Recruitment and selection

1. 1

2. COURSE BOOK
“Industrial and Organizational Psychology : Research
and Practice”
by Paul E. Spector
2

3. “PERSONNEL SELECTION”
3

5. THE RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION PROCESS
Employment
planning and
forecasting
Recruiting:
Build a pool of
candidates
Utilize various
techniques to
identify viable
job candidates
Selection:
Interview final
candidates to
make final
choice
Placing the
new employee
at appropriate
position

6. RECRUITMENT SELECTION AND PLACEMENT
• Recruitment is the process of finding and attracting the
best-qualified candidate (from within or outside of
an organization) for a job opening, in a timely
and cost effective manner.
• Selection is the process of gathering legally defensible
information about job applicants in order to determine
who should be hired for long- or short-term positions.
• Placement is concerned with matching individual skills,
knowledge, abilities, preferences, interests, and
personality to a job.

7. • In recruitment and selection, job related
characteristics and KSAOs are to be assessed.
• The idea is to select or place people into jobs who
have the necessary KSAOs.

8. RECRUITMENT
• Recruitment involves searching for and obtaining
qualified job candidates in such numbers that the
organization can select the most appropriate person to
fill its job needs.
• In addition to filling job needs, the recruitment activity
should be concerned with satisfying the needs of the job
candidates.
• Consequently, recruitment not only attracts individuals
to an organization, but also increases the chance of
retaining them once they are hired.

9. Sources of Applicants
1. Advertising
2. Employee referral
3. Employment agencies
4. Schools/Campus recruiters
5. Walk-ins
RECRUITMENT

10. • Selection is using scientific methodology to choose one
alternative (job candidate) over another.
• A scientific method of selection is important to:
⮚Decreases the likelihood of hiring “bad” employees
⮚Increases the likelihood that people will be treated fairly
when hiring decisions are made
⮚Reduces discrimination
⮚Reduces likelihood of discrimination lawsuits
• Two important elements in employee selection are:
⮚Criterion
⮚Predictor

11. • Criteria – the standards used to judge the quality of
alternatives.
• When selecting new employees, I/O psychologists use
criteria that will identify effective on-the-job
performance
• Example: Good performance
• Predictor – any variable used to forecast a criterion
• KSAOs can be used as predictors of a criterion of job
performance.
• Example: Knowledge of the subject matter should be a
good predictor of job performance of a class room
teacher.

12. • To determine if a given predictor actually relates to a
criterion requires VALIDITY STUDY
• Validity Study is a research study that attempts to
show that the predictor relates to the criterion.

13. VALIDITY STUDY
Step 1 - Conduct Job Analysis
Step 2 – Specify Job Performance Criteria “Define what you
mean by success on the job."
• Example: for a manager who is required to manage budget, a
criterion might be “staying within the budget”
Step 3 – Chose Predictors
• Example: for the manager, mathematical knowledge may be a
good predictor of criterion.

14. VALIDITY STUDY
Step 4 – Validate the Predictors
• Concurrent validation: administer the tests to employees presently on
the job. You then would compare their test scores with their current
performance.
• Predictive validation: the test is administered to applicants before they
are hired. After they have been on the job for some time, you measure
their performance and compare it to their earlier tests.
Step 5 – Cross-validate “to add confidence that the predictor can
forecast the criterion of interest”
• In order to make sure that our predictors and criterion are truly related,
the same process is repeated.
• For cross- validation purpose, two samples are needed; first sample to
determine if the criterion and predictor are significantly correlated.
Second sample, to see if significant relation found in the first sample
can be repeated on the second.

15. • A good means of obtaining information about applicants
is through asking them about it.
• Organizations generally have standard application forms
or “Biographical Inventory” to ask applicants about
their background, past work experiences et cetera.

16. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

17. “A psychological test is a standardized series of problems
or questions that assess a particular individual
characteristic”
• In recruitment and selection, tests are commonly used
to assess many KSAOs, attitudes, interests and
personality.
• These tests are usually comprised of multiple items
that are indicators of the characteristics of interest.

18. 1. Group vs. Individually Administered Tests
• Group tests – time efficient
• Individual test – either the test administrator has to score the items as the
test proceeds or it requires some apparatus
2. Objective vs. Open-Ended Tests
• Objective test – MCQs
• Open-ended test – Writing ability test
3. Paper & Pencil vs. Performance Tests
• Performance test – test taker’s ability is demonstrated using actual
apparatus, equipment, material, or tools under standardized condition.

19. 4. Power vs. Speed Tests
• Power Test – contains items that vary in difficulty
• No subject is expected to get all items right even with unlimited time.
• In practice, a definite but ample time is set for power tests.
• Used to evaluate academic achievement
• Examples: Vocabulary Test (a difficult one)
• Speed Test – contains homogeneous, very easy content
• Tests of psychomotor abilities, e.g., eye–hand coordination, often involve
speed.
• Used to test mastery of material by testing how quickly someone can deal
with it. And to test someone’s speed at a task (typing).
• Examples: For those who are competent at Math, a task where people are
asked to solve a page of simple addition problems as fast as possible would
be a speed test.

