Ch05-Selecting Employees

Fundamentals of
Human Resource
Management
2e
Gary Dessler
Selecting Employees
Chapter 5
5-2
Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall
When you finish studying this chapter,
you should be able to:
1. Define basic testing concepts, including validity and
reliability.
2. Discuss at least four basic types of personnel tests.
3. Explain the factors and problems that can
undermine an interview’s usefulness, and
techniques for eliminating them.
4. Explain the pros and cons of background
investigations, reference checks, and pre-
employment information services.
5-3
Why Careful Selection Is Important
 Leads to improved employee and

organizational performance.
 Your own performance always depends
partly on the performance of your
subordinates.
 Can help reduce dysfunctional behaviors at
work.
 It’s costly to recruit and hire employees.
5-4
Legal Implications and Negligent Hiring
 Negligent hiring
∟ Hiring workers
with criminal
records or other
such problems
without proper
safeguards
5-5
Reliability
 Reliability
∟ Consistency of scores obtained by the same
person when the person is retested with the
identical test or with an equivalent form of a test
∟ Retest estimate
∟ Equivalent-form estimate
∟ Internal comparison estimate
5-6
Validity
 Test validity
∟ The accuracy with which a test, interview, etc.
measures what it purports to measure or fulfills
the function it was designed to fulfill
5-7
Validity
• Criterion validity • Content validity

 Scores on the test  The test contains a fair
(predictors) are related sample of the tasks
to job performance and skills actually
(criterion). needed for the job in
question.
5-8
A Slide from the Rorschach Test: Figure
5.1
5-9
How to Validate a Test: Figure 5.2
5-10
Sample Selection Test: Figure 5.3
5-11
Using Tests at Work
 Outback is looking for employees who are

highly social, meticulous, sympathetic, and
adaptable.
 Outback uses a special personality assessment
test as part of a three-step pre-employment
interview process.
 The company compares the candidate’s test
results to the profile for Outback Steakhouse
employees.
5-12
Tests of Cognitive Abilities
 Intelligence tests (IQ tests)

∟ Tests of general intellectual abilities including
memory, vocabulary, verbal fluency, and numeric
ability
www.wonderlic.com
5-13
Type of Question Applicant Might Expect on a
Test of Mechanical Comprehension: Figure 5.4
5-14
Tests of Motor and Physical Abilities
 Measure finger dexterity, strength, manual

dexterity, and reaction time
 Stromberg Dexterity Test
∟ Measures the speed and accuracy of simple
judgment as well as the speed of finger, hand,
and arm movements
5-15
Personality Tests
 Emphasize the “big five” personality

dimensions as they apply to personnel
testing
 Extroversion, Emotional stability,
Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness
to experience
 Most difficult tests to evaluate and use
5-16
Personality Tests
 Conscientiousness shows a consistent

relationship with all job performance
criteria.
 Extroversion is a valid predictor of
performance for managers and sales
employees.
 Openness to experience and extroversion
predicts training proficiency for all
occupations.
5-17
Using Tests at Work
• Interest inventories • Achievement tests

 Compare one’s  Measure what a
interests with those of person has learned
people in various
occupations
5-18
Ann Weaver
User:
Sample Items from Wonderlic
Note that the
answer given
for question 1 is
Personnel Test: Figure 5.6
incorrect. Niiice.
5-19
Situational Judgment Tests
 Situational judgment tests

∟ Personnel tests that “are designed to assess an
applicant’s judgment regarding a situation
encountered in the workplace”
5-20
Management Assessment Centers
 Management assessment center

∟ A facility in which management candidates are
asked to make decisions in hypothetical
situations and are scored on their performance
5-21
• In-basket • Leaderless group

 The candidate is faced discussion
with an accumulation  A leaderless group is
of reports, memos, given a discussion
notes of incoming question and told to
phone calls, letters, arrive at a group
and other materials. decision.
5-22
 Individual presentations
∟ A participant’s
communication skills and
persuasiveness are
evaluated by having the
participant make an oral
presentation on an assigned
topic.
5-23
Interviewing Candidates
 Selection interview
∟ Selection procedure designed to predict future
job performance on the basis of applicants’ oral
responses to oral inquiries
5-24
Types of Selection Interviews
• Non-structured • Structured
 Interviewer asks  Questions are
questions as they specified in advance
come to mind. and the responses may
 No set format to be rated for
follow. appropriateness of
content.
 Also called directive.
5-25
Types of Questions
 Situational interviews
∟ Questions focus on the candidate’s ability to
project what his or her behavior would be in a
given situation
 Behavioral interview
∟ Applicants are asked how they behaved in some
situation in the past
5-26
Behavioral Interviews
 When Citizens Banking Corporation in Flint,

