Pre-Employment Screening

Sampson’s Public Safety Pre-Employment Psychological Assessment are useful in predicting a candidate’s ability to function in a public safety position by focusing on:
  • Intelligence
  • Personality Traits
  • Mental Stability
  • Social/Emotional Judgment
Assessment results help an organization to ensure their team has a holistic view of the applicant to avoid or mitigate the potential for negligent hiring and the assessment can also assist background investigators with formulating possible questions to aid in clarifying information provided by the applicant during the screening process.

“I have known Dr. Steve Sampson for over 20 years. For 18 of those years he has served as the LaGrange Police Department’s psychologist for pre-employment
consultation and critical incident de-briefings; he has consistently provided a
valuable service to our agency and to our officers. Dr. Sampson has my complete
confidence and my highest recommendation.”
- Chief Lou Deckmar, Retired – LaGrange Police Department
Former President – International Association Chiefs of Police (IACP)

Pre-Employment Psychological Assessment Options

We offer agencies two options for Pre-Employment Psychological Assessments:

1. Psychological Test only (includes an electronic copy of the report – the test is administered at your location by your agency). Our staff will mail you all the relevant testing materials to get you started. This test takes the candidate between 2 - 3 hours to complete. You will then scan or email the answer sheets to our office, and we will email you the report results within 24 – 48 business hours.

2. Psychological Test and Clinical Interview (includes psychological test administered in our Loganville office by our staff and a clinical interview). A pre-approval letter is sent within 24-hours of the appointment and a complete written report is sent within 14 business days.

What the Clinical Interview and/or Test Results Tell You

Sampson’s evaluation program will screen out applicants and recommend “no hire” for several reasons:
  • Insufficient Intelligence: The candidate will have extreme difficulty learning procedures and will be less likely to use good judgment.
  • Highly Exploitive, Destructive or Manipulative Personality Traits:These individuals are poorly suited for many jobs, but especially for public safety work where they would have substantial discretionary control over others.
  • Self-Destructive Tendencies: The candidate is likely to display irrational thinking, poor judgment and recklessness and are therefore eliminated.
  • Social Intelligence: The candidate’s ability to manage social encounters with others in a constructive manner.
  • Emotional Intelligence: Those individuals suffering from an emotional illness that may endanger themselves or society and are clearly poor choices for public safety work.
Our team will walk you through the testing process step-by-step and ensure that you are fully informed and completely satisfied that our testing protocol meets your organization’s specific needs.