 According to US law and HR practices worldwide, one

of the fundamental principles of job selection is that

any information you use to select a candidate is
defined as a test.

So let’s review possible items used to select an

individual for a job. Which of the following is a test?
1. Application blank or form
2. Paper and pencil or computer-based test
3. Selection Interview
4. Background check
Answer: If any of the above are used to make a decision
about a candidate it is legally considered a test. Thus
The short answer is: All the above!

Types of job interviews:

Unstructured Job interviews –

There are a number of flaws of unstructured job interviews.

The basic problem with these types of interviews is that they
do a poor job of predicting job performance—in other words,
they have poor validity.
This can be due to several reasons.
First, different applicants are typically asked different
questions. Thus it is hard to make fair comparisons between
them.
Second, the questions are often not directly related to the
job. Maybe your interviewer discovers you are an alumnae of
EDHEC and he is too. The rest of the conversation may veer
off course, being more about his or her remembrances of
EDHEC than your specific job qualifications.
Finally, especially in the unstructured interview format,
interviewers have a hard time agreeing amongst themselves
what is a great answer from a not so great answer! This
picture shows how judges gave very different scores for the
same performance.

In the semi-structured interview:

The employer lists job-oriented questions ahead of time.
The interview is set up so that each person is asked THE
SAME questions.
Candidate answers are still ‘open-ended’, not multiple
choice. Note that this is the difference between the semi-
structured and the completely structured interview format.
However, a behavioral scoring guide of illustrative answers
improves the reliability of scoring. This way, managers have
the same frame of reference.

Finally, although structuring your interview helps to reduce

interviewing errors, it is useful to keep them in mind, since
they can still occur.
First is the halo effect, where a very positive (or negative)
evaluation on one dimension clouds judgment of other
dimensions. By structuring the interview and asking specific
questions, this tends to reduce the risk of a halo effect since
you have to score each question separately. The Halo effect
is aggravated when you are asked to just give one overall
score for an interview.
Second, is the similar-to-me effect (unrelated to the job). If
you went to the same school, play the same sports, come
from the same region, share the same religious affiliation, all
these factors can affect and cloud your judgment. A major
French university study which took place a few years ago
shows, for instance that in resumes sent to companies that
were identical except for obvious differences in religious
background (based on name or extracurricular activity), bias
entered into the evaluation of candidates. Stereotyping is a
related problem.
Candidate order can also make a difference. Those first and
last tend to be remembered more. Also an extremely good
candidate may make an otherwise acceptable candidate that
follows look weaker. Again, although not entirely eliminating
the problem, structuring the interview reduces this problem
somewhat, although not eliminating it altogether.
Another common error is that of first impressions. While the
average length of an interview is 40 minutes, 33% of 2000
surveyed bosses indicated they know within the first 90
seconds if they will hire that candidate.
Leniency error is another problem, where everyone might be
rated too high or low. A similar error is central tendency
error which is to rate everyone as average.
You can learn more about some of these errors in the
reading, Optional 1.3.
With work samples, candidates are presented with
situations representative of the job for which they’re
applying, and are evaluated on their responses.
Sometimes a short training session is given to show the
candidate what to do, and then an observer watches to
see how quickly he or she can learn the job being
performed.

The management assessment center is another type of

job simulation which is actually a series of job
simulations.
For professional positions, it may be important to see
how the candidate works with others in a group
situation or how the candidate can present his or her
ideas to the rest of the group. Many different tasks are
bundled together typically into an all-day event where a
number of candidates are invited at the same time.
Many students may find themselves in this type of
environment.
Observers may take notes of how each of the candidates
acts individually and with others. There may be several
exercises planned throughout the day including a role
play, in-basket simulation, leaderless group discussion
and business game. Our Career Service Center helps
students learn to prepare for some of these exercises
since they are commonly used by employers hiring
EDHEC graduates.
You can read more about Management Assessment
Centers in the section on Job simulations in Reading 1.1
(see especially pages 15-19).

Types of reliability:

Reliability describes the consistency of scores obtained

by the same person when tested in different ways. One
common type of reliability important in employee
selection is test-retest reliability. This type of reliability
asks: are the results similar after retesting. Consider this
example. Imagine weighing yourself on a scale. The first
time you step on the scale you see you weigh 60 kilos. A
few seconds later, without having eaten anything or
exercised, you step on the scale again. What would you
expect? Right, you would still weigh 60 kilos. If this is
what happens, you would say that the scale is a reliable
way to measure your weight. It is a type of test-retest
reliability.

Inter-rater reliability. Is another important type of

reliability, especially when several individuals are used
in the organization to assess candidates. Different raters
would come up with the same rating of an individual, if
they used the same test. Rating an application blank
may be relatively easy. Getting the same grade from a
job interview, especially one that is unstructured, as we
will see, is a different story. In a later module, we will
see though how to improve inter-rater reliability of the
interview by structuring the questions and creating a
more uniform score sheet when interviewing
candidates.

A third type of reliability which is also important in

construction of good tests, especially when multiple
items are involved, is that of internal consistency
reliability, two examples of which are the item-to-total
or split half-reliability. Suppose it’s a personality test
measuring self-confidence. With split half reliability, the
score on the first half of the test should correlate with
that of the second half. That is, if you scored high on the
first part, you should score high on the second part, and
if you scored low on part I, you should score low on Part
II. The same holds for average scores on both parts. Of
course, individual scores may differ, but if administered
to a large group, this should be the general pattern.

Types of validity:

Employers demonstrate the content validity of a test by

showing that the test constitutes a fair sample of the
job’s content. The basic procedure here is to first carry
out a job analysis. This helps you to identify job tasks
that are critical to performance. Next, randomly select a
sample of those tasks to test.
Criterion-based validity means demonstrating that
those who do well on the test will also do well on the
job, and that those who do poorly on the test do poorly
on the job. In psychological measurement, a predictor is
the measurement (in this case, the test score) that you
are trying to relate to a criterion, such as performance
on the job. We will come back to this.