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1.1.1.1.1 Chapter Summary
The following requirements to use a personnel selection device are discussed: reliability, validity,
generalizability, utility, and legality. The following methods of selection are discussed, in terms
of the above factors, how the methods work in practice, and how they can be improved for use:
interviews, reference checks, biographical information, physical ability tests, cognitive ability
tests, personality inventories, work-sample tests, honesty tests, and drug tests. The importance of
the use of multiple measures and multiple judges in selection is emphasized.
Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter the student should be able to:
1. Establish the basic scientific properties of selection methods, including reliability,
validity, and generalizability.
2. Discuss how the particular characteristics of a job, organization, or applicant affect the
utility of any test.
3. Describe the government's role in personnel selection decisions, particularly in the areas
of constitutional law, federal laws, executive orders, and judicial precedent.
4. List the common methods used in selecting human resources.
5. Describe the degree to which each of the common methods used in selecting human
resources meets the demands of reliability, validity, generalizability, utility, and legality.
Extended Chapter Outline
Note: Key terms appear in boldface and are listed in the "Chapter Vocabulary" section.
Opening Vignette:
The Minority Majority
For the first time in US history, in 2012 the first ever “natural decrease” in population occurred
among whites of European ancestry. Simply put, the demographics of the American population
and subsequently the labor force is changing rapidly. Despite advances in racial relations (for
example, the election on an African American President in the US in 2008 and 2012), stereotypes
and the issues associated with them still appear to abound.
Discussion Question
1. With all of the assumed advances made in race relations, coupled with the changing demographic
profile of the American population and labor force, what impacts do you see these conditions
having on employee selection? On employee relations?
The answers to this question will almost certainly be varied. It appears that employers
1.1.2 I. Introduction
The chapter will familiarize students with ways to minimize errors in employee selection
and placement, and doing so improve the organization's competitive position. Five
selection method standards will be discussed: reliability, validity, generalizability, utility
and legality.
1.1.2.1.1.1.1.1 II. Selection Method Standards
A. Reliability is the degree to which a measure of physical or cognitive abilities, or
traits, is free from random error. If a measure of a stable characteristic is reliable,
the score a person receives will be consistent over time and over different
contexts. Reliability is a necessary but insufficient characteristic of a good
measuring device (See Figure 6.1 a & b).
1. Estimating the Reliability of Measurement—The concept of reliability is
demonstrated by measuring height at different times. Even though height
is supposedly a stable characteristic, slightly different results are generated
every time height is measured. Each measurement is then composed of
"true height" and "error of measurement." The average of all the errors
(ignoring the positive or negative value) is referred to as the reliability of
measurement. Reliability in this example refers to the measuring
instrument (a ruler versus a visual guess) rather than to the characteristic
itself.
a. The correlation coefficient is a measure of the degree to which two
sets of numbers are related. The correlation coefficient expresses
the strength of the relationship in numerical form. A perfect
positive relationship equals +1.0; a perfect negative relationship
equals –1.0.
b. When assessing the reliability of a measure, we might be interested
in knowing how scores on the measure at one time relate to scores
on the same measure at another time. This is what is called
assessing test-retest reliability.
2. Standards for Reliability—Clearly, the more reliable the measure, the
more likely decisions can be made on score differences. There are many
ways to increase the reliability of a test, including writing clear and
unambiguous items and increasing the length of a test.
B. Validity is the extent to which a performance measure assesses all the relevant
–and only the relevant- aspects of job performance. Criterion-related validation
1. Criterion-related validation is a method of establishing the validity of a
personal selection method by showing a substantial correlation between test
scores and job-performance scores. There are two types of criterion-related
validity:
a. Predictive validation is a criterion-related validity study that
seeks to establish an empirical relationship between applicants’ test
scores and their eventual performance on the job.
b. Concurrent validation is a criterion-related validity study in
which a test is administered to all the people currently in a job and
then incumbents’ scores are correlated with existing measures of
their performance on the job (processes are compared in Figure
6.3).
c. Predictive validation is superior to concurrent validation for three
reasons a) job applicants are typically motivated to perform well
on the tests than are current employees, b) current employees have
learned many things on the job that applicants have not yet learned,
c) current employees tend to be homogeneous.
2. Satisfactory levels of validity are typically defined by statistical
significance (text Table 6.1).
3. Content validation is a test-validation strategy performed by
demonstrating that the items, questions, or problems posed by a test are a
representative sample of the kinds of situations or problems that may
occur on the job. There are two limitations to content validation a) the
person who is hired must have the knowledge, skills, or abilities at the
time he or she is hired and b) subjective judgment plays such a large role
in content validation.
