Lecture 2 - Organsational Psych

Question 1

What are the four stages in the selection process?

Answer 1

1. Employee Recruitment
2. Employee Screening
3. Employee Selection and Placement
4. Validity Check

Question 2

What is selection?

Answer 2

Selection is matching the person to the job or organisation, and then evaluating that match.

Question 3

What is the utility of the selection process?

Answer 3

1. The company’s performance is always dependent on the employees
2. It can cost up to 3xSalary for an incorrect hire - recruitment fees, moving costs, training costs.
3. There are many legal implications of incompetent and discriminatory selection processes.
4. Can depend on selection ratio and base rate of success

Question 4

Selection Ratio and Base Rate

Answer 4

Selection Ratio: the number of job applicants divided by the number of positions vacant

Base Rate: The proportion of the candidate population that could successfully perform the role.
> The lower the base rate, the higher the utility of the selection process.

Question 5

1. Employee Recruitment stage

Answer 5

How they attract qualified applicants eg Beilby finding applicants through Seek etc.

Employee referrals and applicant-initiated contacts (here’s my resume - without an advertised job) yield higher quality workers than newspaper ads or employment agency ads

Question 6

What is a Realistic Job Preview?

Answer 6

An accurate presentation of the job and organisation made to the applicant

> Increases job commitment; applicants are more likely to turn down the job if they see the bad aspects, but then you are left with the committed ones.

Question 7

2. Employee Screening

Answer 7

Reviewing information about the job applicant to select workers

1. Applications and Resumes
2. References
3. Employment Testing
   > Cognitive
   > Personality
   > Job Skills and Knowledge - very high face validity, but expensive
   > Integrity Tests
4. Assessment Centres
5. Interviews
   > Traditional (unstructured)
   > Structured

Question 8

Structured Interviews

Answer 8

Situational Questions: how they would deal with hypothetical job-related situations

Behavioural Questions: asked to draw on previous experiences to deal with future work situations

Job knowledge questions: assess the interviewee’s knowledge about the job

Background questions: supplements information from resume and application form

Question 9

3. Employment Selection and Placement

Answer 9

Multiple Regression: statistical decision making model

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

Multiple hurdle model: each stage has a ‘hurdle’ that you must overcome, if you don’t then you will not unnecessarily be wasting your (employee) or their (employer) time.