Hr Selection ; Placement

Our purpose in this chapter to be familiar with ways to minimize errors in employee selection and placement and improve our company’s competitive position in doing so we will focus on five standards that should be met by any selection method also we will evaluate several common selection methods according to those standards. The part one: Selection method standards: There are several generic standards should be met in any selection process. We focus on five: reliability, validity, generalizes ability, utility, and legality. . reliability on any selection method we want to measure characteristic of people to determine who will be accepted for job opining, and also we need to quantify people on these characteristic (assign number to them) so we can order them from high to low on the characteristics of interest. Once people are ordered in this way we can decide whom to hire and whom to reject. One key standard for any measuring device is its reliability we can define the reliability as the degree to which a measure is free from the random errors.

True scores and the reliability of measurement We can say that the reliability refers to the measuring instrument rather than to the characteristic itself. Because one never really knows the true score for the person being measured there is no direct way to capture the true reliability of the measure. The correlation coefficient is a measure of the degree to which two sets of numbers are related the correlation coefficient expresses the strength of the relationship in numerical form. The research shows that the correlation of overall ratings of job pplicants’ suitability for jobs based on unstructured interviews is very close to (0) thus no one can assume a measure is reliable without actually checking this directly. Standards for reliability Regardless of what characteristic we are measuring, we want highly reliable measures (for ex. when it comes to measuring students’ aptitude for college) this is difficult question to answer specifically because the required reliability depends in part on the nature of the decision being made about the people being measured.

This is mean that no specific value of reliability is always acceptable; the more reliable the measures, the more likely it is that we can base decision on the score differences that its reveals. There are many ways to increase the reliability of a test, new technologies allow for the development of computer adaptive testing can generate highly reliable tests by tailoring the item sequencing and selection process differently for each individual that is with computer adaptive testing there is no standard set of questions that everyone takes. . validity We define validity as the extent to which performance on the measure is related to performance on the job, reliability is a necessary but insufficient condition for validity. Criterion-related validation One way of establishing the validity of selection method is to show that there is an empirical association between scores on the selection measure and scores for job performance. If there is a substantial correlation between test scores and job performance scores, criterion-related validity has been established.

We usually use the correlation coefficient to assess both reliability and validity but the different is the correlation reflects a reliability estimate when we are attempting to assess the same characteristic twice, but the correlation coefficient reflects a validity coefficient when we attempting to relate one characteristic to performance on some task. Criterion-related validation studies come in two varieties: predictive validation which seeks to establish an empirical relationship between applicants’ test score and their eventual performance on the job. Concurrent validation which a test is administered to all the people urrently in a job and then correlating test score with existing measures of each person’s performance Despite the extra effort and time needed for predictive validation, it is superior to concurrent validation for a number of reasons; first job applicants are typically more motivated to perform well on tests than are current employees. Second current employees have learned many things on the job that applicants have not yet learned; therefore the correlation between test score and job performance for current employees may not be the same as the correlation between test scores and job performance for less knowledgeable job applicants.

Third current employees tend to be homogeneous. We would like our measures to be high in validity but as with the reliability standard, we must know how high is high enough? When trying to determine how much validity is enough, we have to ask how likely is it that a correlation of the sample size could have come about through lack or enhance. It is generally true that bigger correlations are better the size sample on which correlation is based plays a large role as well.

For more details we can say that a validation study with a small sample size is almost doomed to failure from the start thus many companies are too small to use a criterion-related validation strategy for most, if not all, of their jobs. Content validation When sample size are small we can use content validation, we can define it as a test validation strategy performed by demonstrating that the items, questions or problems posed by a test are representative sample of the kinds of situations or problems that occur on the job.

The ability to use content validation in small sample setting makes it generally more applicable than criterion related validation. However content validation has two limitations: first one assumption behind content validation is that the person who is to be hired must have the knowledge, skills or abilities at the times she or he is hired. Second because subjective judgment plays such role in content validation it is critical to reduce the amount of inference involved on the part of judgment.

For all of these limitations content validation would be inappropriate for assessing more abstract characteristics such as intelligences and integrity. 3. generalize ability Just as reliability is a necessary but insufficient condition for validity also validity is a necessary but insufficient condition for generalize ability. We can define it as the degree to which the validity of a selection method established in one context extends to other contexts. There are three primary contexts: different satiations, different sample of people, and different time period.

The validity coefficient for any test job performance pair was different for people of different races or genders. Validity generalization is an alternative for validation selection methods for companies that can’t use the content validation or criterion-related. Validity generalization is a three steps process: * The company provides evidence from pervious criterion related validity study conducted in other situation that shows that a specific test is a valid predictor for a specific job. The company provides evidence from job analysis to document that the job which tries to fill is similar to the job validated elsewhere. * The company can show that it uses a test is the same as or similar to the used in the validated setting. Then one can generalize the validity from the first context to the new context. 4. utility We can define the utility as the degree to which the information provided by selection methods enhances the effectiveness of selecting personnel in real organization. In general the more reliable, validity and generalize able the selection method is the more utility it will have.

