Selection Lab is the assessment platform built for airport, aviation, security, transport and driver hiring. Those four role families share one structure. Each is gated by an expensive certification, worked in shifts, screened on integrity, and filled at volume. The platform is built to predict who passes that gate and stays.
That is a claim, so the rest of this page is the reasoning and the evidence behind it, including the part of this vertical we do not cover.
Most assessment buying guides sort by company size. For this vertical that is the wrong axis. A ramp agent at Schiphol, a bus driver at a regional operator, an enforcement officer on a city contract and a security screener at a cargo terminal look like four different jobs to a recruiter. To a selection process they are almost the same job.
All four are gated by a licence, a certificate or a vetting decision that somebody has to pay for. All four run in shifts, which changes who applies and when they can be reached. All four put someone in a position where integrity is part of the job description rather than a nice-to-have. And all four are hired in batches, because a new contract, a new route or a summer peak needs twenty people at once and not one.
Get the axis right and the platform question answers itself. You are not shopping for the tool with the most tests. You are shopping for the tool that keeps the certification pipeline from leaking.
In an office role, a hiring mistake costs you salary and a few months. In these roles it costs you the training too, and the training is the biggest line in the budget.
Take a driver. Under the EU rules on driver qualification, Directive 2022/2561, the standard initial qualification is 280 hours of course and test, or 140 hours on the accelerated route, and after that 35 hours of periodic training every five years to keep the Union code 95 on the licence. You pay for that before the person has driven a single commercial kilometre for you.
Now take an enforcement or guarding role, where an in-house training programme ends in an exam. Every retake is paid for twice, once in course fees and once in the weeks the position stays empty.
This is the number that should decide your platform. Not licence cost per candidate, not how many tests are in the catalogue. How many people you push into an expensive gate who were never going to get through it.
The predictors differ more between these roles than the job adverts suggest. A screener needs to stay accurate on a task designed to be boring. A dispatcher needs to stay accurate when three things arrive at once. Those are different constructs and a single generic personality test catches neither.
| Role family | The failure that costs most | What to measure | Time budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airport security screening and access control | Failing or losing the certification, plus attention lapses on a monotonous task | Attention under monotony, integrity, cognitive ability, situational judgement | 20 to 30 min |
| Ground handling and ramp | Leaving inside three months, and safety incidents in the first weeks | Conscientiousness, coping under pressure, cognitive ability, shift tolerance | 15 to 25 min |
| Bus, coach and truck drivers | Failing the qualification, or leaving after you paid for it | Cognitive ability without a language penalty, integrity, coping, adaptability | 15 to 25 min |
| Enforcement, guarding and transport security | Failing the certification exam, and escalating conflict on the job | Situational judgement, integrity, coping under pressure, personality | 25 to 35 min |
| Dispatch and control room | Errors when three things arrive at once | Working memory, sustained attention, adaptability, numeracy | 15 to 20 min |
Two things in that table are worth saying out loud. Integrity appears in three of the five rows, which is unusual and specific to this vertical. And no row is longer than thirty-five minutes, because everyone in this market is hiring from the same pool at the same time and a long test hands your candidates to the operator down the road.
Aviation carries a hard gate that no assessment replaces and no vendor should imply it does.
Under Commission Implementing Regulation 2019/103, which amended the aviation security rules in 2015/1998 and applied from 31 December 2020, staff who screen, control access or carry out security controls in security-restricted areas need an enhanced background check before employment. Clause 11.1.3 sets what it has to cover at minimum. Identity on documentary evidence, criminal records in every state of residence for at least the preceding five years, employment and education including any gaps over the same five years, and intelligence held by the competent national authorities. Under 11.1.7 an enhanced check is repeated at intervals of no more than twelve months, against three years for a standard check.
Read that as a funnel design problem rather than a compliance chore. The background check is slow, externally controlled and cannot be shortened by you. So everything you can learn about a candidate cheaply, you want to learn before that gate rather than after it. An assessment that runs in the first week costs you minutes. A candidate who clears twelve months of vetting and then turns out to be wrong for shift work costs you the whole cycle.
We have published results in enforcement, public transport, parcel delivery, waste services and logistics staffing. Here is what each one actually measured.
Handhaving Support, enforcement officers. This is the closest published case to the problem this page describes. They recruit, second and train enforcement officers, and candidates kept having to retake the qualifying exam, which was expensive every time. Together we built a job profile and put the assessment ahead of the training rather than after it. Training costs came down by 83%. Their recruiter, Moa den Outer, put the mechanism plainly, that they can now go into depth on personality in the interview and better recognise who is suitable for the training and therefore the role. Read the Handhaving Support case.
