Selecting Human Resources
Chapter Outline
• The Selection Process
• Basic Selection Criteria
• Popular Selection Techniques
• Selection Technique Reliability
• The Selection Decision
• Legal Issues in Selection
• Evaluating Selection Activities
Chapter Objectives
• Describe the steps in and responsibilities for the selection process in organizations.
• Identify and summarize basic selection criteria that organizations use in hiring new employees.
• Discuss popular selection techniques that organizations use to hire new employees.
Chapter Objectives (cont’d)
• Discuss reliability and validity and note the importance of multiple predictors.
• Discuss the selection decision itself.
• Identify and summarize the basic legal issues in selection.
• Discuss the importance to an organization of evaluating its selection activities.
The Selection Process
• Is concerned with identifying the best candidate or candidates for jobs from among the pool of qualified applicants developed during the recruiting process
Steps in the Selection Process
Selection Errors
• False positives
– Applicants who are predicted to be successful and are hired but who ultimately fail
• False negatives
– Applicants who are predicted to fail and are not hired, but if they had been hired, they would have been successful
Selection Errors
Responsibilities for Selection
• Responsibilities are shared by HR managers and operating managers.
• HR managers design the selection system.
• The HR department may screen out individuals who do not meet the criteria for the job opening.
• Operating managers make subjective assessments about applicants’ qualifications.
• Operating employees and potential colleagues may play a role.
Basic Selection Criteria
• Education
– The formal classroom training an individual has received in public or private schools and in a college, university, and/or technical school
• Experience
– The amount of time the individual has spent working, either in a general capacity or in a particular field of study
Basic Selection Criteria (cont’d)
• Skills and abilities
– The specific qualifications and capabilities of an individual to perform a specific job
Basic Selection Criteria (cont’d)
• Personal characteristics
– Big five personality traits
• More behavioral than cognitive or emotional
• Likely to be more important for job performance than are more traditional personality traits
• Neuroticism
• Extraversion
• Openness to experience
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
Basic Selection Criteria (cont’d)
• Hiring for “fit”
– Rather than hiring someone who is a good fit for a specific job, an organization might hire someone who is a good fit for the larger organization
– Skills and abilities can be taught on the job; hiring someone based on personal characteristics, values, etc., may be more important
A Sample Selection System
Popular Selection Techniques
• Employment application
– Asks individuals for various bits of information pertaining to their personal background
– Questions must relate to an individual’s ability to do the job
Popular Selection Techniques (cont’d)
• Weighted application blank
– Relies on the determination of numerical indices to indicate the relative importance of various personal factors for predicting a person’s ability to perform a job effectively
Popular Selection Techniques (cont’d)
• Employment test
– Device for measuring the characteristics of an individual
• Personality
• Intelligence
• Aptitude
Popular Selection Techniques (cont’d)
• Work simulations (or work samples)
– Asking the prospective employee to perform tasks that simulate the work for which the person is being considered
– In-baskets
• Special forms of work simulations for prospective managers that consist of collections of hypothetical memos, letters, and notes that require responses
Popular Selection Techniques (cont’d)
• Personal interviews
– Face-to face conversations between prospective job applicants and representatives of the organization.
Interview Errors
• First impression error
– Making a decision early in the interview process
• Contrast error
– The interviewer is unduly influenced by other people who have been interviewed
• Similarity error
– The interviewer is unduly influenced because the interviewee is similar to the interviewer in one or more important ways
Interview Errors (cont’d)
• Nonrelevancy error
– The interviewer may be inappropriately influenced by an applicant’s posture, dress, or appearance
• Inappropriate interviewer
– The interviewer may know little about the job so is unable to appropriately assess the applicant
Popular Selection Techniques (cont’d)
• References and recommendations
– The applicant provides letters of recommendation or the names and addresses of individuals who may be contacted
– Are often of little value
– Growing concern about legal liability in the preparation of recommendation letters
Popular Selection Techniques (cont’d)
• Physical examinations
– Few organizations require physical exams of all applicants; they may ask only those finalists who are most likely to receive a job offer
– A related type of physical examination is drug testing
Popular Selection Techniques (cont’d)
• Assessment center
– An approach to selecting managers based on measuring and evaluating their ability to perform critical work behaviors
– Are costly
Selection Technique
Reliability and Validity
• Reliability
– The consistency of a particular selection device
• Validity
– The extent to which a measure is a real reflection of what it is assumed to measure
• Single verses multiple predictor approaches
– Since no single technique is perfectly reliable and valid, multiple techniques are often used
The Selection Decision
• Banding
– Creating clusters of job applicants who do not differ substantially from one another
– Allows an organization to select an applicant from an underrepresented group in the organization while still ensuring high performance standards
• The screening process
– A series of decisions, each resulting in some candidates being eliminated and others being kept for continued consideration
Legal Issues in Selection
• An organization faces the greatest legal liability in discrimination in selection.
• It is critical that the HR manager understand the process of validating a selection instrument and carrying out the process in all cases.
Evaluating Selection Activities
• Utility analysis
– An attempt to determine the extent to which a selection system provides real benefit to the organization
– An organization must consider the cost of the selection system and the cost of a selection error