2 Workplace Selection

Question 1

What is the personnel selection?

Answer 1

Selection involves matching the person to the job or organisation and then evaluating the effectiveness of that match

Question 2

What information is needed on personnel selection?

Answer 2

What the job requires - through job analysis What the person has to offer (KSAOs) How well the person performs in that type of work

Question 3

What is the first step in the utility of the selection process?

Answer 3

(1) company performance depends on employees - in terms of utility: cost-benefit and selection because companies highly depend on their employees as the right employees have an effect on profit and overall performance

Question 4

What is the second step in the utility of the selection process?

Answer 4

(2) it is costly to recruit and hire employees - lots of fees associated with recruitment and hiring e.g. search fees and advertisements followed by training

Question 5

What is the third step in the utility of the selection process?

Answer 5

(3) there are legal implications of incompetent selection - you can actually sue companies for discriminatory practices

Question 6

What is the fourth step in the utility of the selection process?

Answer 6

(4) can depend on selection ratio and base rate of success

Question 7

What is the selection ratio?

Answer 7

If selection ratio ≥ 1 utility decreases

If selection ratio < 1 utility increases

Screening in and screening out

Question 8

What is screening in?

Answer 8

When you’re trying to choose the best person among applicants

Question 9

What is screening out?

Answer 9

When you’re trying to get rid of people who are completely inappropriate

Question 10

What is the base rate of success?

Answer 10

The proportion of hires considered successful before the implementation of the selection system

• The higher the base rate the less likely a new system will be beneficial e.g. base rate of success of 90% for an easy job that most people could do well that means the utility is not very high and the system is less likely to be successful
• The utility of the selection process increases when it is a more complex job

Question 11

What are the 4 steps in the selection process?

Answer 11

(1) Employee recruitment
(2) Employee Screening
(3) Employee Selection and Placement
(4) Validity Check

Question 12

What is employee recruitment?

Answer 12

The process by which companies attract qualified applicants

Question 13

Explain the Employee Recruitment process in selection

Answer 13

Employee referrals and applicant-initiated contacts yield higher quality workers with a lower rate of turnover than newspaper ads or employment agency placement.

• May involve RJP

Question 14

What is RJP?

Answer 14

Realistic job previews: an accurate presentation of the prospective job and organisation made to applicants

• Increase job commitment and satisfaction; decrease turnover
• RJPs allow applicants to self-select, lower unrealistically high job expectations and may provide applicants with information that will later be useful on the job
• But, applicants are more likely to turn down a job offer when RJP presented - forces applicants to question what they want and it is not for them

Question 15

What is employee screening?

Answer 15

The process of reviewing information about job applicants to select workers

Question 16

What are some of the ways employees are screened?

Answer 16

(1) Applications and resumes (collects biographical information, hard to evaluate and interpret this information to determine most qualified workers) - weighted application forms: experience vs higher education
(2) References (limited importance as typically biased and litigation against employers who give bad references; waive rights of applicants) = often include rating forms
(3) Employee Testing (standardised testing typically to measure biodata, cognitive and mechanical ability, motor and sensory ability and job skills and knowledge, personality, integrity and other tests)
(4) Assessment Centres (Structured setting, monitored by a group of evaluators, and used in large organisations for managerial positions, can be very costly)
(5) Interviews (traditional unstructured or structured) - one of the most common

Question 17

How are traditional unstructured employment interviews conducted?

Answer 17

In an unstructured interview you simply ask questions that come to mind, and no formalized “scoring” for the quality of each answer.

• May actually diminish the tendency to make simple stereotype judgements e.g. different expectations from people

Question 18

What are some of the negatives of traditional unstructured interviews?

Answer 18

• Physically attractive people hired more than those less physically attractive, although not by the most experienced managers
• Unstructured interviews often give rise to poor selection decisions and sometimes lack predictive validity
• There is low level agreement between interviewers

Question 19

What are factors that can undermine unstructured interviews usefulness?

Answer 19

• Applicant self presentation, snap judgements, negative emphasis, self-fulfilling prophecies, misunderstanding the job, interview skills (e.g. Communication) may not relate to job and pressure to hire
• Candidate-order (contrast) error, influence of nonverbal behaviour, telegraphing, too much/too little talking, similar-to-me effect, halo effect and other personal prejudices/biases

Question 20

How are structured interviews conducted?

Answer 20

All applicants are evaluated in the same manner (the same information is obtained in the same situation from all applicants, who are then compared on a common, relevant set of dimensions)

• Situational questions: asks interviewees how they would deal with specific job-related, hypothetical situations
• Behavioural questions: asks interviewees to draw on past job incidents and behaviours to deal with hypothetical future work situations
• Job Knowledge questions: assess interviewee knowledge about the job
• Background questions: supplements information from resume and application

Question 21

Based on your past work experience, what is the most significant action you have ever taken to help out a co-worker?

Answer 21

Behavioural Q

Question 22

What work experiences, training, or other qualifications do you have for working in a teamwork environment?

Answer 22

Background Q

Question 23

Suppose you were giving a sales presentation and a difficult technical question arose that you could not answer. What would you do?

Answer 23

Situational Q

Question 24

What factors should you consider when developing a television advertising campaign?

Answer 24

Job Knowledge Q

Question 25

What do personality tests demonstrate in employment selection?

Answer 25

Work-related personality characteristics can be reasonably good predictors of job performance, especially when derived from job analysis.

Some used to screen out applicants with psychopathologies

E.g. Conscientiousness: performance across jobs, teamwork and training

Question 26

What is employee selection?

Answer 26

The actual process of choosing people for employment from a pool of applicants

• Once employers have gathered information about job applicants, they can combine this information in various ways to make selection decisions
• Usually these decisions are made subjectively, but such decisions are error prone

Question 27

How can decisions be made more objectively in the Employee selection process?

Answer 27

Multiple regression: a statistical decision-making model

Multiple cut-off models: uses a minimum cut-off score for each of the various predictors of job performance

Multiple hurdle model: requires an acceptance or rejection decision to be made at each several stages in the screening process. Applicants who do not pass one of the hurdles are no longer considered for the job

Question 28

What is employee placement?

Answer 28

The process of assigning workers to appropriate jobs

• Only takes place when there are two or more positions that a new worker could fill

Question 29

What is validity check?

Answer 29

Test the selection in procedures to determine if they succeeded in identifying the best workers for the job

Question 30

What are some of the adverse impacts of equal employment opportunity in employee selection and placement?

Answer 30

Occurs when members of one sub-group are selected disproportionately more or less often than members of another sub-group