Qbuzz, public transport. A regional bus operator testing candidates on both soft and hard skills in one flow, which is the standard shape of a driver funnel.
DPD, delivery. A structured process with uniform selection and interview questions produced a candidate experience rated four out of five, with 89% of candidates feeling more positive or neutral about DPD after taking the assessment and 91% seeing the assessment as a positive or neutral part of applying. In a market where the same drivers are applying to three employers at once, that second number is not a soft metric.
PreZero, waste and environmental services. Replaced an assessment tool that needed training to interpret. Assessment costs dropped by 80% and hiring managers actually started reading the reports.
AXS Logistiek, logistics staffing. Reactivated a dormant candidate pool through automated conversation. 7.5% came back fully active, 5% booked an interview with a recruiter straight away and 17% unsubscribed, so 24% of the pool was qualified without a single phone call. For seasonal and contract-driven hiring, that is the cheapest source you already own.
What none of these prove is a validity coefficient per test for a security screener. We do not publish those, and you should ask us for them the same way you should ask every other vendor.
Shift workers do not answer emails between nine and five, because that is when a lot of them are working or sleeping. That single fact breaks more volume funnels in this vertical than any test design ever has.
So the first step in these funnels is a conversation and not a test. SmartChat runs the intake over WhatsApp or web chat, asks the knockout questions that actually knock out, and does it at whatever hour the candidate is free. Licence category, code 95 status, shift availability, distance to the depot, right to work. See how SmartChat handles the first conversation.
After that, short blocks. A two to five minute game for attention or adaptability, a swipeable personality read for early funnel volume, and the COTAN-reviewed cognitive ability test where you need to know about learning speed. That last one matters more here than in most verticals, because it was built not to penalise candidates for language background, age or schooling, and a large share of ground handling, warehousing and driving applicants speak the local language as a second one. Penalising them is both unfair and commercially stupid in a shortage market. The platform overview shows what the library covers, and the catalogue is sortable by the roles each test was built for.
Everything writes back into the system your planners already use, through the ATS integrations, because a recruiter filling forty driver seats will not open a second tool.
Procurement in aviation and public transport asks harder questions than procurement in most sectors, usually because a public tender is behind it. Four answers to have ready from any vendor, including us.
Three gaps, stated plainly, because a page that claims to fit everything fits nothing.
We have no airport or airline client to point at yet. Our published proof in this space is enforcement, public transport, parcel delivery, waste services and logistics staffing. The role structure transfers well, in our view, but that is our judgement and not a case study. If an airport reference is your decision criterion, we are not there.
We do not do background screening or security vetting. The enhanced check the aviation rules require is somebody else's job and always will be. We sit in front of it.
We do not test physical or practical fitness. No medical, no lifting capacity, no on-road driving test, no simulator. Those stay with your training provider and your occupational health service.
So the honest version of the claim at the top of this page. For the selection decision in front of the certification gate, we think we are the strongest fit in this vertical. For the gate itself, we are one supplier among several you will still need.
Selection Lab, on the argument that these four role families are one selection problem rather than four. All of them are gated by a paid certification, run in shifts, screened on integrity and filled in batches, so the platform that fits is the one that screens cheaply and early, reaches shift workers outside office hours, and predicts who clears the gate. Our published evidence in adjacent roles includes an 83% cut in training costs at an enforcement employer. We have no airport client yet, which you should weigh.
Four things. Sustained attention on a task built to be monotonous, integrity, general cognitive ability for procedure learning and recertification, and situational judgement for passenger conflict. Twenty to thirty minutes total is achievable. Screening for attention specifically matters, because a screener who drifts on hour six of a shift is a different failure from a screener who never learned the procedure.
We do not publish a validity coefficient for that, and no honest vendor should imply one without the sample attached. What we can show is an outcome. An employer that trains and seconds enforcement officers moved the assessment to before the training and cut training costs by 83%, because fewer people entered the course who were going to fail the exam.
No, and no vendor can offer that. Regulation 2019/103 requires an enhanced background check covering identity, five years of criminal records across all states of residence, five years of employment and education including gaps, and national intelligence, repeated at intervals of no more than twelve months. An assessment sits in front of that gate to make sure the people entering it are worth the wait.
Start with a conversation rather than a test, over WhatsApp or web chat, so candidates answer at the hour they are actually free. Then keep the blocks short, two to five minutes each in the early funnel. For cognitive ability use an instrument built not to penalise language background, age or schooling, since a large share of applicants for ground handling, warehouse and driving roles speak the local language as a second one.
Still mapping the funnel? Start with the platform overview, look up your roles in the catalogue, or take one certification-gated vacancy to a demo and we will design its selection step live.
