SummaryAstudywas conducted in a manufacturing division of an electronics firm to determine if tests could be selected which would be positively related to managerial success and thus useful in selecting employees who have good managerial potential. Data were obtained from 102 managers, 84 of whom were first‐line managers. These employees were from four plants in various sections of the United States.A job analysis was conducted by means of interviews to find the characteristics that were minimal requirements for the position of manager and those that discriminated between better and poorer managers. Based on the job analysis, a number of characteristics were hypothesized which seemed to relate to the success of the managers interviewed. Tests were then selected to measure these characteristics. Both subjective and objective criteria were employed to evaluate the test results. The objective criterion (salary corrected for length of service) was found to be the most satisfactory measure. When the tests were correlated to the objective criterion for the first‐line managers, two measures (Otis Test of Mental Ability and Background and Contemporary Data Form) were found to have significant validity and cross‐validity.The results indicate that the use of these instruments in the selection procedure would increase the number of managers capable of performing in an above‐average manner. This increase might be as much as 36 per cent over the present situation as measured by the criterion of th