What it is
Biddle Consulting Group’s 911 dispatcher and calltaker test, sat on TestGenius. Your agency picks the modules.
Scoring
Each module in its own unit: words per minute for Keyboarding, keystrokes per hour for Data Entry, percentage correct for the rest.
Emergency messages
15 seconds each to choose Police, Fire, EMS or Utility. After 15 seconds the answer is worth nothing.
Pass mark
Set by each agency, per module, from its own dispatchers’ estimates.
Device
Laptop or desktop only, usually with a headset for the audio modules.
A rate has no answer key
Most of CritiCall is not a set of questions with right answers. Data Entry gives you records to copy into a form and counts your keystrokes per hour. Keyboarding gives you a passage to copy and counts your words per minute. A shortcut needs something to look up, and here there is nothing: the score is simply how fast and how accurately you type, measured while you do it.
Speed is also what agencies set their bar on. Florida Highway Patrol’s dispatchers put the data entry cut at about 4,000 keystrokes per hour and keyboarding at about 33 words per minute. Nobody can type those for you from a second screen.
On a module scored in keystrokes per hour, the only way to raise the number is to type more correct characters in the same time.
Fifteen seconds is the other half
The emergency messages arrive on their own and give you 15 seconds to choose Police, Fire, EMS or Utility. In the multi-tasking modules they interrupt you while you are typing. Reading a message, finding a note and checking it takes longer than the window, and a late answer scores the same as a wrong one.
The cost
A lookup expires the message
Fifteen seconds covers reading the message and clicking an agency. There is no time left to consult anything.
The cost
Proctoring records you
Where an agency tests remotely, TestGenius’s proctor records your screen and webcam for the whole sitting.
The gain
The rules are public
Biddle publishes the four decision rules in its candidate guide. Learning them as ten triggers is the single biggest thing you can do today.
The gain
Typing speed trains fast
Typing speed improves with regular practice, and practising it is exactly the same activity as the test.
What to do instead
Do
Learn the four decision rules until you can route a message on its trigger word alone.
Practise copy typing on mixed-case prose with punctuation, not word lists.
Use Tab between form fields and the numeric keypad with Num Lock on for numbers.
Practise on a laptop or desktop with a headset, the way the real test is sat.
Set aside two to three uninterrupted hours: the real sitting cannot be paused.
Do not
Do not hunt for an answer key. Most modules have none, and the rest change every sitting.
Do not rely on how your local agency routes calls. CritiCall is marked on its own rules.
Do not stop to fix every typing error. Constant backspacing costs more time than it saves.
Do not take it on a phone or tablet. TestGenius says its modules do not work correctly there.
Do not leave a message unanswered. A guess can score; a timeout cannot.