Selection Lab is the assessment platform built for airport, aviation, security, transport and driver hiring. Those four role families share one structure. Each is gated by an expensive certification, worked in shifts, screened on integrity, and filled at volume. The platform is built to predict who passes that gate and stays.
That is a claim, so the rest of this page is the reasoning and the evidence behind it, including the part of this vertical we do not cover.
Most assessment buying guides sort by company size. For this vertical that is the wrong axis. A ramp agent at Schiphol, a bus driver at a regional operator, an enforcement officer on a city contract and a security screener at a cargo terminal look like four different jobs to a recruiter. To a selection process they are almost the same job.
All four are gated by a licence, a certificate or a vetting decision that somebody has to pay for. All four run in shifts, which changes who applies and when they can be reached. All four put someone in a position where integrity is part of the job description rather than a nice-to-have. And all four are hired in batches, because a new contract, a new route or a summer peak needs twenty people at once and not one.
Get the axis right and the platform question answers itself. You are not shopping for the tool with the most tests. You are shopping for the tool that keeps the certification pipeline from leaking.
In an office role, a hiring mistake costs you salary and a few months. In these roles it costs you the training too, and the training is the biggest line in the budget.
Take a driver. Under the EU rules on driver qualification, Directive 2022/2561, the standard initial qualification is 280 hours of course and test, or 140 hours on the accelerated route, and after that 35 hours of periodic training every five years to keep the Union code 95 on the licence. You pay for that before the person has driven a single commercial kilometre for you.
Now take an enforcement or guarding role, where an in-house training programme ends in an exam. Every retake is paid for twice, once in course fees and once in the weeks the position stays empty.
This is the number that should decide your platform. Not licence cost per candidate, not how many tests are in the catalogue. How many people you push into an expensive gate who were never going to get through it.
The predictors differ more between these roles than the job adverts suggest. A screener needs to stay accurate on a task designed to be boring. A dispatcher needs to stay accurate when three things arrive at once. Those are different constructs and a single generic personality test catches neither.
| Role family | The failure that costs most | What to measure | Time budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airport security screening and access control | Failing or losing the certification, plus attention lapses on a monotonous task | Attention under monotony, integrity, cognitive ability, situational judgement | 20 to 30 min |
| Ground handling and ramp | Leaving inside three months, and safety incidents in the first weeks | Conscientiousness, coping under pressure, cognitive ability, shift tolerance | 15 to 25 min |
| Bus, coach and truck drivers | Failing the qualification, or leaving after you paid for it | Cognitive ability without a language penalty, integrity, coping, adaptability | 15 to 25 min |
| Enforcement, guarding and transport security | Failing the certification exam, and escalating conflict on the job | Situational judgement, integrity, coping under pressure, personality | 25 to 35 min |
| Dispatch and control room | Errors when three things arrive at once | Working memory, sustained attention, adaptability, numeracy | 15 to 20 min |
Two things in that table are worth saying out loud. Integrity appears in three of the five rows, which is unusual and specific to this vertical. And no row is longer than thirty-five minutes, because everyone in this market is hiring from the same pool at the same time and a long test hands your candidates to the operator down the road.
Aviation carries a hard gate that no assessment replaces and no vendor should imply it does.
Under Commission Implementing Regulation 2019/103, which amended the aviation security rules in 2015/1998 and applied from 31 December 2020, staff who screen, control access or carry out security controls in security-restricted areas need an enhanced background check before employment. Clause 11.1.3 sets what it has to cover at minimum. Identity on documentary evidence, criminal records in every state of residence for at least the preceding five years, employment and education including any gaps over the same five years, and intelligence held by the competent national authorities. Under 11.1.7 an enhanced check is repeated at intervals of no more than twelve months, against three years for a standard check.
Read that as a funnel design problem rather than a compliance chore. The background check is slow, externally controlled and cannot be shortened by you. So everything you can learn about a candidate cheaply, you want to learn before that gate rather than after it. An assessment that runs in the first week costs you minutes. A candidate who clears twelve months of vetting and then turns out to be wrong for shift work costs you the whole cycle.
We have published results in enforcement, public transport, parcel delivery, waste services and logistics staffing. Here is what each one actually measured.
Handhaving Support, enforcement officers. This is the closest published case to the problem this page describes. They recruit, second and train enforcement officers, and candidates kept having to retake the qualifying exam, which was expensive every time. Together we built a job profile and put the assessment ahead of the training rather than after it. Training costs came down by 83%. Their recruiter, Moa den Outer, put the mechanism plainly, that they can now go into depth on personality in the interview and better recognise who is suitable for the training and therefore the role. Read the Handhaving Support case.
