SELECTION

Why Employee Selection is Important

• The aim of employee selection is to achieve
person-job fit. This means matching the
knowledge, skills, abilities, and other
competencies (KSACs) that are required for
performing the job (based on job analysis)
with the applicant’s KSACs.
• Of course, a candidate might be “right” for a
job, but wrong for the organization.
• Therefore, while person-job fit is usually the
main consideration, person-organization fit is
important too.
• In any case, selecting the right employee is
important for three main reasons.

• First, employees with the right skills will

perform better for you and the company.

• Second, effective selection is important

because it is costly to recruit and hire
employees.
• Third, it’s important because inept hiring has
legal consequences.
 The Basics of Testing and Selecting
Employees
• A test is basically a sample of a person’s
behavior. Any test or screening tool has two
important characteristics, reliability and
validity.
• Reliability
• Reliability is a selection tool’s first
requirement and refers to its consistency.
• A reliable test is one that yields consistent
scores when a person takes two alternate
forms of the test or when he or she takes the
same test on two or more different occasions.
• You can measure reliability in several ways.
One is to administer a test to a group one day,
re-administer the same test several days later
to the same group, and then correlate the first
set of scores with the second (called test-
retest reliability estimates).
• Or you could administer a test and then
administer what experts believe to be an
equivalent test later; this would be an
equivalent or alternate form estimate.
• Validity
• Validity tells whether the test is measuring
what it’s supposed to be measuring.
• validity often refers to evidence that the test is
job related—in other words, that performance
on the test accurately predicts job
performance.
• A selection test must be valid since, without
proof of validity, there is no logical or (under
EEO law) legally permissible reason to use it to
screen job applicants.
• Criterion validity involves demonstrating
statistically a relationship between scores on a
selection procedure and job performance of a
sample of workers.

• For example, it means demonstrating that

those who do well on the test also do well on
the job, and that those who do poorly on the
test do poorly on the job.
• In psychological measurement, a predictor is
the measurement (in this case, the test score)
that you are trying to relate to a criterion,
such as performance on the job. The term
criterion validity reflects that terminology.
• Content validity is a demonstration that the
content of a selection procedure is representative
of important aspects of performance on the job.
For example, employers may demonstrate the
content validity of a test by showing that the test
constitutes a fair sample of the job’s content. The
basic procedure here is to identify job tasks that
are critical to performance, and then randomly
select a sample of those tasks to test.
• Construct validity means demonstrating that
(1) a selection procedure measures a
construct (an abstract idea such as morale or
honesty) and (2) that the construct is
important for successful job performance.
Evidence-Based HR: How to Validate a
Test
• Step 1: Analyze The Job
• Step 2: Choose The Tests
• Step 3: Administer The Test
• Step 4: Relate Your Test Scores And Criteria
• Step 5: Cross-validate And Revalidate
• Bias
– Most employers know they shouldn’t use biased
tests in the selection process.

