Human Resource Management: Recruitment and Selection

Selection

• Factual information to consider when looking at references:
  • Length of past employment
  • Job title
  • Responsibilities
  • Overall performance
  • Time-keeping
  • Reasons for leaving

'Best Practice' Psychometric Model

• Assumptions:
  • Selection is objective, systematic, and scientific
  • Measurement can predict future job performance
• Limitations:
  • Overlooks context
  • One-way process, ignoring applicant perspective

The Applicant Perspective

• Selection as interactive process of information exchange and negotiation between organisation and stakeholders
• User acceptability:
  • Credibility of method
  • Managers' and practitioners' use
  • Candidate perception
• Performance-based methods are more favourable:
  • More likely to be adopted than less transparent psychometric tests
  • Interviews are the preferred method
  • Job applicants prefer cognitive tests, interviews, and work samples for respect of privacy and opportunity to perform

Best Practices in Selection

• Structured and rigorous approach
• Use insight from several methods in decision-making process
• Pay attention to candidate experience
• Prevent unconscious bias

Psychometric Quality

• Reliability: consistency of measurement, reducing measurement error
• High physical fidelity with job performance
• Standardised across applicants
• Structured and consistent across assessors
• Example: work simulations have high reliability, while interviews have lower reliability

Validity

• Predicting a job-related criterion
• Showing association between scores on selection method and desired job behavior
• Relationship reported as a correlation coefficient from -.1 to +1.0
• Example: personality test of extraversion correlated with number of sales made by retail worker

Interviews

• Structured interviews predict job performance better than unstructured interviews
• Plan questions carefully before the interview
• Ask all candidates the same questions
• Score answers using a rating system
• Focus on attributes and behaviours needed for the job only
• Have some balance for flexibility allowing for supplementary questions if needed
• Insights from the interview should be supported by data collected with other methods

Behavioral Interviewing

• Ask questions that directly relate to performance on the job
• Follow the job description
• Ask behavioral interviewing questions:
  • Situation
  • Tasks
  • Actions
  • Results
• Examples of behavioral questions:
  • Planning and organisation
  • Initiative
  • Communication
  • Leadership
  • Teamwork