lecture 6 (week 7) - occupational assesment Flashcards
what are the complexities in personnel selection
overall - how do we select the right person for a job
-Use valid assessment techniques to select job applicants with the best
profile of performance
- What are you looking for in a good
employee?
- How do you choose the assessment
techniques?
- Employers ‘just know’ how to select
employees : Subjective influences and unconscious biases
-assessment technique has to be reliable, valid and not biased
what is job analysis
-first stage in recruiting people for jobs
-understanding what the job is
Understand nature of job task requirements
* Job description and person specification (what characteristics foes a person need to do the job well)
what are job analysis methods
- Observations, records, questionnaires,
interviews, diaries - E.g. Position Analysis Questionnaire
- Updated 2008, adapted for different settings
- Self-report, Employer/manager report, can get the person to fill out and an extra person (the employer etc)
- Covers areas such as: Knowledge & skills, organisational relationships, responsibilities, decision-making, working environment, qualifications, primary purpose of job
the reliability of the position analysis questionnaire
-sanchez and levine (2012)
- Analysis of 92 jobs by two independent groups
- Inter-rater reliability coefficient of 0.79
-how reliable are the ratings across different groups - does the person doing the job and the employers etc give the same ratings - Different perspectives (e.g. employee v employer) suggest acceptable reliability
the validity of the position analysis questionnaire
-sanchez and levine (2012)
- Evidence of reasonable validity
- But relatively few studies, small numbers in studies, and potential sources of subjective bias
-the main way its been assessed is by comparing it to other methods of assessing the nature of the job, (convergent validity)
-has reasonable validity, correlates
-highlight the fact there’s a bias in the questionnaire, particularly for employees in the role, they may exaggerate whats in the role and how difficult it is
what are the steps in the recruitment process
- Job analysis
- Job and person description
- Advertise
- Select best candidate…
want to chose method of selection that will predict how well someone will be at the job
selection techniques
-autobiographical data
-interviews
-cognitive ability tests
-personality and integrity tests
-assesment centres
autobiographical data (biodata)
-examples, factual info etc
-is it a good predictor for a job?
- Application form, curriculum vitae, references
- Factual info: education, work experience, skills…
- Tends to be quite reliable, faking levels low
-Biodata good predictor of job performance
* Meta-analysis by Schmidt & Hunter
* Useful for screening candidates (Cole et al., 2003) (screeing- initial idea of a person, give them application forms etc before choosing who to asses so cut down the amount)
what is a key biodata predictor of getting jobs
-sulastra et al 2015
- For psychology graduates Sulastra et al. (2015) found that key biodata predictor:
- …of getting a job on graduation is work experience
- ….of getting a psychology-based job is GPA
biases of biodata
-cvs judged favourable whether there is a male name or female name, even if cvs are identical
-Spanish study revealed that women are 30% less likely to be offered an interview than men (even when cvs are identical
what are the purpose of interviews
-where are they particularly important
a form of assesment
- gather data about people
- make predictions about their behaviour
most frequent assesment in job selection
initial method of data collection
-really important in clinical psychology and educational psychology
employment interviews
reliability
-early studies and bad reliability
-what kind of interviews are more reliable/valid
- early studies : Poor inter-rater reliability (.5) and predictive validity (e.g.
Wagner, 1949). - Panel interviews better than
single interviewers - Structured interviews better reliability and predictive validity compared to unstructured interviews.
(Wiesner & Cronshaw, 1988)
structure vs unstructured interviews
Unstructured interviews
* Free-ranging and unplanned
* Halo effects - one piece of info that is irrelevant could have a massive consequence on the interview , the genral impression of a person influences how we feel and think about their personality
* Influenced by social situation and biases
Structured interviews
* Standardised questions focused on job
* Relate to job analysis and person specification
* Consistent panel with transparent scoring
* Reduce biases
Validity of structured versus unstructured employment interviews
