schultz10e_ch03.ppt

Psychology and Work Today
Schultz & Schultz 10e 1
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc.,
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved
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Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
• Explain the recruitment process and the importance of
recruiter characteristics, campus recruiting, and realistic job
previews
• Understand the selection process and the critical
contribution of job and worker analyses
• Explain the legal and regulatory aspects of fair employment
practices, including how to determine adverse impact, what
are discriminatory questions, and reverse discrimination
• Define job analysis, what it’s used for, and how it is
conducted
• Compare and contrast four major techniques for employee
selection: biographical information, interviews, references
and letters of recommendation, and assessment centers

What’s Your Ideal Job?
• Challenging, interesting work
• High salary
• Job security
• Stock options
• Good working hours
• Good working conditions
• Compatible co-workers
• Respect from one’s boss
• Opportunity to learn new skills
• Fair/loyal supervisor
• Being asked for your opinion
• Help with personal problems

Survey Says…
• Opportunities to learn and grow 78%
• Interesting work 77%
• Good manager/boss 75%
• Organization you can be proud to work for 74%
• Opportunity to advance 73%
• Promise of stability/job security 70%
• Creative or fun workplace culture 67%
• Compatible work group/team 67%
• Balance between work and personal life 65%
• Opportunity for accomplishment 64%
Source: Howard, Erker, & Bruce. (2007). The selection forecast 2006/2007:
Slogging through the war for talent. Intelligence.monster.com

• Age and generation
• Education
• Level, major and grades
• Blue-collar vs. White-collar
• Technical vs. management
• Economic conditions
• Strong economy – challenging work
• Weak economy – pay and security
Influences on Job Preferences

Gen Y
• More than half the workforce by 2012
• Need to stay connected through IM, instant
games and instant media
• Multitaskers who work best in teams
• Expect instant recognition and rewards
• Jobs should be meaningful and challenging
• Want responsibility ASAP
• Don’t see need to prove selves in low level jobs

Recruiting Sources
• Online search services
• Help-wanted ads
• Current employee referrals
• Networking & personal contacts
• Employment agencies/headhunters
• Professional associations
• Job fairs
• Outplacement agencies
• Campus interviews

• Increasingly important for providing job and
organizational information
• Advantages
• Cost-effective means for transmitting lots of
information
• Gives impression that organization is sophisticated
and technologically savvy
• Allen, Mahto, & Otondo (2007) found that college students are
more likely to apply if they like the company website
• Applicants can quickly learn about and apply to
companies
• Job offers can be made more quickly
Web-based Recruiting

Successful Recruiters
• Personableness more important than status, race
or gender of recruiter
• Smiles & nods
• Eye contact & empathy
• Thoughtful & warm
• Competent
• Stays on topic
• Provides information about company
• Solicits information about applicant
• Answers applicant’s questions

Realistic Job Preview
• A recruitment technique that acquaints
prospective employees with positive and
negative aspects of a job
• Correlates positively with
• Job satisfaction
• Job performance
• Reduced turnover
• Also reduces number of applicants initially
accepting jobs
• Why might this be a good thing?

Steps in the Selection Process
• Job analysis
• Worker analysis
• Determine recruitment method
• Determine anticipated selection ratio
• Identify selection techniques
• Select and classify new employees
• Evaluate selection methods for:
• Validity – did we hire the right people?
• Fair employment practices
• Evidence of adverse impact

• Application blanks
• Interviews
• Letters of recommendation
• Assessment centers
• Psychological tests
• Drug tests
• Physical requirements
• Different combinations of techniques used
based on the particular job to be filled
Selection Techniques

Fair Employment Practices
• In USA, conformity with:
• EEOC regulations
• 1964 & 1991 Civil Rights Acts (CRA)
• Equal opportunities in employment for all, regardless of race,
religion, sex, color or national origin
• Protect against....
• Adverse impact on minority or protected groups
• Discriminatory questions in interviews or on application
blanks
• “Reverse” discrimination

Determining Adverse Impact
• “Four Fifths” Rule
• Selection ratio for minority group may be no
less than 80% of that of the majority group
• Selection ratio is the number of applicants selected
divided by the number of applicants
• Example: If the selection ratio for the
majority group is 50%, then the selection
ratio for the minority group should not be
less than 40%

Disadvantages of EO Programs
• Perception of “reverse” discrimination
• Misnomer – the reverse of discrimination is non-
discrimination
• Discrimination is discrimination for everyone
• Which groups are most positive toward
affirmative action?
• Women
• Blacks
• Hispanics
• Stigmatization of those hired under EO
• e.g., Heilman’s “Stigma of Incompetence”

Federally Protected Groups
• An American employer cannot discriminate based on:
• Sex – CRA Title VII
• Race and Color – CRA Title VII
• National Origin – CRA Title VII
• Religion – CRA Title VII
• Age - workers over 40 – Age Discrimination Act of 1967 (ADEA)
• Disability – Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)
• Vietnam veterans - The Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment and
Assistance Act of 1974 (VEVRAA)
• Not protected on the basis of:
• Sexual orientation
• Physical attractiveness

Job and Work Analysis
• Job analysis
• The study of a job to describe in specific terms
the nature of the component tasks performed by
the workers
• Work analysis
• Focuses on certain tasks and skills that can be
transferred from one job to another
• Results provide basis for selection, evaluation
and training
• Number and complexity of selection methods
increase with complexity and demands of job

Conducting Job & Work Analysis
• Refer to previously conducted analyses
• U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational
Information Network (O*NET)
• Interviews
• Direct observation
• Systematic activity logs
• Critical incidents

O*NET
• Provides the following information:
• Person requirements
• Person characteristics
• Experience requirements
• Job requirements
• Labor market
• www.online.onetcenter.org/

Job Analysis Interview
• Performed by Subject Matter Experts (SME’s)
• Incumbent workers
• Supervisors
• Trained HR personnel
• Person interviewed should be told purpose of
interview and need to answer accurately and
completely.

