FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT measures instinct: the move somebody reaches for first when the job goes sideways. You find out which of your seats they'd hold, where they'll strain, and what to ask them Thursday. One link, and the report's back the same day.
Holds that board fine on a calm week in March. Comes apart in July.
You've done this one. Somebody sits across from you, says the right things, has the right answers. You hire them. They start strong because they're capable. Four months later they're gone, and the truth isn't that you hired a bad person. You put a good one somewhere they were never going to last.
You already know the shape of it.
Put your own number on that. Whatever that seat costs you for a week, multiply it by the six months you just read. That one's yours, not a survey's, and it's still only the part that fits on a spreadsheet. It doesn't count the customer who stopped calling, the callback you ate, or what your best person now thinks about how long you let it run.
You paid every dollar of it before anybody told you they were wrong for the seat.
Everybody has one move they reach for first when a job goes sideways. Not the answer they'd give in an interview. Not what they can be trained to do. The thing they actually do, before anybody has time to manage the impression. Put that instinct in the wrong seat and no amount of skill holds it together.
Every other assessment reads something else. Personality tools read traits. Skills assessments read what somebody learned. Both of those can be studied for, coached, and grown into. Instinct is the one thing that shows up the same way on a Tuesday in March and a Friday in July, which is exactly why it decides who lasts in a seat.
FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT reads four of them.
Verifies, diagnoses, wants to know what's actually going on before committing to anything.
Creates order and sequence. Reaches for the system that stops the problem coming back.
Improvises, goes where it's messy, does the best work on the days the plan falls apart.
Does it personally, learns by handling it, would rather fix it than hand it off.
Here's how it gets at instinct. Twelve situations out of your trade, four ways to handle each one, ranked most like me to least. All four are moves a good operator would make, and they're written to look about equally good on purpose. With no better-looking answer to aim at, what a candidate hands you is the order they'd really work in.
Which raises the question of whose trade, and that turns out to be the other half of this.
You've been handed the corporate ones. A candidate opens the link, reads a question about cross-functional stakeholders and quarterly alignment, and by the third screen you both know it wasn't written for anybody who has ever been on a roof. So they click through it to be polite, and you get a report on a person who doesn't exist.
FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT was built the other way around. Every seat in it is a seat that only exists in a contracting business. Every situation in it is something that actually happens in a shop. And before your candidate reads a single word, the whole thing gets rewritten into their trade.
Pick a trade and read what your candidate would actually get. Nine trades, nine different afternoons. Not one question with the words swapped out.
It's 2pm. A plumber calls in. The drain line turned into something bigger than what got sold, and the customer's standing right there asking what it's going to cost. Two more calls are on the board this afternoon.
Different trade, different afternoon, different four answers. The four instincts underneath are the only thing that stays constant. Your candidate only ever sees their own trade, those labels stay on our side of the wall, and then eight more situations get asked twice, once calm and once under load, so you see whether that instinct holds when the pressure comes on.
That's the part nobody else has. There are plenty of assessments. There isn't another one built from the ground up for the people who fill these seats, in the language they actually use, measuring the thing that actually decides whether they last.
One candidate's instinct, held up against six of the twenty seats. Their instinct never changes. Only the seat changes. Click through and watch what that does to the answer.
One made-up candidate, so you can watch it work. Bar positions here are illustrative. The real targets for each of the 20 seats live inside the product where they belong, so every candidate meets the assessment cold.
That's the whole idea. There's no good instinct or bad instinct, only instinct that suits a seat or doesn't. The same person who's a Strong Fit on a truck lands somewhere else entirely on a dispatch board, and nothing about them changed except the seat you were putting them in.
Six things you can act on before the interview, every one of them written against this person's instinct and the seat you're actually filling.
How close their instinct sits to what that seat demands, as one number against a written standard, with the band it lands in and the range it would fall in if they sat it again. Fit for this seat, in your trade, in your shop.
An instinct that's quiet in March is the one that breaks a July. The report names the gap, says what it costs in this seat specifically, and tells you the conditions that bring it out, so you know what you're signing up to manage.
Written off this person's gaps, not off a template. You walk into the interview already knowing the three things worth finding out, instead of running the same script you've run at everybody for eleven years.
Aimed at the same doubts. Most reference calls are a formality because nobody knows what to probe. These give you something specific to ask a previous employer that they can actually answer.
