CH8: Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment
 The process of encouraging potentially qualified applicants to seek employment with a
particular company
• Affected by the organization’s reputation and organizational values
 Efficiency of selection system is limited by effectiveness of recruitment
 Many sources can be utilized:
• Newspaper classifieds, Internet (including aesthetic and usability factors of the
organization’s website), newsletters, campus career centers, employee referrals

Recruitment Planning: Organizational Issues

 In-house vs. external recruitment agency
• Many companies do recruiting in-house
• Recommended approach for large companies
• Smaller companies may rely on external recruitment agencies
 Individual vs. cooperative recruitment alliances
• Cooperative alliances involve arrangements to share recruitment resources
 Centralized vs. decentralized recruitment

Considerations Related to Recruiters: Selection

• Desirable characteristics of recruiters
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Knowledge about company, jobs,
and career-related issues
• Technology skills
• Enthusiasm
• Various sources of recruiters
• HR professionals
• Line managers
• Employees

Considerations Related to Recruiters: Training and Rewards

• Training
• Traditional areas of training
• Interviewing skills, job analysis, interpersonal skills, laws, forms and
reports, company and job characteristics, and recruitment targets
• Nontraditional areas of training
• Technology skills, marketing skills, working with other departments, and
ethics
• Rewards
• Performance must be monitored and rewarded
• Effective recruiter behaviors
• End results
Searching: Communication Message
• Job requirements and rewards matrices
• Type of messages
• Realistic recruitment message -- RJP
• Elementary School Teachers (dental insurance but long school day)
• Branding (great place to work, closely tied to product image)
• Targeted messages (to a particular audience’s preferences, e.g., a demographic
group - positive climate for diversity)
• Choice of messages
• Nature of labor market
• Vacancy characteristics
• Applicant characteristics

Searching: Place of recruitment

• Managerial & Professional positions
• Countrywide, regional, and increasingly global
• Technical & Artisan positions
• Regional & local
• Clerical & Manual positions
• Local
• Past experience helps determine where to focus
• Labour market
• Tight labour market – if few qualified candidates available locally, search would
be expanded
Recruitment Sources
• Unsolicited (walk-ins, write-ins)
• Employee referrals and networks
• Advertisements
• Recruiting online
• Colleges and placement offices
• Employment agencies
• Executive search firms
• Professional associations and meetings
• State Employment services
• Outplacement services
• Community agencies
• Job fairs
• Co-ops and internships

Effectiveness of Recruitment Sources

• Effectiveness
• Involves assessing impact of sources on increased employee satisfaction,
performance, and retention
• Research results
• Most effective
• Referrals, job postings, rehiring of
former employees
• Least effective
• Newspaper ads, employment agencies

Approaches to Recruiting Online

• Job postings on Internet job boards
• Searching Web-based databases
o Recruiting Web Sites
• Job postings on organization’s Web site
• Mining databases

Innovative Recruitment Sources

• Religious organizations
• Interest groups
• Realtors
• Senior networks
Strategy Development: Criteria Affecting Choice of Sources
• Sufficient quantity and quality
• Cost
• Past experience with source
• Impact on HR outcomes
o Satisfaction
o Performance
o Retention
Open vs. Targeted Recruitment
• Open recruitment
• Targeted recruitment
• Key KSAO shortages
• Workforce diversity gaps
• Passive job seekers (non-candidates, e.g., trailing spouse)
• Former military personnel
• Former employees
• Employment discouraged (e.g., welfare recipients)
• Reward seekers (attracted to employee value proposition, e.g., flexible hours, health
care)
• Reluctant applicants (interested but conflicted... flexible work arrangements)

Searching: Communication Medium

 Recruitment brochures
 Videos and videoconferencing
 Advertisements
• Types of ads
o Classified ad
o Classified display ad
o Display ad
 o Online ad
 Telephone messages
 Organizational Web sites
 Radio
 E-mail

Strategy Development: When to Look

• Lead time concerns
• Goal -- Minimize delay in filling vacancies
• Effective planning requirements
• Establishment of priorities for job openings
• Prepared recruiters
• Time sequence concerns
• Staffing flowchart
• Time-lapse statistics