Job Analysis Questionnaires
• Unstructured questionnaire
• Open-end approach
• Structured questionnaire
• Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ)
• 194 job elements organized into six categories
• Information input
• Mental processes
• Work output
• Relationships with other persons
• Job context
• Other job activities & conditions

Direct Observation
• Sample should be representative
• Electronic monitoring may be used
• Analyst should be unobtrusive
• People may behave differently when they
are being watched
• Hawthorne Effect
• Must deal with privacy issues

Systematic Activity Logs
• Employees and supervisors maintain
detailed written records of their activities
during a specified time
• Logs can provide job details not available
from other methods

The Critical-Incidents Technique
• Identifies incidents or behaviors that are
necessary for successful job performance
• Focuses on specific activities or behaviors
that lead to desirable or undesirable
consequences on the job
• Goal is to indicate behaviors that separate
a good from a bad performer

Employee Selection Techniques
• Biographical information (Biodata)
• Interviews
• References and letters of recommendation
• Psychological tests (Chapter 4)

Biodata
• Biographical information collected using:
• Application blanks
• Biodata inventory
• Variety of collection methods:
• Paper
• Online
• Kiosks
• Recruiting stations
• Information can be used to screen candidates
to improve efficiency of selection process

Application Blanks
• Identifies initial suitability for employement
• It’s crucial to determine what information to
request
• Each question should relate to job success
• How honest is the response?
• Use follow-up interviews
• Check employers & references

Biodata Inventory
• A more systematized form of application blank
• Longer and more detailed
• Assumes on-the-job behavior is related to biodata
• Each item must be researched and validated to
ensure correlation with performance criteria
• Properly developed biographical inventories
show high predictive value
• Not used extensively due to time and expense
• Can still be faked

Interviews & First Impressions
• Two-way process to determine fit
• Key variables
• Perceived attractiveness, sociability, & skill at self-
promotion
• Verbal and Non-verbal cues
• Maintaining eye contact, smiling, leaning toward the
interviewer, & friendly hand gestures
• Low pitched voice with vocal inflections
• Impression Management
• Ingratiation
• Self-promotion
• Self-monitoring – psychological construct reflecting the
extent to which people observe, regulate, and control self
image

Types of Interviews
• Unstructured interview
• Structured interview
• Situational interview
• Puzzle interview
• Online interview

Unstructured Interview
• Format and questions asked are left to the
discretion of the interviewer
• Lacks advance planning
• Potentially different questions for each candidate
• Criticisms
• Lack of consistency in assessing candidates
• Low validity for predicting job performance
• Interviewer training can improve usefulness

Structured Interview
• Uses a predetermined list of questions asked of
every candidate
• Printed form
• Applicant’s responses recorded
• Results are greatly improved over unstructured
interviews
• Structured interviews can be as valid as
cognitive ability tests
• Still rarely used due to perceived cost, time and
loss of control by interviewer

Situational Interview
• Focus is on behaviors needed for successful
performance
• Development of interview
1. Prepare list of critical incidents
2. Determine benchmarks for scoring the incidents
3. Translate incidents into interview questions
• Generally used for semi-skilled and skilled
factory jobs, sales, & first line supervisors
• Correlates positively with later work
performance

Puzzle Interview
• Asks candidates to solve a puzzle
• “Why are manholes round?”
• Popularized by Microsoft in 1990’s to measure:
• Critical thinking
• Creativity
• Ability to reason under pressure
• Correlated with cognitive ability
• Good performers perceived method as fair

Online Interview
• Automates structured interview process
• Presents same questions in same order to all
applicants for a particular job
• Can include sensitive questions that many
interviewers hesitate to ask face-to-face
• Often used for screening
• Home Depot reported 11% drop in turnover in first
year of online kiosk for interview

Interviewer Biases
• Availability of prior information
• May predispose interviewer to favor a particular
candidate (e.g., knowledge of psych eval. results)
• Contrast effect
• Impressions of prior candidates influence opinion of
subsequent candidates
• Personal prejudices
• e.g., Race, ethnicity, gender
• Halo effect – tendency to judge all aspects of a
person’s behavior or character on the basis of a
single attribute

Refs & Letters of Recommendation
• Intended to examine others’ opinions of
candidate and verify information provided
by candidate
• Often paint a false picture of the applicant
• Positive bias
• Negative information should raise flag
• Fear of lawsuits for defamation or providing
inaccurate information
• Companies are advised to provide only employment
dates, job title and final salary

Assessment Centers
• Method of selection that places candidate
in a simulated job situation to evaluate
behavior under stress
• Originally called situational testing
• Usually involve 6-12 candidates
• Evaluated through a series of exercises over
several days
• In-basket technique
• Leaderless group discussions

Assessment Centers - Advantages
• Can be highly valid predictor of job success for
management and entry-level positions
• On the job evaluations 2-4 years later correlated highly
with assessment center results (Dayan, Kasten, & Fox,
2002)
• May be a more equitable way of evaluating
management skills of candidates of different racial
and ethnic backgrounds
• But ...
• Interpersonal skills count strongly, and active and forceful
participants are rewarded
• Research suggests adverse impact on Black candidates

Key Terms
• Adverse impact
• Biodata inventories
• Critical-incidents technique
• Halo effect
• Impression management
• In-basket technique
• Job analysis
• Leaderless group
discussion
• Realistic job previews
• Reverse discrimination
• Selection ratio
• Situational interviews
• Situational testing
• Structured interviews
• Unstructured interviews
• Work analysis

schultz10e_ch03.ppt

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