How to onboard this person, what to watch, what shuts them down and how to talk to them. You stop guessing at how to manage somebody for three months before you figure them out.
This is the one people don't expect. An instinct that fights the opening you posted often fits another seat in your building perfectly, and the report names which one. You stop throwing good people back.
Your part in all of it takes about a minute. Pick the seat, send the link by email or text. They take ten to fifteen minutes at their own pace, and it lands in your inbox the same day.
Every seat wants a different instinct, and each of these carries its own written standard built from occupational research. A dispatcher gets measured against what a board demands, a bookkeeper against what the books demand. Nine trades, and every situation gets rewritten into your trade's own words before your candidate reads it.
Filling something that isn't on the list? Write it. A warranty administrator, a fleet manager, a recruiter, a membership coordinator, a permit runner. A custom position gets held to the same rules as the twenty. And when you're not sure where somebody belongs, run them against three seats at once and let the report tell you.
An Office Manager supervises staff and owns the financial close. An Office Administrator is the only administrator in a smaller shop with nobody reporting to them. Those two seats want the four instincts in close to reverse order, so picking the wrong one flips your answer completely. FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT flags it the moment you choose, so you land on the right standard the first time.
Scoring is a fixed formula written by people. Run it twice, get the same result twice. The words around the number come from an AI reading scores the formula already computed, and every line it writes has to cite the score it came from, so what you read traces back to arithmetic you could check by hand.
Scores land within about seven points either way and the report prints that range right on the front. You'll know when two candidates are genuinely different people and when they're the same call, which is exactly the judgment you need when two good ones are sitting in front of you.
Every report tells you how much of the sitting it's working from and how that sitting was taken, in plain words. So you know which reports to lean on hard and which ones point you at a question to ask in the room, and you're never guessing at how much weight the thing deserves.
| FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT | Personality inventories | Skills assessments | Your read in the room | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it actually measures | Instinct: the move they make first | Personality traits and types | A skill they learned | However they came across |
| Can a candidate study for it | There's nothing to study | Traits are easy to guess at | Yes, that's the point | Yes, and they do |
| What it compares somebody to | One written seat standard | A type or a trait profile | A correct answer | Whoever you hired last |
| Tells you what to ask afterward | Questions written off their gaps | Generic prompts if any | Not usually | You improvise |
| Tells you how to manage them | A first ninety days for this person | Trait descriptions | No | You find out |
| Points you at a better seat | Names it, if there is one | No | No | Rarely |
| Who it was written for | The trades. 9 of them, 20 seats | Office work generally | One named skill | Your shop |
| Time it takes the candidate | 10 to 15 minutes, no clock | Often 20 to 40 minutes | Varies widely | An interview |
| Margin printed on the score | On every report | Rarely shown to the buyer | Rarely shown to the buyer | None |
Full terms, disclosures and limits are in the legal section at the bottom of this page, in writing, before you buy.
Send a credit to a real candidate for a real seat and read the whole report. If it did not tell you something you had not already worked out, email us and the credit goes back. You keep the report either way. It runs once per customer, on your first completed assessment, told to us within 30 days of the report. No form and no explanation, and those three lines are the whole of it.
Several locations, a hiring pipeline that never really stops, or a purchase that has to go through somebody first. Tell us what you are hiring and we will set it up with you. Plenty of buyers this size simply take the Practice License at checkout; this is for the ones who want a conversation before they do.
A contractor pays about $129 for one Google lead who may never pick up the phone. One credit is $149 to read the person he is about to hand a truck and a customer list to.
Credits never expire. Not at renewal, not after a year, never. Buy ten, use two this month and eight next spring.
One precision, because a customer who reads "never" and then sees a link stop working will think we moved the line: the credit never expires, but an assessment link stops working 30 days after you send it. If the candidate never opened it, that credit returns to your balance on its own.
There is no overage rate, because there is nothing to meter. The packs are one time purchases. Run out and you buy another pack. The Practice License is the only item on this page that renews.
Ten to fifteen minutes for most people, at their own pace. The first screen tells them in plain words that they can take as long as they want on any question, so nobody is rushing and you get their real answers.
Pick the seat and send one link by email or text. That's about a minute of your day. They open it on whatever they've got and go.
