CHAPTER 5

 REASON TO CHECK REFERENCES:

-Check for resume fraud
-Find new information about the applicant
-Check for potential discipline problems
-Predict future performance

 ALTERNATIVE MEASURES IN FINDING NEW

INFORMATION ABOUT THE APPLICANT:
- psychological test
-letters of recommendation
-biodata
-resumes
-interviews

 TYPES OF INFORMATION THE EMPLOYER WANTS TO

FIND ABOUT THE APPLICANT:
-personality
-interpersonal style
-background
-work habits

 POTENTIAL DISCIPLINE PROBLEMS:

-Criminal Records
-Previous employers
-Motor vehicle records
-Military records
-Credit reports
-Colleges and universities
-Neighbors and friends

 IN USING CONVICTIONS, EMPLOYER MUST

CONSIDER:
-Nature and gravity of offense
-Amount of time that has passed since the conviction and/or completion
of the sentence
-The nature of the job held or being sought

 PURPOSE OF CREDIT CHECKS:

-Predict motivation to steal
-Determine character of applicant

 FOUR MAIN PROBLEMS WITH REFERENCES AND

LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION:
-leniency
-knowledge of the applicant
-low reliability
-extraneous factors in writing and reading such letters

 REASONS FOR LENIENCY ERROR:

-Applicants often choose their own references
-Applicants often have the right to see their files
-Former employers fear legal ramifications

 POTENTIAL LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS:

-negligent hiring
-invasion of privacy
-negligent reference
-defamation

 THREE TYPES OF DEFAMATION:

-libel (written)
-slander (oral)
-self-publication
  EMPLOYERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE IF THEIR
STATEMENTS WERE:
-truthful (statements were true; not true, but reasonable person
would have believed them to be true; opinions are protected unless
reference infers opinion is based on facts that don’t exist)
-made in good faith (don’t offer unsolicited information; statements
cannot be made for revenge; avoid personal comments)
-made for legitimate purpose
-made with the permission of the applicant (use waivers; let the
former employee know if the reference will not be positive

 EXTRANEOUS FACTORS SURROUNDING THE

REFERENCE:
-Reference giver’s ability to articulate
-The extent to which the referee remembers the applicant
-The words used by the reference giver

 PERSONNEL SELECTION METHODS:

-Training and education
-experience
-knowledge
-ability
-skills
-personality and character
-medical
 EXPERIENCE:
-applications/resumes
-biodata
-interviews

 ABILITY:
-cognitive ability
-perceptual ability
-psychomotor ability
-physical ability

 SKILLS:
-work samples
-assessment center
-references

 PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER

-Personality tests
-integrity tests

 MEDICAL:
-Medical Exams
-Psychological Exams
-Drug Testing

PREDICTING PERFORMANCE USING TRAINING AND

EDUCATION

 RATINGS OF TRAINING:
-Education
-Work-Related Training
-Military

 WHY WOULD EDUCATION PREDICT PERFORMANCE?

-Knowledge
-Liberal arts skills
-Mental ability
-Motivation
  PREDICTING PERFORMANCE USING APPLICANT
KNOWLEDGE:
-taps job-related knowledge
-good validity (r=0.22, p=0.45)
-face validity
-can have adverse impact

 COGNITIVE ABILITY TESTS:

-high validity (r=0.39, p=0.51)
-Predicts training and job performance for all jobs
-The more complex the job, the better cognitive ability tests predict
performance

 STRENGTHS OF COGNITIVE ABILITY TESTS:

-Highest validity of all selection measures (ρ = 0.51)
-Easy to administer
-Relatively inexpensive
-Most are not time consuming

 WEAKNESSES OF COGNITIVE ABILITY TESTS:

-Likely to cause adverse impact
-Low face validity
-Not well liked by applicants

 PERCEPTUAL ABILITY TESTS:

-Vision (near, far, night, peripheral)
-Depth perception
-Glare sensitivity
-Hearing (sensitivity, auditory attention, sound localization)

 PSYCHOMOTOR ABILITY TESTS

-Dexterity (finger, manual)
-Control precision
-Multilimb coordination
-Response control
-Reaction time
-Arm-hand steadiness
-Wrist-finger speed
-Speed-of-limb movement

PHYSICAL ABILITY-used for jobs with high physical demands

 THREE ISSUES:
-Job relatedness
-Passing scores
-When the ability must be present

 TWO COMMON WAYS TO MEASURE PHYSICAL

ABILITY:
-Simulations
-physical agility tests

 PHYSICAL ABILITIES:
-Dynamic strength (strength requiring repetitions)
-Trunk strength (stooping or bending over)
-Explosive strength (jumping or throwing)
-Static strength
-Dynamic flexibility (speed of bending or stretching)
-Extent flexibility (degree of bending or stretching)
Gross body equilibrium (balance)
-Gross body coordination (coordination)
-Stamina