20. 1. Ability/Aptitude Tests – are designed to assess a person’s
capability of learning a particular task or his potential.
a. Cognitive ability tests – such as intelligence or IQ test, is relevant to
tasks that involve information processing and learning
• Paper-pencil tests, verbal, non-verbal.
• Used by organizations for employee selection
b. Psychomotor ability – such as manual dexterity, involves body
movement and manipulation of objects.
• They involve both, the coordination between senses and movement
(eye-hand coordination) and the accuracy of movement
• Mainly performance tests and speed tests
• Which ability test to choose depends upon the nature of task of interest.
• Example: Computer programmer? Sweeper? Repair of an equipment?
TYPES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS

21. 2. Knowledge And Skill Or Achievement Tests – are
designed to assess a person’s present level of proficiency.
TYPES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS

22. 3. Personality Tests – measure predispositions or tendencies to
behave in a particular way across situations
• The use of personality tests for selection purpose has been highly
criticized on two grounds:
a. Possibility of Response Bias
b. Low Job Relevance (what an assessment tool measure is obviously
related to specific job tasks) compared to other assessment tools.
• Meta-analysis have found low validities for personality tests as
predictors of job performance. However, personality tests designed
especially for organizational settings have been proven good
predictors.
• Trait based testing
TYPES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS

23. • Openness
– Highs: imaginative, creative, and to seek out cultural and educational
experiences.
– Lows: more down-to-earth, less interest in art & more practical.
• Conscientiousness
– Highs: methodical, well organized and dutiful.
– Lows: less careful, less focused & more likely to be distracted
• Extraversion
– Highs: energetic and seek out the company of others.
– Lows (introverts): tend to be more quiet and reserved.
• Agreeableness
– Highs: tend to be trusting, friendly and cooperative.
– Lows: tend to be more aggressive and less cooperative
• Neuroticism
– Highs: prone to insecurity and emotional distress.
– Lows: more relaxed, less emotional and less prone to distress.
• Conscientiousness show consistent correlation with job performance across jobs,
across cultures
• Emotional stability and agreeableness predict performance in customer service jobs
THE BIG FIVE INVENTORY

24. 4. INTEGRITY TESTS – designed to predict whether employee will
engage in counterproductive work behavior (CWB)
• CWB usually include cheating, poor performance, sabotage, theft,
absenteeism, and turnover
• The overt integrity test assesses a person’s attitude and prior
behaviour. It asks a person to indicate agreement or disagreement
with statements concerning honesty and moral behaviour (It is all
right to lie if you know you won’t get caught)
• The personality integrity test (covert) assesses personality
characteristics that have been found to predict counterproductive
behavior.
EmployeeReliabilityInventory.pdf
TYPES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS

25. 5. VOCATIONAL INTEREST TEST – matches either the interests and
personality of the test taker to those of people in a variety of
different occupations.
• Most popular vocational interest test is “Self-Directed Search” by
Holland.
TYPES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS

26. 26

27. • It’s a face to face meeting between one or more interviewers who are
collecting information or making hiring decisions and an interviewee.
• Interview can be Unstructured or Structured
• Interview can be used as an alternative to written application form,
that is, it can be used for Information gathering or it can be used to
infer a person’s suitability for a job.
• Benefit of interview is its flexibility.
• Issue with interviews is that the interviewer can affect the answers
of interviewee
• However, meta-analysis has indicated the validity of structured
interview for selecting employees.
INTERVIEW

28. 28

29.  Behavioral interviews
 Behavioral interviews, as you might guess from their name, focus on past behavior.
 However, they involve more than just recapping what a candidate has written on their
CV: They’re an opportunity to dig into how the candidate has responded to challenges in
their working life.
 In the social media manager example we gave earlier, your list of questions might include:
 Tell us about a time when you failed to reach a target. How did you handle it?
 Can you give us an example of a campaign that wasn’t working? What did you do to rectify it?
 Tell us about a time when you misunderstood an important task. How did you handle that situation?
29

30.  Whereas behavioral questions ask candidates how they have reacted to past
work dilemmas, situational interview questions propose hypothetical scenarios
and ask your candidate to describe how they would react if they were to
happen.
 The advantage of including situational questions in structured interviews is
that you can discuss the optimal answers with your team in advance and use
their answers as a benchmark.
 Here is a sample list of questions you might use in a situational interview:
 What would you do if you made a mistake in your work but no one else on your team
noticed?
 How would you respond if a client asked you to allocate extra time to their project
without speaking to your supervisor first?
 How would you go about measuring the performance of our company
30

31. 31

32. • It is designed to measure the skill level of the applicant.
• It requires a person to perform a task under standardized conditions.
• The basic procedure of work sample tests is to choose several tasks crucial to
performing the job in question and test applicants on each. Their performance
on each task is monitored by a trained observer who indicates on a checklist
how well the applicant performs that tasks.
• Example: Driving test

33. • An assessment center measures how well a person is able to perform the
tasks of a specific job.
• Realistic tasks are done in groups and are assessed by multiple of raters rating
multiple domains
• Assessment center may contain many different activities and exercises.
Assessee might be interviewed, take a battery of psychological tests, and
complete simulation exercises.
• Simulation exercises may be in the form of
⮚in basket exercise
⮚ leaderless group exercise
⮚ problem solving exercise
⮚ role-play exercise

34. • Strong criterion validity (e.g., teachers, police)
– overall scores predict job performance
• Measurement issues
– costly to administer
– different ratings on a task too highly correlated
– dimension ratings not correlated strongly across tasks