EMPLOYERS PUT JOB SEEKERS TO TEST.

Byline: Jim Davenport Knight-Ridder Newspapers

Henry White is going through the longest interview experience in his life.

Last week, he was in the seventh week of a 10-week, 120-hour training program needed to get a job as a reservation clerk at Air South.

While pay at those jobs isn't high, averaging $6.75 hourly, the 43-year-old White says selling tickets for Air South won't be like the dead-end jobs he's held in hotels since early retirement from the U.S. Postal Service.

Businesses facing increased competition and the need to keep costs down are turning more to testing and training of prospective employees before they make a job offer and cut the first paycheck. It's the hurdle more workers find themselves leaping in order to get jobs with better working conditions, benefits or pay.

In South Carolina, testing alone has nearly tripled during the past five years as employers seek more competent workers. Meanwhile, the state's special training schools program has doubled the number of workers it trains.

The amount of training surprised Air South job aspirants like White.

``We never dreamed there would be this much,'' White says.

The training is more than learning a job.

``Every day of class is an interview process,'' says Tamra Behles, Air South's vice president of customer services. But this process is a kind of slow dance in which the dips of passing tests and the embrace of team skills keep White and others on their toes.

``The bar is getting higher,'' says Jack Mullins, assistant vice president of human resources at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of South Carolina.

Raising the bar through testing and training pays dividends to employers like Air South and Blue Cross.

``The quality of the new hire has increased,'' Mullins says. Blue Cross tightened its hiring procedures five years ago. ``The quality of people provided through the normal interview selection techniques was not producing good enough candidates,'' he says.

For example, some job candidates would have a strong academic background, but lack reading comprehension skills.

Those type of workers don't help companies win business.

``The competition is demanding better service,'' Mullins says. ``To provide better service, we need better qualified individuals with the mental capacity to learn different skills,'' he says.

Since tightening its hiring policies, Blue Cross has been using a U.S. Labor Department test given by the state's Job Service to assess basic worker aptitudes. The insurer also uses an aptitude test developed specifically for the insurance industry.

When workers, including the more than 1,000 the company is hiring for new federal contracts, pass the test, most of them face training regimens that can stretch to three months through the state's special schools program. The state picks up the cost of that program.

``They go through (training) at their own expense and own risk,'' Mullins says.

The process also can save money and egos because it cuts the cost of failure when workers don't have what the job requires, Behles says.

``They might have been tremendous failures on the job, with a personal cost to them (through lowered esteem) and a cost to us as a business and to team members that would have been burdened with their load,'' she says.

In the Air South class, Annzala Pitt is asking six students what they thought of a recent test. Students have to pass all their tests with an average score of 90 to be offered jobs.

Just over one in 10 people seeking jobs through the state's Job Service faced pre-employment aptitude and skills testing last year. For those workers, Job Service runs them through the General Aptitude Test Battery, a test developed by the U.S. Department of Labor to measure skills and comprehension.

You're more likely to face pre-employment testing when a company is hiring a large number of people, says Red Bonneau, assistant deputy director for employment services at the South Carolina Employment Security Commission. The tests are used as part of the screening process along with applications.

A worker applying for some jobs may be required to take all 12 parts of the test. The full test takes 2-1/2 hours and measures nine groups of skills, including the ability to move objects quickly, to recognize detail in words and groups of numbers and to use verbal and number skills.

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Photo: Henry White trains participants in a 10-week trainin g course in Columbia, South Carolina, the company uses to screen applicants.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service