Internal vs. External Staffing

Closed Internal Recruitment System

Open Internal Recruitment System

Criteria for Choice of System
 A closed system is the least expensive, but may lead to high legal costs if minorities and
women do not have equal access to jobs
 Managers want a person to start work immediately when they have a vacancy; a closed
system offers the quickest response
 An open system is more likely than a closed system to identify more candidates, and hidden
talent is likely to be overlooked
 Some openings may require a narrow and specialized KSAO set
• A closed system may be able to identify these people quickly
• An open system may be cumbersome
 An open system may motivate migration of employees from critical and difficult to fill jobs
 Whatever system is specified in a labor contract must be followed since a contract is a
legally binding agreement
 An open system enhances perceptions of fairness
Strategy Development: When to Look
• Lead time concerns
• Difference between internal and external recruitment
• Essential an organization do HR planning
along with internal recruitment
• Time sequence concerns
• Coordination between internal and
external recruitment activities is essential
• Issues
• Time frame of internal search
• Whether external recruitment can be done
concurrently with internal recruitment
• Who will be selected if both an internal and external candidate are
identified with relatively equal KSAOs

Transition to Selection
• Involves making applicants aware of
• Next steps in hiring process
• Selection methods used and instructions
• Expectations and requirements

Logic of Prediction: Past Performance Predicts Future Performance

Development of the Selection Plan: Steps Involved
1. Begin with a job analysis
• Identify criteria important for job success
• Identify KSAOs associated with those criteria
• KSAOs are provided by job requirements matrix
2. For each KSAO, decide if it needs to be assessed in the selection process
3. Determine method(s) of assessment to be
used for each KSAO - Develop tests to tap these KSAOs

Nature of Predictors
 Test – Systematic procedure for observing behavior and describing it with the aid of
numerical scales
• Tests = predictors = assessments
 Content
• Sign: A predisposition thought to relate to performance (e.g., personality)
• Sample: Observing behavior thought to relate to performance
• Criterion: Actual measure of prior performance
 Form
• Speed vs. power: How many versus what level
• Paper / pencil vs. performance: Test in writing or in behavior
• Objective vs. essay: Much like multiple-choice vs. essay course exam questions
• Oral vs. written vs. computer: How data are obtained
• Individual vs. Group
• Aptitude vs. Proficiency (future potential vs. current level)

Measurement
• Measurement – Assignment of numbers to objects or events in such a way as to represent
specified attributes of the objects
• Attribute – Dimension along which individuals can be measured and along which they vary
• Measurement Error – things that can make measurement inaccurate
• Because of measurement error, we must carefully consider two important measurement
concerns:
o Reliability
o Validity

Reliability
 The consistency or stability of a measure
• It is imperative that a predictor be measured reliably
• Unsystematic measurement error renders a measure unreliable
• We cannot predict attitudes, performance, or behaviors without reliable
measurement – limit to validity
Test-Retest Reliability
• Test-Retest – reflects consistency of a test over time
• Stability coefficient
• Administer test at time 1 and time 2 and see if individuals have a similar rank
order at both time 1 and time 2

Parallel Forms Reliability

 Parallel forms – extent to which two independent forms of a test are similar measures of
the same construct
• Coefficient of equivalence
o Two different forms of a final
o Survey on paper and computer
o Test for disabled applicants

Inter-Rater Reliability
 Inter-Rater – extent to which multiple raters or judges agree on ratings made about a
person, thing or behavior
• Examine the correlation between ratings of two different judges rating the same
person
• Helps protect against interpersonal biases

Internal Consistency Reliability

• Internal Consistency – indication of interrelatedness of items
• Tells us how well items hang together
o Split-half – split test in half by odd and even number questions
o Inter-item – look at relationships among every item to test for consistency
(Cronbach’s Alpha)
• Rule of thumb for Reliability – should be greater than .70