The same day. You get an email with the headline result and a link straight into the full report, so you can read it before the interview instead of after.
Write your own. A custom position is held to the same rules as a built in seat and checked by the same code. Warranty administrator, fleet manager, recruiter, membership coordinator, permit runner. People build these all the time.
Run them against three seats at once. That's usually the more useful question anyway, and it's how people find out the applicant they were about to pass on is the CSR they've been looking for.
Nine trades are built in, and every situation gets rewritten into your trade's own words before your candidate reads it. A plumbing candidate reads about plumbing work, on a plumbing job, with plumbing language.
A short passage and two questions about it, so you know the person actually read the thing rather than clicking through. Anybody who read it can answer both, and it takes under a minute.
No. They stay in your account until you send them, however long that takes. The one thing with a clock on it is the link: once you send an assessment it works for 30 days, and if the candidate never opens it the credit comes back to your balance by itself.
You do, and anybody you choose to share it with, like the coach or the partner who helps you hire. It's written for the person making the decision.
It writes the plain-English sections around numbers the scoring formula already produced, and every claim it makes has to name the computed score it came from. The numbers are arithmetic; the AI's job is to explain them well.
Scoring material stays on our server. The browser only ever receives question text and meaningless option identifiers, and a build check fails the release if anything scoring related shows up in a downloadable file.
Shops filling seats they can't afford to get wrong, and shops filling them often enough that one bad hire costs them a season. If you hire once every few years and you already know the person, you probably don't need it.
Plain English, no fine print games. It covers what this is, what it isn't, and which parts are your job as the employer rather than ours.
Nothing here is legal advice and we are not your lawyer. Employment law differs by state and city and it has been moving fast, particularly around automated hiring tools. Before you put any assessment in front of applicants, have your own attorney look at how you plan to use it.
FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT is a work-style assessment. A candidate completes a short reading check, ranks four reasonable responses to each of twelve work scenarios, then answers eight situations twice, once plainly and once under pressure. There is no time limit at any point. A fixed formula written by people scores those answers against a written standard for one specific seat, and returns a report to the employer.
FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT is not any of the following:
FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT does not make, recommend, or take part in any hiring decision. It reports fit against a seat standard, describes where somebody is likely to strain, and suggests what to probe in an interview. No output states or implies that you should hire or not hire a person, and the system is built to refuse to produce one.
Every employment decision, and every legal duty that attaches to it, remains entirely yours.
No criterion-related validation study has been conducted on this instrument. We do not claim, and you should not assume, that a score predicts job performance, tenure, productivity, or success in any role.
We also make no claim that FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT is EEOC-compliant, legally defensible, free of bias, psychometrically validated, or normed against any population. If you ever see a claim like that attached to this product, it did not come from us. If and when real evidence exists, it will be published with the numbers attached.
Use it as one input alongside the interview, the ride-along, work history and reference checks. Never as the sole basis for a decision.
FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT does not measure, screen for, diagnose, or ask about any physical or mental health condition, disability, medication, treatment history, or psychological disorder. No item asks about health, and the written report is prohibited in code from making clinical, diagnostic, or health-related statements.
It is not designed or intended to function as a medical examination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Whether any particular use in your process raises an ADA question is a matter for your own counsel.
FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT is not a consumer reporting agency. We do not assemble or furnish consumer reports, investigative consumer reports, or any information covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the reports this product produces are not consumer reports.
If you also run background checks, drug screens, or credit checks, those go through separate vendors and carry their own notice, authorization and adverse-action obligations that have nothing to do with us.
You are responsible for complying with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the ADA, the ADEA, GINA, and every applicable state and local fair employment law in the places you hire.
That includes applying the assessment consistently to candidates for the same seat rather than selectively, keeping your own records of how it was used, and monitoring your own hiring outcomes for adverse impact.
We have not conducted an adverse impact study on this instrument and cannot tell you whether your particular use of it produces one. If selection rates in your process differ meaningfully across protected groups, that is something you need to investigate with your counsel, whatever tools you are using.
No machine learning model produces the score. Scoring is a fixed arithmetic formula written by people, and it returns the same result for the same answers every time.
An AI model writes the narrative sections of the report from numbers the formula already computed. It never receives the candidate's name, email address, or raw answers. Every claim it makes must cite the score it derives from or the system rejects it, and it is barred from stating a hiring recommendation.