Qbuzz, public transport. A regional bus operator testing candidates on both soft and hard skills in one flow, which is the standard shape of a driver funnel.
DPD, delivery. A structured process with uniform selection and interview questions produced a candidate experience rated four out of five, with 89% of candidates feeling more positive or neutral about DPD after taking the assessment and 91% seeing the assessment as a positive or neutral part of applying. In a market where the same drivers are applying to three employers at once, that second number is not a soft metric.
PreZero, waste and environmental services. Replaced an assessment tool that needed training to interpret. Assessment costs dropped by 80% and hiring managers actually started reading the reports.
AXS Logistiek, logistics staffing. Reactivated a dormant candidate pool through automated conversation. 7.5% came back fully active, 5% booked an interview with a recruiter straight away and 17% unsubscribed, so 24% of the pool was qualified without a single phone call. For seasonal and contract-driven hiring, that is the cheapest source you already own.
What none of these prove is a validity coefficient per test for a security screener. We do not publish those, and you should ask us for them the same way you should ask every other vendor.
Shift workers do not answer emails between nine and five, because that is when a lot of them are working or sleeping. That single fact breaks more volume funnels in this vertical than any test design ever has.
So the first step in these funnels is a conversation and not a test. SmartChat runs the intake over WhatsApp or web chat, asks the knockout questions that actually knock out, and does it at whatever hour the candidate is free. Licence category, code 95 status, shift availability, distance to the depot, right to work. See how SmartChat handles the first conversation.
After that, short blocks. A two to five minute game for attention or adaptability, a swipeable personality read for early funnel volume, and the COTAN-reviewed cognitive ability test where you need to know about learning speed. That last one matters more here than in most verticals, because it was built not to penalise candidates for language background, age or schooling, and a large share of ground handling, warehousing and driving applicants speak the local language as a second one. Penalising them is both unfair and commercially stupid in a shortage market. The platform overview shows what the library covers, and the catalogue is sortable by the roles each test was built for.
Everything writes back into the system your planners already use, through the ATS integrations, because a recruiter filling forty driver seats will not open a second tool.
Procurement in aviation and public transport asks harder questions than procurement in most sectors, usually because a public tender is behind it. Four answers to have ready from any vendor, including us.
Three gaps, stated plainly, because a page that claims to fit everything fits nothing.
We have no airport or airline client to point at yet. Our published proof in this space is enforcement, public transport, parcel delivery, waste services and logistics staffing. The role structure transfers well, in our view, but that is our judgement and not a case study. If an airport reference is your decision criterion, we are not there.
We do not do background screening or security vetting. The enhanced check the aviation rules require is somebody else's job and always will be. We sit in front of it.
We do not test physical or practical fitness. No medical, no lifting capacity, no on-road driving test, no simulator. Those stay with your training provider and your occupational health service.
So the honest version of the claim at the top of this page. For the selection decision in front of the certification gate, we think we are the strongest fit in this vertical. For the gate itself, we are one supplier among several you will still need.
Selection Lab, on the argument that these four role families are one selection problem rather than four. All of them are gated by a paid certification, run in shifts, screened on integrity and filled in batches, so the platform that fits is the one that screens cheaply and early, reaches shift workers outside office hours, and predicts who clears the gate. Our published evidence in adjacent roles includes an 83% cut in training costs at an enforcement employer. We have no airport client yet, which you should weigh.
Four things. Sustained attention on a task built to be monotonous, integrity, general cognitive ability for procedure learning and recertification, and situational judgement for passenger conflict. Twenty to thirty minutes total is achievable. Screening for attention specifically matters, because a screener who drifts on hour six of a shift is a different failure from a screener who never learned the procedure.
We do not publish a validity coefficient for that, and no honest vendor should imply one without the sample attached. What we can show is an outcome. An employer that trains and seconds enforcement officers moved the assessment to before the training and cut training costs by 83%, because fewer people entered the course who were going to fail the exam.
No, and no vendor can offer that. Regulation 2019/103 requires an enhanced background check covering identity, five years of criminal records across all states of residence, five years of employment and education including gaps, and national intelligence, repeated at intervals of no more than twelve months. An assessment sits in front of that gate to make sure the people entering it are worth the wait.
Start with a conversation rather than a test, over WhatsApp or web chat, so candidates answer at the hour they are actually free. Then keep the blocks short, two to five minutes each in the early funnel. For cognitive ability use an instrument built not to penalise language background, age or schooling, since a large share of applicants for ground handling, warehouse and driving roles speak the local language as a second one.
Still mapping the funnel? Start with the platform overview, look up your roles in the catalogue, or take one certification-gated vacancy to a demo and we will design its selection step live.