PREDICTING PERFORMANCE USING APPLICANT SKILL

 ADVANTAGES OF WORK SAMPLES:
-Directly related to the job
-Good criterion validity
-Good face validity
-Less adverse impact than cognitive ability
-Provide realistic job previews

 DISADVANTAGE OF WORK SAMPLES:

-can be expensive to develop and maintain

 GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSMENT CENTER PRACTICES

-Based on job analysis
-Behavioral classification
-Assessment techniques
-Use multiple assessment exercises
-Simulations
-Use multiple assessors
-Assessor training
-Recording behavior
-Reports
-Overall judgment based on integration of information

 ASSESSMENT CENTER EXERCISES:

-Leaderless group discussions
-In-basket technique
-Simulations
-Situational exercises
-Work samples
-Role plays
-Case analyses and business games

 WEAKNESSES OF ASSESSMENT CENTERS:

-Very expensive
-Time consuming
-Can have low inter-rater agreement
-Behaviors can overlap into several dimensions
-Safety of candidates for some work samples
  ASSESSMENT CENTERS ARE MOST APPROPRIATE
WHEN:
-promotion rather than selection
-when candidates have some knowledge on the job
-When you have the money to develop and maintain assessment centers
-When you have the time and trainers

PREDICTING PERFORMANCE USING PRIOR EXPERIENCE

(past behavior predicts future behavior)
 TYPES OF EXPERIENCE:
-work
-life

 EXPERIENCE ARE EVALUATED THROUGH:

-Application blanks
-Resumes
-Interviews
-Reference checks
-Biodata instruments

 EXPERIENCE CONSIDERATIONS:
-How much experience?
-How well did the person perform?
-How related is it to the current job?

 EXPERIENCE PREDICTS BEST:

-Credit prior work experience only:
-In the same occupational area as that in which performance is to be
predicted
-In the performance of tasks or functions that have direct application
on the job
-Recency of experience should be used as a decision rule for awarding
credit only when justified on a case-by-case basis
-Credit for duration of work experience should be limited to a few years.
-High prediction up to about 3 years of experience, declining to low
prediction for more than 12 years of experience.

 CONCERNS ON EXPERIENCE:
-Performance matters
- “Haven’t done” doesn’t mean “can’t do”
-Experience has a shelf life
-Listing something on a resume is not experience
-Where you get your experience matters
-Experience does not guarantee success
-Experience is expensive
-More experience might be bad (old ways and ideas)

 DEVELOPMENT OF BIODATA ITEMS:

-Choose a job
-Create pool of potential biodata items
-Choose a criterion to measure behavior (2 criterion based on their
criterion scores)
-Prescreen items and test on employees
-Retest items on second sample of employees

 TWO WAYS TO OBTAIN INFORMATION ABOUT

EMPLOYEES:
-file approach
-questionnaire approach

 GOOD BIODATA ITEMS:

-historical (How old were you when you got your first paying job?)
-external (Did you ever get fired from a job?)
-objective (How many hours did you study for your bar exam?)
-first-hand (How punctual are you about coming to work?)
-Discrete (At what age did you get your driver’s license?)
-Verifiable (What was your grade point average in college?)
-Controllable (How many tries did it take you to pass the CPA exam?)
-Equal Access (Were you ever class president?)
-Job Relevant (How many units of cereal did you sell during the last
calendar year?)
-Noninvasive (Were you on the tennis team in college?)

 BAD BIODATA ITEMS:

-Future or Hypothetical (What position do you think you will be holding
in 10 years?)
-Internal (What is your attitude toward friends who smoke marijuana?)
-Subjective (Would you describe yourself as shy?)
-Second-hand (How would your teachers describe your punctuality?)
-Summative (How many hours do you study during an average week?)
-Non-verifiable (How may servings of fresh vegetables do you eat
everyday?)
-Non-controllable (How many brothers and sisters do you have?)
-Non-equal Access (Were you ever captain of the football team?)
-Not job relevant (Are you proficient at crossword puzzles?)
-Invasive (How many young children do you have at home?)