• Utility Analysis Knowing that a test predicts

performance isn’t always of practical use.
 Types of Tests
• Tests of Cognitive Abilities
• Cognitive tests include tests of general
reasoning ability (intelligence) and tests of
specific mental abilities like memory and
inductive reasoning.
• Intelligence Tests
– Intelligence (IQ) tests are tests of general
intellectual abilities. They measure not a single
trait but rather a range of abilities, including
memory, vocabulary, verbal fluency, and
numerical ability.
• Measuring Personality and Interests
• A person’s cognitive and physical abilities
alone seldom explain his or her job
performance. As one consultant put it, most
people are hired based on qualifications, but
are fired because of attitude, motivation, and
temperament.
• Personality tests measure basic aspects of an
applicant’s personality, such as introversion,
stability, and motivation.
• Industrial psychologists often focus on the
“big five” personality dimensions:
extraversion, emotional stability/neuroticism,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, and
openness to experience.
• Achievement Tests
• Achievement tests measure what someone
has learned.
• They measure your “job knowledge” in areas
like economics, marketing, or human
resources.
• Work Samples and Simulations
• With work samples, you present examinees
with situations representative of the job for
which they’re applying, and evaluate their
responses.
• Using Work Sampling for Employee Selection
The work sampling technique tries to predict
job performance by requiring job candidates
to perform one or more samples of the job’s
tasks.
• Situational Judgment Tests
• Situational judgment tests are personnel tests
“designed to assess an applicant’s judgment
regarding a situation encountered in the
workplace.”
• Management Assessment Centers
• A management assessment center is a 2- to 3-
day simulation in which 10 to 12 candidates
perform realistic management tasks (like
making presentations) under the observation
of experts who appraise each candidate’s
leadership potential.
• Typical simulated tasks include:
– The in-basket
– Leaderless group discussion
– Management games
– Individual oral presentations
– Testing
– The interview
• Realistic Job Previews (RJP) Sometimes, a dose
of realism makes the best screening tool.
• Choosing a Selection Method
• The employer needs to consider several things
before choosing to use a particular selection tool
(or tools). These include the tool’s reliability and
validity, its return on investment (in terms of
utility analysis), applicant reactions, usability,
adverse impact, and the tool’s selection ratio
(does it screen out, as it should, a high
percentage of applicants or admit virtually all?).
• The Polygraph and Honesty Testing
 Basic Types of Interviews
• A selection interview is a selection procedure
designed to predict future job performance
based on applicants’ oral responses to oral
inquiries.
• There are several ways to conduct selection
interviews. For example, we can classify
selection interviews according to 1. How
structured they are 2. Their “content”—the
types of questions they contain 3. How the
firm administers the interviews (for instance,
one-on-one or via a committee
 Structured Versus Unstructured
Interviews
• In unstructured (or nondirective) interviews,
the manager follows no set format.
• in structured (or directive) interviews, the
employer lists questions ahead of time, and
may even weight possible alternative answers
for appropriateness.
 Interview Content (What Types of
Questions to Ask)
• We can also classify interviews based on the
“content” or the types of questions interviewers
ask.
• Many interviewers ask relatively unfocused
questions, such as “What do you want to be
doing in 5 years?” Questions like these generally
do not provide much insight into how the person
will do on the job. That is why situational,
behavioral, and job-related questions are best.
• In a situational interview, you ask the
candidate what his or her behavior would be
in a given situation.
• behavioral interviews ask applicants to
describe how they reacted to actual situations
in the past.
• job-related interview A series of job-related
questions that focus on relevant past job-
related behaviors.
• stress interview An interview in which the
applicant is made uncomfortable by a series of
often rude questions. This technique helps
identify hypersensitive applicants and those
with low or high stress tolerance.
• unstructured sequential interview
• An interview in which each interviewer forms
an independent opinion after asking different
questions.
• structured sequential interview
• An interview in which the applicant is
interviewed sequentially by several persons;
each rates the applicant on a standard form.
• panel interview An interview in which a group
of interviewers questions the applicant.
• mass interview A panel interviews several
candidates simultaneously.
 Errors That Can Undermine an
Interview’s Usefulness
• Structured interviews (particularly structured
interviews using situational questions) are
more valid than unstructured interviews for
predicting job performance.
• effective employment interviewers understand
and avoid the following common interview
errors:
• First Impressions (Snap Judgments)
• Not Clarifying What the Job Requires
• Candidate-Order (Contrast) Error and Pressure to
Hire
• Nonverbal Behavior and Impression Management
• Effect of Personal Characteristics: Attractiveness,
Gender, Race
• The effects of interviewees’ personal
characteristics
• The interviewer’s inadvertent behaviors.
 How to Design and Conduct an
effective Interview
• Designing a Structured Situational Interview
– The procedure is as follows.
• step 1. Analyze the job.
• step 2. Rate the job’s main duties
• step 3. Create interview questions
• step 4. Create benchmark answers
• step 5. Appoint the interview panel and conduct interviews
• step 6: Take brief, unobtrusive notes during the interview.
• step 7: Close the interview
• step 8: Review the interview