The study described the development of a standardized, normed, content-valid machine transcription test which could be used to evaluate the ability of secretarial applicants to type a mailable copy of a business letter from a dictated tape recording. The test was based on a thorough job analysis and was pretested using a pilot study with job incumbents to confirm its feasibility. Normative data were developed from 50 job applicants. Interrater reliability was statistically significant (r = .85, p <..05). The test was adopted for use at the headquarters office of a major oil and gas producing company.