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This is not CritiCall, and it is not the PELLETB

Three different tests get confused with each other in California dispatcher recruitment, and preparing for the wrong one is an expensive mistake. Check which your agency administers before preparing for any of them.

This product prepares
The POST dispatcher battery
CritiCall
A different, commercial test
PELLETB
The peace officer test, not this one
Alternatives allowed
Yes, under Regulation 1957

The POST battery

Commission Regulation 1957 requires public safety dispatcher applicants to be assessed for verbal, reasoning, memory and perceptual abilities, and the POST Entry-Level Dispatcher Selection Test Battery is POST's own instrument for that. It is eleven subtests, about two and a half hours, and POST publishes an examinee guide describing every section. This product prepares its six paper-and-pencil subtests.

CritiCall

CritiCall is a commercial dispatcher test used by some agencies for typing, data entry, call summarisation and multitasking. It is a different product from a different company, its content is proprietary, and nothing here prepares it. Regulation 1957 permits an agency to satisfy the requirement with "alternative job-related tests of these abilities", which is how an agency can use something other than the POST battery.

The PELLETB

POST also publishes the PELLETB, which is the entry-level written test for peace officers — four sub-tests rather than eleven, and a different job. A PELLETB score does not satisfy the dispatcher requirement. The two batteries have one section name in common, Clarity, and even there the material is written around different work.

How to find out which you are sitting

The recruitment itself usually says. Agencies that use the POST battery tend to name it and often publish the minimum T-score they will accept; agencies using something else name that instead. If the posting does not say, ask before you prepare.

Sources

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