Bookmark is a pre-hire screening assessment designed to assist libraries in identifying candidates who demonstrate qualities, characteristics and competencies most likely to lead to success and retention in public-facing library staff roles in a modern library environment. The assessment is appropriate for use in selecting candidates into any public-facing library staff role, including, but not limited to, Librarian, Circulation Assistant and Paraprofessional roles.

The assessment takes approximately 20-25 minutes for candidates to complete and consists of 160 questions.

Good Hiring Makes Good Sense

Bookmark helps you make better choices when filling library staff positions. This helps reduce staff turnover, increase productivity, improve customer service and build a better overall workplace culture.

The initial cost of hiring is a significant investment, and Bookmark helps increase the return on this investment. The average cost to hire an employee is $4,129, plus it takes around 42 days to fill a position (as reported in Society for Human Resource Management’s Human Capital Benchmarking Report).

Bookmark costs $20 per candidate assessment. This price point provides libraries of all sizes with access to scientific aptitude testing that supports hiring decisions.

Adding Science to the Art of Hiring

Rigorous methodology was applied to develop and validate Bookmark in accordance with best professional practices outlined in the Principles for the Validation and Use of Employee Selection Procedures (SIOP, 2003) and Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education, 2014), and in compliance with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Civil Service Commission, Department of Labor, & Department of Justice, 1978).

To ensure The Bookmark would be appropriate for use in virtually any library setting, information and data used to develop and validate Bookmark was gathered from more than 400 library staff members from libraries of varying sizes across the United States (and one in Canada). For more information on the development and validation of Bookmark, refer to the Technical Report for the Job Analysis, Development and Validation of The Bookmark Selection Assessment for Kent District Libraries Staff Roles (PSI, 2018). For ease of reference, the overall validity and reliability evidence for Bookmark total score and competency scales is presented in Appendix A of the reference guide.