Companies that use the CCAT

What we know, and how we know it

Criteria Corp sells the CCAT to employers and names few of them in public. Employers rarely say which tests they use either, because a test is one step in a process they would rather keep flexible. So nearly everything known about who uses the CCAT comes from one of two places.

• Employer-published. The company describes its own CCAT step on its own site. Crossover is the only employer we found that does this: it publishes a CCAT guide, an FAQ with its retake rule (one attempt per email in six months),^[6] and a proctored retest for finalists.^[7]
• Candidate reports. People who applied describe the test in interview reviews, usually on Glassdoor: "50 questions in 15 minutes", a link from ondemandassessment.com, the point in the process where it came. These are honest but anecdotal, and they age. A report from 2021 tells you what one team did in 2021.

We grade each company on that evidence. Strong means an employer source or a candidate report specific enough to identify the test (the Criteria name, 50 questions in 15 minutes). Some means a less specific report or a pattern across a company group. Thin means prep-site lists or a single passing mention. Lists from prep sites that cite nothing are a lead, never a source, and we left off companies that appear only there.

23 employers reported to use the CCAT

Filter by industry or by how strong the evidence is, and sort by target score. Each name opens a company guide with the roles candidates report, where the test sits in the process, the question types to drill, and a check of your own score against the target.

A few patterns stand out. The ESW Capital group (Crossover, Trilogy, IgniteTech) uses the CCAT as an early, mandatory gate and sets the highest bars. Candidates and prep sites describe it as common across software companies owned by Vista Equity Partners. Elsewhere it shows up across sales, analyst and engineering hiring, usually after a recruiter call and before the first interviews with the team.

How we estimate each target

A CCAT score is a raw count of right answers out of 50. Criteria publishes three things that let you judge one: its median of 24 out of 50^[4], two norm groups with a mean of 24.2 and a standard deviation of 8.58 (985 working adults)^[1] and a median of 24 with a standard deviation of 7.00 (106,740 adults)^[3], and suggested score floors for 42 job families, from 17 for retail sales to 24 for data analytics and legal roles.^[2]

For each company we:

1. Map the roles candidates report to Criteria's closest job families and take their published floors.
2. Place those floors against the norm groups, so a floor of 22 reads as roughly the middle of the pack, not a high bar.
3. Adjust upward for how competitive the applicant pool is: remote roles open to the world and well-known employers draw stronger candidates, and their real bars sit well above Criteria's floors.
4. Replace the estimate with the employer's own number when it publishes one. Today that is only Crossover.

The result is a range and a single target inside it. It is an estimate, not a cutoff the employer has confirmed, and we say so on every page. For the percentile behind any score, see the CCAT percentile chart. For the job-family floors in full, see what a good CCAT score is.

If your employer isn't listed

Most employers that use the CCAT never come up in a public review, so a missing name means nothing. Your invitation email is the best evidence: a link to ondemandassessment.com and a 15-minute, 50-question test is the CCAT.

To set a target, open the CCAT score calculator, find the Criteria job family closest to your role, and treat its floor as the minimum. Then aim higher in proportion to the competition: a few points above the floor for a local role with few applicants, and into the low 30s for a remote or well-known employer. If you are not sure where you stand today, a free CCAT practice test gives you a baseline in 15 minutes, and the pacing calculator turns your target into seconds per question.

Before you practice: employer rules

Check the employer's own rules before you prepare. Crossover treats engagement with most third-party CCAT materials as cheating and grounds to disqualify an application, while saying you can prepare by getting familiar with the types of questions.^[5] Criteria also says it flags results whose speed and accuracy suggest the candidate saw the test before.^[8] Clever Cat Prep writes its own practice questions in the CCAT's formats; it does not have, and never shows, questions from the test.

Clever Cat Prep is not affiliated with Criteria Corp or with any employer on this page. Company names are trademarks of their owners.