Lecture 5 Flashcards
Why is careful selection important?
- The organisation’s performance is dependent on its subordinates.
- It is important because it’s costly to recruit and hire employees. More attention is being paid to the costs of poor selection.
- It is important because mismanaging hiring has legal consequences. Practices need to be well validated to meet legal requirements
In your own words, summarise Selection as a two way process.
Selection as a two way process states the importance of:
- the importance of both the job applicant and the organisation to ensuring that the right job goes to the right person as taking the wrong job may be just as disastrous for the employee as it is for the organisation.
- provision of information for all involved (i.e both employer and employee)
- applicants having a realistic picture of the job so that they can decide if they really want it and whether they could do it well.
- applicants being given the opportunity to consider what type of organisation they may be joining and whether it would suit them.
State and explain 3 selection ctriteria
- Individual/Person-job fit: this involves identifying required individual competencies for job success.
- Person-organization fit: this is the degree to which individuals are matched to the culture and values of the organization. Specific attributes are considered valuable in its employees. They are often expressed in terms of personality, attitudes, flexibility, commitment and goals
and is important where jobs are ill-defined and constantly changing - Person-functional/team fit: This criteria is important if a new appointee is to fit into a pre-existing work team. For example, It is appropriate for all members of the HR Department to have good interpersonal skills, thus this criteria(good interpersonal skills) is important if a new appointee is to fit into a pre-existing work team
Define what we mean by a selection tool being reliable
A reliable test is one that yields consistent scores when a person takes two alternate forms of the test or takes the same test on two or more different occasions.
What is meant by the validity of a selection tool?
Validity of a selection too is the ability of the test to measure what its intended to measure
State and explain the three forms of validity
Criterion validity involves demonstrating statistically there is a relationship between scores on a selection procedure and the job performance of a sample of workers.
Simply put; workers who do well on the test will also do well on the job.
Content validity shows that the content of a selection procedure is representative of important aspects of performance on the job.
In other words; the test will be contain activities that will encountered on the Job. (A driver taking a test on traffic regulations)
Construct validity demonstrates that a selection procedure measures a construct and that the construct is important for successful job performance. Constructs represent an underlying human trait or characteristic such as honesty. (In short, values like Discipline, integrity etc are measured as they are needed for successful job performance.)
State 3 selection methods
- Application forms
- Interviews
- Tests
Briefly talk about selection interviews.
A selection interview is a selection procedure designed to predict future job performance based on applicants’ oral responses to oral inquiries. Some examples include:
- Unstructured Interview
The applicant determines the course of the discussion, while the interviewer refrains from influencing the applicant’s remarks.
- Structured Interview
An interview in which a set of standardized questions having an established set of answers is used.
- Situational Interview
An interview in which an applicant is given a hypothetical incident and asked how he or she would respond to it.
- Behavioral Description Interview (BDI)
An interview in which an applicant is asked questions about what he or she actually did in a given situation.
- Phone Interview
Phone interviews can be effective and actually help expand a company’s pool of talent.
- Computer Interview
Using a computer program that requires candidates to answer a series of questions tailored to the job.
- Video and Digitally-Recorded Interviews
Using video conference technologies to record and evaluate job candidates’ technical abilities, energy level, appearance, and the like before incurring the costs of a face-to-face meeting.
Briefly state the 2 ways in which interviews can be administered and 3 ways to make interviews effective
- One-on-one: as the name suggests. You understand.
- Panel of interviewers; sequentially or all at once: an interview conducted by a team of interviewers who interview each candidate and then combine their ratings into a final panel score.
3 WAYS TO MAKE INTERVIEWS EFFECTIVE:
- Structure the interview
- Carefully select traits to assess
- Beware of committing interviewing errors
State some of the errors that undermine interviews
- Snap judgments: This involves interviewers jumping into conclusions .i.e making snap decisions during the first few minutes of the interview. Sometimes this occurs before the interview starts, based on test scores or résumé data.
- Job requirements: Interviewers may not have an accurate picture of the job requirements and what sort of candidate is best suited for it. As such, they may make their decisions based on incorrect impressions or stereotypes of what a good applicant is.
- Candidate-order & pressure to hire: with this, the order in which you see applicants affects how you rate them. There is some indication that the effects of primacy (who you interviewed first) or recency (most recently interviewed) can impact your decisions.
- Nonverbal behavior & impression management: the applicant’s nonverbal behavior can also have a surprisingly large impact on his or her rating. Interviewers infer your personality from your nonverbal behaviors in the interview.
- Personal characteristics: physical attributes such as applicants’ attractiveness, gender, disability, or race also may distort an interviewer’s assessments.
State the five basic steps involved in designing and conducting structured interviews
STEP 1: Write a job description with a list of job duties; required knowledge, skills, and abilities; and other worker qualifications.
STEP 2: Rate each job duty, say from 1 to 5, based on its importance to job success.
STEP 3: Create interview questions for each of the job duties, with more questions for the important duties.
STEP 4: Next, for each question, develop ideal (benchmark) answers for good (a 5 rating), marginal (a 3 rating), and poor (a 1 rating) answers.
STEP 5: Select a panel consisting of three to six members, preferably the same ones who wrote the questions and answers. It may also include the job’s supervisor and/or incumbent, and a human resources representative. The same panel interviews all candidates for the job.
Define what a test is and state some examples.
A test is an objective and standardized measure of a sample of behavior that is used to gauge a person’s knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) in relation to other individuals. It is basically a sample of a person’s behavior. Examples include:Job Knowledge Tests Work Sample Tests Assessment Center Tests Cognitive Ability Tests Honesty and Integrity Tests Physical Ability Tests Medical Examinations Drug Tests
State the steps involved in validating a test
- Analyze the job and write job descriptions and job specifications. Your goal is to specify the human traits and skills (predictors) you believe are required for job performance.
- Decide how to test for the predictors and choose the tests. You usually will base this choice on experience, previous research, and “best guesses.”
- One option is to administer the tests to employees currently on the job and then compare their test scores with their current performance. Its main advantage is that data on performance are readily available. Here you administer the test to applicants before you hire them using appropriate techniques. After they have been on the job for some time, measure their performance and compare it to their earlier test scores.
- Next, determine if there is a significant relationship between test scores (the predictor) and performance (the criterion).
- Finally, before using the test, you may want to check it by “cross-validating”—in other words, by again performing steps 3 and 4 on a new sample of employees.
What are some problems with tests
Tests are not outstanding predictors of future performance
Validation procedures are very time consuming
Criteria that are used to define good performance in developing the test are often inadequate
Tests are often job specific
Tests may not always be fair
What are assessment centres?
Assessment center - Is a 2- to 3-day simulation in which 10 to 12 candidates perform realistic management tasks such as making presentations. The behaviors of the candidates are observed by experts who appraise each candidate’s leadership potential.
