Selecting Employees. Selection is the process of collecting systematic information about

Selection is the process of collecting systematic information about

applicants and using that information to decide which applicant to hire.

The major purpose of various devices of selection – application form,

interviews, testing, and reference checking – is to gather information

about the applicants’ job related skills. A very important principle of the

questions should reflect the activities of the job to be filled.

The application. Traditional application forms ask information about

educational and work history, avocational interests, and honors. How-

ever, such forms have limitations. In the majority of cases, they have

limited space, so the applicant can supply only basic information such as

the manes of schools attended, major, dated of attendance, and previous

job titles and dates of employment. A second limitation is that a large

percentage of respondents falsify the information that they report. Such

falsification is easy because often all that is requested is brief information

such as job title and major.

One device that has been used successfully is a training and experience

form, which presents a small number, for example five, of the important

tasks of the job. The form asks applicants to indicate whether they have

ever performed or been trained in each of the activities. If they answer

yes, they are then asked to describe briefly how to perform the activity.

The interview. The interview is, perhaps, the most often used selec-

tion device. The purpose of the interview is to allow at least one mem-

ber of the organization to interact with each applicant and assess that

applicant’s job-related KSAs (key selection areas). Two aspects of the

interview format are especially important. First, the interview should be

structured, meaning that the interviewer asks the same set of job-related

questions of each candidate. This ensures that the interviewer gathers

full information from each applicant, and it makes comparisons among

applicants easier because they all are evaluated on the same character-

istics. The second aspect of the format is the nature of the questions.

Questions about job-related behaviors have proven to be quite useful.

The idea behind them is that gathering information about behaviors that

are performed on the job is useful in making selection decision. The in-

terviewer must evaluate the accuracy and completeness of the response.

Tests. Many organizations use tests during the selection process to

identify those applicants who have the specific KSAs needed for the

available position. Human resource managers can use many kinds of

tests. The most common are the following:

Ability tests are paper-and-pencil quizzes, usually multiple choice,

that measure an applicant’s knowledge of specific work content or cog-

nitive ability.

Performance or work-sample tests verify an applicant’s ability to per-

form actual job behaviors identified from a job analysis. Perhaps the old-

est example is a typing test.

Assessment center tests are programs that typically simulate manageri-

al tasks. One of the most often used simulations is the In-Basket, which

simulates 20 to 30 office memos, complete with an organizational chart

and relevant company policy statement.

Integrity tests measure an applicant’s attitudes and opinions about

dysfunctional behaviors such as theft, sabotage, physical abuse, and sub-

stance abuse. Companies usually use paper-and-pencil, multiple choice

tests that ask about the applicant’s thoughts and reactions to a number

of illegal or unethical situations.

Personality inventories measure the thoughts, feeling and behavior

that define an individual and determine that person’s pattern of interac-

tion with the environment. Two general types of personality tests have

been used in selection. One is a multiple-choice questionnaire. The

second type of personality tests is the projective test, which asks an ap-

plicant to write a story about ambiguous pictures or to finish partially

completed sentences.

Physical examinations test individuals for placement in manually and

physically demanding jobs.

Reference checks. A company considering hiring a particular appli-

cant often contacts previous employers or others who know him or her

well to verify the information previously obtained. Reference checks can

be handled in three ways. The first, and most often used, is through tele-

phone conversations, in which previous supervisors of the applicant are

contacted. Other ways include in-person visits and mail inquiries. The

organization may also obtain reference information from investigative

agencies, credit bureaus, and public documents.

Unit 2