A growing number of jurisdictions regulate automated employment decision tools and the use of AI in hiring, including New York City, Illinois, Colorado, Maryland and others, and the law here is changing quickly. Requirements can include independent bias audits, advance notice to candidates, published summaries, and record keeping. Determining whether your use of this or any tool triggers those obligations, and satisfying them, is your responsibility.
The assessment is untimed for everybody. Nothing counts down and nothing expires, and the first screen tells the candidate in writing that they may take as long as they want on any question. It also tells them that if they need the assessment in a different format, for any reason at all, they can contact whoever sent the link and it costs them nothing to ask.
Those requests come to you, not to us. Receiving, evaluating and granting accommodation requests under the ADA and any applicable state law is your obligation as the employer.
Candidate notice requirements vary by jurisdiction and some are specific to automated tools. At a minimum, we recommend telling every candidate that an assessment is part of your process, roughly what it measures, how long it takes, and how to request an accommodation.
Some jurisdictions require more than that, including advance notice within a set number of days, a description of the characteristics assessed, and information about data retention. Check what applies where you hire.
What is stored for each assessment: the candidate's name and email address, the seat and trade you selected, the context you selected, timing data, the raw answers, the computed scores, the written analysis, and the relevant dates.
What is never sent to the AI model: the candidate's name, email address, raw answers, or any account identifier.
Retention and deletion. An unused assessment link expires 30 days after it is created. Archiving a result hides it from your list and keeps everything. Deleting a result permanently erases the candidate's name, email address, answers and scores, and stops any report link that was already open from working. Deletion cannot be undone.
As between you and us, you are responsible for having a lawful basis to submit a candidate's information, for any notice or consent your jurisdiction requires, and for responding to candidate requests about their own data. Tell us and we will assist with deletion.
Credits. One credit buys one assessment link. It is deducted when the link is created, not when the assessment is completed. If the link is never used it expires after 30 days and the credit returns to your balance automatically. Delete an unused link before then and the credit returns the same day. Credits do not expire while unused.
The guarantee. On your first completed assessment, if the report contains nothing you had not already worked out for yourself, tell us within 30 days of the report being generated and that credit goes back to your balance. You keep the report. One claim per customer, on the first completed assessment only. No form and no explanation required.
Everything else. Credits consumed by completed assessments beyond that first one are not refundable, because the work has been delivered. If something goes wrong on our end, tell us and we will fix it.
The assessment items, the seat standards and their benchmarks, the scoring engine, the item bank, the report structure and the software are proprietary and protected. Reports you receive are licensed to you for internal hiring and management use in your own business.
You agree not to copy, republish, resell or sublicense the assessment or its items; not to reverse engineer, scrape or attempt to derive the scoring or the benchmarks; not to publish assessment items or answer keys anywhere; not to use outputs to build or train a competing product; and not to share account credentials or report links outside your organization.
Publishing the items would make the instrument gameable and worthless to every other customer, which is why the scoring never reaches the candidate's browser in the first place.
Nothing produced by FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT, including report narratives, interview questions, management suggestions or onboarding plans, constitutes legal, human resources, medical, psychological or other professional advice. It is information for you to weigh with your own judgment and your own advisors.
The service is provided as is. To the fullest extent permitted by law we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, and we do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error free.
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, our total liability arising out of or relating to your use of FIRSTMOVE ASSESSMENT is limited to the amount you actually paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost business or the cost of substitute services.
You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from claims arising out of your use of the service, including employment decisions you make, your compliance or non-compliance with employment and privacy law, and information you submit about candidates.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this may not apply to you.
We may update these disclosures and our terms. Material changes will be posted here with a revision date, and continuing to use the service after that means you accept them.
Governing law and venue, the full terms of service, the privacy policy and the candidate privacy notice are published as separate documents. Where those documents conflict with this summary, those documents control.
For legal notices, privacy requests, deletion requests or anything in this section, use the contact route listed in your account or in your purchase receipt.
Everything in this block appears elsewhere in these disclosures. It is collected here so that a buyer who wants the limits in a single list can read them in under a minute.
Last updated 31 August 2026. This summary is written for the person buying and using the product. It does not replace the full terms of service, privacy policy or candidate privacy notice.