On the other hand, many characteristic of particular selection context enhance or detract from the usefulness of given selection methods, even when reliability, validity and generalize ability are held constant. Thus the utility of any test generally increase as the selection ratio gets lower so long as the additional costs of recruiting and testing are low. Extroversion 5. legality All selection methods should conform to existing laws and existing legal precedent. The part two: Types of selection methods: 1. Interviews

A selection interview has been defined as “a dialogue initiated by one or more persons to gather information and evaluate the qualifications of an applicant for employment” the selection interview is the most widespread selection method employed in organization. The interviews without proper care it can be unreliable, low in validity and biased against a number of different groups also the interviews are relatively costly. Also as any subjective method the interview must be validated by criterion related or content validation procedures if they show any degree of adverse impact.

To increase the utility of the personnel selection interview; hr staff should keep the interview structured, standardized, and focused on accomplishing a small number of goals also they should plan to come out from each interview with quantitative ratings on small dimensions that are observable and avoid ratings of abilities that may be better measured by tests. Also interviews should also have a structured note-taking that will aid to recall when it comes to justify the ratings.

Also ask questions dealing with specific situations that are likely to arise on the job and use these to determine what the person is likely to do in this situation these types of situational interview items have been shown to have quite high predictive validity. An additional benefit of situational interviews items is that their standardization and the concrete behavior nature of the information that is collected mean that they can be effectively employed. Situational interview can be particularly effective when assessing sensitive issues dealing with the honesty and integrity of candidates.

It is also important to use multiple interviews who are trained to avoid many of the subjective errors that can result when one human being is asked to rate another. Limiting the subjectivity of the process is central to much of this training and the best way to do this is to ask interviews to be witness of facts that can later be integrated via objective formulas as opposed to being judges allowed to idiosyncratically weigh how various facts should be combined to form the final recommendation. 2. References and application data Employers also use some method for getting background information on applicant before the interview.

The evidence of reliability and validity of reference checks suggests that these are weak predictor of future performance on the job the mean reason for this low validity is that the evaluation supplied in most reference latter are so positive that it is hard to differentiate applicants this because the applicant usually gets to choose who writes the latter and can thus choose only those writers who think the highest of her abilities. Also latter writers can never be sure who will read the latter they may fear that supplying damaging information about someone could come back to haunt them this fear is well placed. . Physical ability tests Although automation and other technology have eliminated or modified many physically demanding occupational tasks many jobs still require certain physical abilities in these cases tests of physical abilities may be relevant not only to predicting performance but to predicting occupational injuries and disabilities as well there are seven classes of tests in this area: muscular tension, muscular power, muscular endurance, flexibility, balance, and coordination. Because of this there are two key questions to ask in deciding whether to use these kinds of tests.

We have to ask if the physical ability is essential to perform the job. And is there a probability that failure to adequately perform the job would result in some risk to the safety or health of the applicant or clients? 4. Cognitive ability tests Cognitive ability tests differentiate individuals based on their mental rather than physical capacities. Cognitive ability has many different facets; verbal comprehension refers to a person’s capacity to understand and use written and spoken language.

Quantitative ability concerns the speed and accuracy with which one can solve arithmetic problems of all kinds. And reasoning ability refers to a person’s capacity to invent solutions to man diverse problems. Some job are require only one or two of these facets of cognitive ability however many jobs that are high in complexity require most, if not all of the facets. Highly reliable commercial tests measuring these kinds of abilities are widely available and they are generally valid predictor of job performance in many different kinds of contexts including widely different countries.

This means that the strategic design of jobs has to be matched with strategic selection so that when jobs are designed to be complex and dynamic the selection system needs to emphasize cognitive ability. One of major drawbacks to these tests is that they typically have adverse impact on some minority groups indeed the size of differences is so large that some have advocated abandoning these types of tests for making decisions regarding who will be accepted for certain job. 5. Honesty tests and drug tests behavioral

Many problems that confront society also exist within organizations which have led to two new kinds of tests: honesty and drug use test. Paper and pencil honesty test come in a number of different forms which content items and tap more basic traits such asocial conformity, conscientiousness, or emotional stability. Some people are concerned that people confronting an honesty test can make their way to a passing score. However it is not clear that this affects the validity of the predictions made using such tests. Thus the effect of the faking bias is not large enough to detract from the test’s validity.

There is a growing perception of the problems caused by drug use among employees. Because the physical properties of drugs are invariant and subject to highly rigorous chemical testing the reliability and validity of test drugs are very high. The employers use drugs testing conform to some rules: These test should be administer systemically also the result of the tests should reported first to applicant and hold as confidence Reference Acquisition and preparation of human resources, selection and placement, chapter six, part one and two