Case Study: Equistar USA Fills Crucial Positions in a High-Tech Industry Using WorkKeys

November 2006

The Company:
Equistar, one of the largest ethylene and polyethylene manufacturers in the U.S., makes plastics for everything from grocery bags to dashboards to shampoo bottles

The Challenge:
Selecting candidates for high-skill, extensive-training positions at the Clinton, IA, facility

The Solution:
WorkKeys^® profiling and testing from Iowa Workforce Development Centers

Situation

The empowered Process Control Technologist position (125 of the site's 400 employees) controls highly complex machinery, chemicals, and processes. The job is so demanding it takes five years of work and costly training before a technologist is considered fully skilled. Identifying the right applicants is challenging, while the cost of an incorrect hiring decision is significant and could take one to two years to realize. In addition, the plant's high-pressure processes and materials require OSHA documentation of worker competence.

Needs

Equistar needed a way to articulate the high levels of math, technology, and teamwork skills required, to identify candidates who had them and to minimize incorrect hiring decisions.

Solution

In 1995, Equistar's long relationship with the Iowa Workforce Development Centers led to WorkKeys, which gave the plant a single vocabulary to define job requirements and applicants' skill levels.

Working with the Centers' ACT-trained job profilers in 1996, job incumbents defined and prioritized the skills required based on their knowledge of their jobs. Applicants then systematically took the resulting WorkKeys assessments in five skill areas.

Results

Employees accepted WorkKeys as a valid tool in the plant hiring process because jobholders were the content experts, and because of noticeable improvement in the success rate of recent hires.

The assessments revealed that many applicants lacked the required skills. WorkKeys thus became an efficient, fair screening tool to pinpoint the right candidates and to help other candidates target their training needs.
Documentation of the technologists' skills helps satisfy OSHA requirements.