 STRENGTHS OF BIODATA:
-Good validity (r = 0.36, ρ= 0.51)
-Can predict for variety of criterion measures
-Easy to administer
-Relatively inexpensive
-Fairly valid
-Can have good face validity

 WEAKNESSES OF BIODATA:
-Low face validity
-Can invade privacy
-Items can be offensive
-Expensive to develop
-Not always practical to develop
PREDICTING PERFORMANCE USING PERSONALITY,
INTEREST, AND CHARACTER

 TYPES OF PERSONALITY INVENTORIES:

-Measures of normal personality
-Measures of psychopathology

 BASIS FOR PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS:

-Theory based
-Statistically based
-Empirically based

 SCORING
-Objective
-Projective

 FIVE-FACTOR MODEL (THE BIG 5):

-Openness to Experience (imaginative, curious, cultured
-Conscientiousness (organized, disciplined, careful)
-Extraversion (outgoing, gregarious, fun-loving)
-Agreeableness (trusting, cooperative, flexible)
-Neuroticism/emotional stability (anxious, insecure, vulnerable to stress)

 EXAMPLES OF COMMON MEASURES OF NORMAL

PERSONALITY USED IN EMPLOYEE
-Hogan Personality Inventory,
-California Psychological Inventory,
-NEO-PI (Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Personality Inventory),
-16PF.

EVALUATION OF PERSONALITY
 STRENGTHS:
-Relatively cheap
-Easy to administer
-Little adverse impact
-Predicts best when based on a job analysis

 WEAKNESSES:
-Scale development
-Validity
-Faking

 INTEREST INVENTORIES...:
-Tap an applicant’s interest in particular types of work or careers
-Poor predictors of job performance (r = 0.10, ρ = 0.13)
-Better predictors of job satisfaction

SAMPLE INTEREST INVENTORY

 TYPES OF INTEGRITY TESTS:

-electronic testing
-paper and pencil testing

 ELECTRONIC TESTING:
-Polygraph testing

 PAPER AND PENCIL TESTING:

-Overt
-Personality based

LIMITATIONS OF THE POLYGRAPH:

-Emotions other than guilt can trigger responses
-Countermeasures used to avoid detection
-Frequency of false positives
-Frequency of false negatives
  EMPLOYEE POLYGRAPH PROTECTION ACT OF 1988
MAKES IT ILLEGAL TO:
-Directly or indirectly require an employee to take a polygraph
-Use, accept, refer to, or inquire about the results of any polygraph test
of any applicant or employee
-Discharge, discipline, discriminate against, or deny employment or
promotion to (or threaten such actions) against any prospective or
current employee who refuses, declines, or fails to take or submit to a
polygraph

 EXEMPTED FROM THESE PROHIBITIONS:

-Private employers providing security services
-Employers who manufacture, distribute, or dispense controlled
substances
-Federal, state, and local government employees.

OVERT INTEGRITY TESTS

 RESEARCH HAS SHOWN THAT THE “TYPICAL”
EMPLOYEE-THIEF:
-Is more tempted to steal
-Engages in many of the common rationalizations for theft
-Would punish thieves less
-Often thinks about theft related activities
-Attributes more theft to others
-Shows more inter-thief loyalty
-Is more vulnerable to peer pressure to steal than an honest employee

 OTHER BEHAVIORS INTEGRITY TESTS CAN PREDICT:

-Drug and alcohol abuse
-Vandalism
-Sabotage
-Assault behaviors
-Insubordination
-Absenteeism
-Excessive grievances
-Bogus workers compensation claims
-Violence

 ADVANTAGES OF INTEGRITY TESTS:

-Potentially good validity
-Inexpensive to use
-Easy to administer
-Little to no racial adverse impact

 DISADVANTAGES OF INTEGRITY TESTS:

-Males have a higher fail rate than females
-Younger people have a higher fail rate than older people
-Failure has a negative psychological impact on applicants.

 AGGRESSIVE INDIVIDUALS TEND TO BELIEVE

-most people have harmful intentions behind their behavior (hostile
attribution bias)
-it is important to show strength or dominance in social interactions
(potency bias)
-it is important to retaliate when wronged rather than try to maintain a
relationship (retribution bias)
-powerful people will victimize less powerful individuals (victimization
bias)
-evil people deserve to have bad things happen to them (derogation of
target bias)
-social customs restrict free will and should be ignored (social
discounting bias).

 SAMPLE INTEGRITY TEST

-Conditional Reasoning Tests
-Graphology

DRUG TESTING
  DRUG USERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO:
-Miss work
-Use health care benefits
-Be fired
-Have an accident

 FORMS OF TESTING
-Pre-employment testing
-Random selection at predetermined times
-Random selection at random times
-Testing after an accident or disciplinary action

 TWO STAGES OF DRUG TESTING:

-Initial screening of hair or urine
-Confirmation test (Typically used only after a positive initial screening)

 AAMODT AND PEGGANS FOUND THAT REJECTION

LETTERS DIFFER TO THE EXTENT THAT THEY
CONTAIN THE FOLLOWING TYPES OF RESPONSES:
-A personally addressed and signed letter
-The company’s appreciation to the applicant for applying for a position
with the company
-A compliment about the applicant’s qualifications
-A comment about the high qualifications possessed by the other
Applicants
-Information about the individual who was actually hired
- A wish of good luck in future endeavors
-A promise to keep the applicant’s resume on file