Michigan found that 31 of the 50 people in its
call center quit in one year, the center’s head
switched to behavioral interviews.
 She says this makes it much harder to fool the
interviewer, and, indeed, only four people left
her center in the following year.
5-27
How Interviews Are Administered
 Sequential interview
∟ Several people interview the applicant in
sequence before making a hiring decision
 Panel interview
∟ Candidate is interviewed simultaneously by a
group (or panel) of interviewers
5-28
How Useful Are Interviews?
 Situational interviews yield a higher mean

validity than behavioral interviews do.
 Structured interviews are generally more
useful for predicting job performance.
 One-on-one interviews tend to be more valid
than panel interviews.
5-29
Common Interviewing Mistakes
• Snap judgments • Influence of nonverbal

• Negative emphasis behavior
• Not knowing the job • Attractiveness
• Pressure to hire • Ingratiation
• Candidate order • Nonverbal
(contrast) error implications
5-30
Guidelines for Conducting an Interview
 Structure the interview

 Review background
 Establish rapport
 Ask questions
 Close the interview
 Review the interview
5-31
Structure the Interview
1. Base questions on actual job duties

2. Use job knowledge, situational, or
behaviorally oriented questions and objective
criteria
3. Train interviewers
4. Use the same questions with all candidates
5-32
Structure the Interview
5. Use rating scales to

rate answers
6. Use multiple
interviewers or panel
interviews
7. Use structured
interview form
5-33
Sample Interview Questions: Figure
5.8
5-34
5.8
5-35
5.8
5-36
Talent Management: Profiles and
Employee Interviews
5-37
Background Investigations and
Reference Checks
 Most commonly verified background areas are
legal eligibility for employment, dates of prior
employment, military service, education, and
identification.
 Other items should include county criminal
records, motor vehicle record, credit, licensing
verification, Social Security number, and
reference checks.
5-38
Collecting Background Information
 Most employers try to directly verify an

applicant’s current position, salary, and
employment dates with his or her current
employer by phone.
 Others call the applicant’s current and previous
supervisors to try to discover more about the
applicant’s motivation, technical competence,
and ability to work with others.
5-39
Checking Social Networking Sites
 More employers are checking candidates’

social networking sites’ postings.
 Recruiters found that 31% of applicants had
lied about their qualifications and 19% had
posted information about their drinking or
drug use.
5-40
Making Reference Checks More Useful
1. Have the candidate sign a release

2. Obtain two forms of identification
3. Ensure the applicants complete the application
fully
4. Use a structured reference-checking form
5. Use the references offered by the applicant as a
source of other people who may know of the
applicant’s performance
5-41
Honesty Testing
 Polygraph tests
 Pencil-and-paper honesty tests
 Graphology
 Medical exams
 Drug screening
5-42
Making the Selection Decision
1. Whichever approach you use, use it

systematically.
2. It is very helpful to create, using the multiple
regression statistical approach, a formula
that relates your criterion score with scores
on several weighted predictor scores.
3. A more informal approach is still usually
better than nothing.
5-43
Evaluating the Selection Process
5-44
Complying with Immigration Law
 Candidate does not have to be a U.S. citizen.

 Employer should ask if candidate is lawfully
authorized to work in the U.S.
 Pre-employment screening should include
employment verification, criminal record
checks, drug screens, and reference checks.
5-45
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
5-46

Ch05-Selecting Employees

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ch05-Selecting Employees

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Fundamentals of

 Leads to improved employee and

• Criterion validity • Content validity

 Outback is looking for employees who are

 Intelligence tests (IQ tests)

 Measure finger dexterity, strength, manual

 Emphasize the “big five” personality

 Conscientiousness shows a consistent

• Interest inventories • Achievement tests

 Situational judgment tests

 Management assessment center

• In-basket • Leaderless group

 When Citizens Banking Corporation in Flint,

 Situational interviews yield a higher mean

• Snap judgments • Influence of nonverbal

 Structure the interview

1. Base questions on actual job duties

5. Use rating scales to

 Most employers try to directly verify an

 More employers are checking candidates’

1. Have the candidate sign a release

1. Whichever approach you use, use it

 Candidate does not have to be a U.S. citizen.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

You might also like