Validity
 Construct Validity – extent to which a test measures the underlying construct it was
intended to measure
• Construct – abstract quality that is not observable and difficult to measure
• Self-esteem, intelligence, cognitive ability

Validity – Overview
• Two types of evidence used to demonstrate Construct Validity
• Content Validity – degree to which a test covers a representative sample of quality being
assessed
o Not established in a quantitative sense
• Criterion-Related Validity – degree to which a test is a good predictor of attitudes,
behavior, or performance
 • Face Validity – degree to which a test appears valid at face value (looking at it)
o Not established in a quantitative sense
Approaches to Criterion-Related Validity
• Predictive Validity – extent to which scores obtained at one point in time predict criteria at
some later time.
o GREs, GPAs, research experience, etc. predicting success in graduate school
• Concurrent Validity – extent to which a test predicts a criterion that is measured at same
time as test
o Want to see if newly developed selection tests predict performance of current
employees

Predictive Designs
• Gather predictor data on all of the applicants.
• Some of the applicants would be hired to fill the open positions – based on predictors that
are not part of our selection battery.
o If we hire only high scorers on the new predictors, then we will not be able to examine
if low scorers are unsuccessful on the job.
• After months on the job, we gather performance data, which serve as the criteria.
• A validity coefficient is computed between the predictor score and the criterion score that
indicates the strength of the relationship.

Concurrent Designs
• Data on both predictors and criteria are collected from incumbent employees at the same
time.
• A validity coefficient is computed between the predictor score and the criterion score which
indicates the strength of the relationship
Components of Construct Validity
• Convergent Validity –Measure is related to other measures of similar constructs
• Divergent Validity – Measure is not related to measures of dissimilar constructs
• These are demonstrated by using concurrent and/or predictive validity designs

Validity of Predictors: Review

 Reliability and Validity are very important
 Within the context of predictors, Criterion Validity is critical to the demonstration of validity
• Predictor must be related to a criterion
• Indicated by correlation between predictor and criterion
• In selection – correlations are Validity Coefficients
• Coefficient of determination (r2) - percentage of variance in the criterion
accounted for by the predictor

Validity Estimates: A Review

• General Cognitive Ability: .53
• Specific Cognitive Ability: .40 -.50
• Personality Tests: .23 - .37
• Integrity Tests: .34 - .47
• Work Samples: .32 - .44
• Assessment Centers: .37 - .45
• Biodata: .20 - .52
• Structured Interviews: .44
• Unstructured Interviews: .33
Multiple Cutoff Approach
• Non-compensatory model of selection in which “passing scores” or cutoffs are set on each
predictor
o Applicant must score higher than cutoff on each predictor
• Strength: does not allow candidates weak in very important areas of the job to be selected
despite other abilities (e.g., surgical ability)

Types of Predictors

Types of Interviews
• Structured – Series of job analysis-based questions which are asked of all job candidates in
the same way and scored on the same scale
o Increases the reliability of the process and more fair comparison of applicants
• Unstructured – Constructed without thought to consistency in questioning
o Not as useful as Structured because of lack of consistency
o May provide more detailed information by leading discussion in a new direction that
may not have been planned in advance
• Purpose: provide information about the applicant to the interviewer, about the job and
organization to the applicant, create positive attitude toward the organization

Structured Interviews
• Questions based on job analysis
• Same questions asked of each candidate
• Detailed anchored rating scales used to numerically score each response
• Detailed notes taken, focusing on interviewees’ behaviors
• Situational - Assess applicant’s ability to project his / her behaviors to future situations.
Assumes the person’s goals/intentions will predict future behavior (validity averages .35)
• Experience-based - Assess past behaviors that are linked to prospective job. Assumes past
performance will predict future performance (validity averages .28)
• Train interviewers
Final selection
• HR compiles the files of the candidates above threshold – finalists (either ranked or not)
• Manager of the department with the job opening makes final decision
• Rejecting applicants: be honest, be polite
o Maintain the person’s self-concept
o Maintain goodwill towards the organization
o Let the person know they are rejected in unambiguous terms

Staffing Process Evaluation