Unicru was a

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

company which produced a

human resources Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include m ...

software line built to aid companies in evaluating job applicants and their suitability for particular positions by giving them personality tests. Many of their customers were large retailers such as

Big Y Big Y Foods, Inc. (or Big Y) is an American, family-owned supermarket chain located in Massachusetts and Connecticut. It operates under the trade names "Big Y World Class Market" or "Big Y Supermarket". In 1936, a young entrepreneur, Paul D'Am ...

Lowe's Lowe's Companies, Inc. (), often shortened to Lowe's, is an American retail company specializing in home improvement. Headquartered in Mooresville, North Carolina, the company operates a chain of retail stores in the United States and Canada. A ...

Hollywood Video Hollywood Entertainment Corp. (Nasdaq: HLYW), more commonly known as Hollywood Video, was a home video and video game rental shop company started in 1988. The chain was the largest direct competitor to Blockbuster Video until it was purchased ...

Hastings Entertainment Hastings Entertainment was an American retail chain that sold books, movies, music, and video games and functioned as a video rental shop. As of 2016 it had 126 superstores, which were mainly located in the South Central United States, Rocky M ...

Albertsons Albertsons Companies, Inc. is an American grocery company founded and headquartered in Boise, Idaho. With 2,253 stores as of the third quarter of fiscal year 2020 and 270,000 employees as of fiscal year 2019, the company is the second-large ...

Toys R Us A toy or plaything is an object that is used primarily to provide entertainment. Simple examples include Toy block, toy blocks, Board game, board games, and Doll, dolls. Toys are often designed for use by children, although many are designed sp ...

PetSmart PetSmart is a privately held American chain of pet superstores, which sell pet products, services, and small pets. It is the leading North American pet company, and its direct competitor is Petco. Its indirect competitors are Amazon, Walmart, ...

Best Buy Best Buy Co. Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebra ...

, and

Blockbuster Video Blockbuster or Block Buster may refer to: * Blockbuster (entertainment) a term coined for an extremely successful movie, from which most other uses are derived. Corporations * Blockbuster (retailer), a defunct video and game rental chain ** Blo ...

. According to its vendor, Unicru was used in 16% of major retail hiring in the United States as of early 2009.

History

Unicru was founded in 1987 as ''Decision Point Data'' and is headquartered in Beaverton,

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

. It acquired two other software companies:

Guru.com Guru.com is a freelance marketplace. It allows companies to find freelance workers for commissioned work. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Guru was initially known as ''eMoonlighter.com''. History Guru Inc. was founded in 1999 in ...

in 2003 and Xperius (formerly Personic) in 2004. The Guru.com URL and logo were subsequently sold to eMoonlighter.com which now operates under the Guru.com brand. In August 2006, Kronos announced it had acquired Unicru.{{cite web, url=http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=142090, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061018022247/http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=142090, url-status=dead, archive-date=October 18, 2006, title=Kronos to Reach Beyond Workforce Management With Unicru Buy, date=2006-07-18, publisher=Gartner, access-date=2008-08-30 According to ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', cheating on the tests, using answer keys available online, became more common during the

late-2000s recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At t ...

, though Kronos denies that cheating is common or significantly affects the test's validity.

References

2006 mergers and acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States Software companies established in 1987 Software companies disestablished in 2006

History

See also

References