1 Employee selection Outline Employee selection interviews Some

1 Employee selection - Outline • Employee selection interviews • Some technical vocabulary • Evaluating selection test utility – Taylor-Russell tables – Utility theory • Fitting people to jobs • Evaluating the work setting • Job analysis

2 Employee Selection Interviews • Reviews of literature • Primacy effect suggest structured • Negative > Positive interviews are far more • Initial unfavorable reliable than unstructured impressions torpedo your ones. chances of getting the job

3 Employee Selection Interviews • What produces an unfavorable impression in an interview? • lack of confidence • failure to make eye contact • poor communication skills • lack of enthusiasm

4 Employee Selection Interviews • To make a favorable impression • • Good grooming Professional attire Project aura of confidence Be friendly and warm – but don’t overdo it!

5 Some technical vocabulary • Cutting Score – score • Being above the cutting that decisions are based score does not ensure on: those above are success selected, those below • Being below does not rejected guarantee failure

6 Some technical vocabulary • Base rate • Proportion of people expected to succeed if no test is used at all

7 Some technical vocabulary • Hit rate • % of predictions based on test that turn out to be correct

8 Some technical vocabulary • Misses • When predictions based on test are wrong

Performance on the job Success Failure Decision on basis of cutting score Unacceptable Acceptable MISS HIT MISS

10 Performance on the job Decision on basis of cutting score Unacceptable Acceptable Success B A Failure D C

Performance Hit (or Accuracy) Rate: B A D C Test score A+D A+B+C+D Base Rate: A+B+C+D

Performance Selection ratio: B D A C A+B+C+D Detection Rate: A A+B Test score

Performance False negatives Hits B A Successful D C Unsuccessful Don’t hire Hire Test score Correct rejections False positives

Performance B A Successful D C Unsuccessful Don’t hire Hire Test score

B A D C Good decisions Bad decisions

Performance Successful Unsuccessful Don’t hire Hire Test score Now, almost all the hires are good (and it doesn’t really matter – to you – that you have many false negatives).

17 Evaluating selection test utility • Do employee selection tests work? • That is, do H. R. professionals make better selection decisions when they use a selection test than they would if they selected randomly?

18 Evaluating Selection Test Utility • To assess test usefulness, look at hit rate as a function of all decisions: • Test accuracy: Hits + Misses (Hits = +Hits and –Hits) Note: on diagrams above, this would be A+D A+B+C+D

19 Evaluating Selection Test Utility • To assess test usefulness, compare hit rate to the base rate • Detection rate: (+ Hits) + False Negatives Note: on diagrams above, this would be A A+B

20 Taylor-Russell Tables • Incremental validity = the provide an estimate of improvement you get by the incremental validity of using a selection test, a test over selecting without a test

21 Taylor-Russell Tables • What you need: – Base rate – Definition of success • Must be clear (e. g. , “Increase sales by 10%”) – Selection ratio • What proportion of applicants will be hired – Validity coefficient for test • correlation of test score with some criterion (e. g. , a measure of work quality)

22 Taylor-Russell Tables • Taylor & Russell (1939) showed that a selection test is most useful when validity is high and selection ratio is low • If selection ratio is high, test doesn’t matter much (you hire people anyway) • If validity is low, test won’t help you (even if you are very picky)

Test is most useful when validity is high and selection ratio is low

24 Evaluating Selection Test Utility • Utility Theory • Assess value of employee to organization (in $) • Subtract cost of hiring process and training

25 Utility theory • Advantage over Taylor. Russell tables: • do not need to define success dichotomously – can use a continuous variable

26 Fitting people to jobs • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator • Wonderlic Personnel Test

27 Fitting People to Jobs • Carl Jung: four characteristic ways of perceiving the world • Balance among the four ways is best • But each of us tends more towards one or another

28 Fitting People to Jobs • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator • Based on Carl Jung’s theory • Determines where people fall on introversion/ extroversion continuum

29 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator • Type given by which of 4 modes you rely on: • Sensing – knowing through senses • Intuition – inferring what’s behind sensory input • Feeling – focusing on emotional aspect of experience • Thinking – reasoning or thinking abstractly

30 Fitting People to Jobs • Wonderlic Personnel Test • Test of mental ability • Several fine tuned tests to choose from depending on vocation of interest

31 Wonderlic Personnel Test • paper and pencil test • measures reasoning ability, the ability to understand instructions and to learn, and problem solving and other cognitive abilities

32 Wonderlic Personnel Test • Example item: one of the numbered figures in the following drawing is most different from the others. What is the number in that figure?

33 Evaluating the work setting • Characteristics of the work environment affect job choice and satisfaction • Measures evaluate environments on: – Ecological dimensions – Organizational structure – Organizational climate

34 Job analysis • In order to know who to hire, who to fire, or how to address employer or employee concerns, you need a process to determine: • • Workplace activities Type of personnel needed What’s going right What’s going wrong

35 Job Analysis • Ways to conduct a Job Analysis 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Checklists Critical Incidents Observation Interviews Questionnaires O*NET