 August 2012). Career Fit does not score Holland interests. Holland (1997) is the theory behind that other literature. We cite it so the two are not confused.

McDaniel, Whetzel, Schmidt, and Maurer (1994) found structured interviews more valid than unstructured interviews. A structured interview is a second method a manager can use beside this profile. This test is not that interview.

If an employer uses scores to select, hire, or promote, the Uniform Guidelines (29 C.F.R. Part 1607) and the SIOP Principles (2018) still require a job analysis and documentation for that use. Career Fit sold to a person is career exploration. Federal Fit is not a qualification determination. We do not claim bias has been eliminated.

7. What we do not claim

We do not say the test is 51 percent accurate, 31 percent accurate, or any other percent. We do not publish an RWC validity coefficient, because we do not have a checkable criterion study to cite. We do not cite an unpublished headcount as evidence. We do not treat O*NET as a score on this test. O*NET names the abilities. Our items are the sample. We do not use this paper as an IBM endorsement.

8. What a buyer receives

One sitting produces six domain results, a composite up to 110, career directions from the demands map, and a score verification after the 50 questions. The price is $199. An office pays the published seat ladder: 1–24 at $199, 25–49 at $175, 50–99 at $160, and 100 or more at $145. One hundred seats are $14,500. ZIP jobs are included for two years. US Testing Center is included for one year, up to three tests. Scoring lock. Citation notes. Pricing.

References

British Psychological Society. (2012, August 13). Interested workers are better performers. Summary of Nye, Su, Rounds, and Drasgow (2012). https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/interested-workers-are-better-performers

Christian, M. S., Edwards, B. D., & Bradley, J. C. (2010). Situational judgment tests: Constructs assessed and a meta-analysis of their criterion-related validities. Personnel Psychology, 63(1), 83–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2009.01163.x

Holland, J. L. (1997). Making vocational choices: A theory of vocational personalities and work environments (3rd ed.). Psychological Assessment Resources.

HumRRO. (2022, September 27). Is cognitive ability the best predictor of job performance? New research says it’s time to think again. Summary of Sackett, Zhang, Berry, and Lievens (2022). https://www.humrro.org/blog/is-cognitive-ability-the-best-predictor-of-job-performance-new-research-says-its-time-to-think-again/

Hunter, J. E., & Hunter, R. F. (1984). Validity and utility of alternative predictors of job performance. Psychological Bulletin, 96(1), 72–98. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.96.1.72

Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. (2004). General mental ability in the world of work: Occupational attainment and job performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(1), 162–173. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.1.162

Kristof-Brown, A. L., Zimmerman, R. D., & Johnson, E. C. (2005). Consequences of individuals’ fit at work: A meta-analysis of person–job, person–organization, person–group, and person–supervisor fit. Personnel Psychology, 58(2), 281–342. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005.00672.x

McDaniel, M. A., Hartman, N. S., Whetzel, D. L., & Grubb, W. L., III. (2007). Situational judgment tests, response instructions, and validity: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 60(1), 63–91. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007.00065.x

McDaniel, M. A., Morgeson, F. P., Finnegan, E. B., Campion, M. A., & Braverman, E. P. (2001). Use of situational judgment tests to predict job performance: A clarification of the literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4), 730–740. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.4.730

McDaniel, M. A., Whetzel, D. L., Schmidt, F. L., & Maurer, S. D. (1994). The validity of employment interviews: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79(4), 599–616. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.79.4.599

National Center for O*NET Development. O*NET Content Model. U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. https://www.onetcenter.org/content.html

Nye, C. D., Su, R., Rounds, J., & Drasgow, F. (2012). Vocational interests and performance: A quantitative summary of over 60 years of research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(4), 384–403. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612449021

Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. (2022). Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(11), 2040–2068. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000994

Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124(2), 262–274. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.262

Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. (2018). Principles for the validation and use of personnel selection procedures (5th ed.).

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Civil Service Commission, Department of Labor, and Department of Justice. (1978). Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. 29 C.F.R. Part 1607. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-XIV/part-1607