Competing Through Technology:
Our Hiring Manager is an Algorithm
Many organizations are attempting to capitalize advances in data analysis technology by
replacing the decision to hire based on traditional face-to-face interview assessments (which may
be subject to personal biases) to computer programs that use algorithms based on “big data”
(long term data concerning success of new hires correlated with personality measures for
example) to find the “ideal employee”. The industry experienced 15% growth in one year to
$3.8 billion in 2011. There are issues related to adverse impacts by age, race and gender when
the algorithm retains items based only criterion-related validity that discriminate applicants in
terms of future outcomes.
Discussion Question
1. What types of jobs are best suited to “big data” hiring solutions like those discussed here?
Students may reply in terms of their own interests to this question. It is important for them to
realize that an algorithm may be able to discriminate applicants for jobs that have readily
2. What types of job categories are likely to always involve some degree of human judgment?
As mentioned above, jobs that are reliant on building long-term relationships with clients or
C. Generalizability is the degree to which the validity of a selection method
established in one context extends to other contexts.
1. It was once believed that validity coefficients were situationally specific—
that is, the level of correlation between test and performance would vary
as one went from one organization to another, even though the jobs still
seemed to be identical.
2. It was also believed that tests showed differential subgroup validity, which
meant that the validity coefficients for any test-job performance pair was
different for people of different races or genders.
3. Validity generalization stands as an alternative for validating selection
methods for companies that cannot employ criterion-related or content
validation.
D. Utility is the degree to which the information provided by selection methods
enhances the effectiveness of selecting personnel in real organizations. Utility is
impacted by reliability, validity, and generalizability. Other factors will influence
utility even when the latter is constant. For example, the selection ratio, which is
the percentage of people tested versus the total number of applicants, will impact
utility as well as the number of people selected (more people increase utility), race
of employee turnover, and level of performance among chose who leave (to
increase utility, turnover should be low with those leaving in low-performance
categories). (See Figure 6.4 a & b).
Evidence Based HR
Recent research evidence indicates that previous assumptions concerning the nature of the
statistical distribution of worker performance appear to be wrong. Previous analyses were based
on an assumption that performance takes the form of a normal distribution, whereas data
collected from over 600,000 employees take the form of a power law distribution. One example
of problems associated with that assumption is in the analysis of the difference in dollar value
between a “highly productive” worker and an “average worker” using the normal distribution is
$11,327 whereas that difference based on a power law distribution is $39,645 – and this is per
employee…
Exercise
Have the class break into small groups, perhaps of three to four students each. Ask them to
research the number of employees in larger corporations. Using the differences in dollar values
provided in the scenario, have them determine the potential loss in value to a company if various
percentages (e.g. 5%, 10%, 20% and 25%) of their employees were hired under erroneous
assumptions (i.e. hired under the assumption of a normal verses a power law distribution).
E. Legality—All selection methods must conform to existing laws and legal
precedents (Chapter 4 discusses these issues).
1. Federal Legislation—The Civil Rights Act of 1991 (an extension of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964) protects individuals from discrimination based
on race, color, sex, religion, and national origin with respect to hiring as
well as compensation and working conditions. The 1991 act differs from
the 1964 act in three different areas:
a. It defines employers' explicit obligation to establish the business
necessity of any neutral-appearing selection method that has an
adverse impact on protected groups.
b. It allows the individual filing the complaint to have a jury decide
whether he or she may recover punitive damages (in addition to
lost wages and benefits) for emotional injuries caused by the
discrimination.
c. It explicitly prohibits the granting of preferential treatment to
minority groups.
Competing Through Globalization:
“Pink Quotas” in Europe
Many European countries have instituted laws requiring listed and state-owned companies to
ensure a certain percentage of their board seats are held by women. For a variety of reasons,
some of these countries do not have enough qualified women to fill these seats and the
companies end up recruiting American women to fill them, which sometimes proves difficult to
do.
Discussion Question
1. How does greater representation of women on corporate boards promote both societal
goals and competiveness goals at the same time?
Any time students answer questions that are based on gender or race, their responses will
vary. In this case, students should identify the issues revolving around equality in terms
2. What long-term steps can be taken by countries and companies to eliminate the need for
quotas over time?
In the longer-term, countries should invest in training programs for women – not only in
2. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1991 protects individuals with
physical or mental disabilities (or with a history of the same):
a. "Reasonable accommodations" are required by the organization to
allow the disabled to perform essential functions of the job.
Examples of accommodations include restructuring jobs,
3. The executive branch of the government also regulate hiring decisions
through the use of executive orders. Executive Order 11246 parallels the
III. Types of Selection Methods
A. Selection interviews are defined as a dialogue initiated by one or more persons to
gather information and evaluate the qualifications of an applicant for
employment. It is the most widely used selection method, although research
suggests it can unreliable, low in validity, and biased against a number of groups.
1. The utility of an interview can be increased by the following suggestions:
a. Interviews should be structured, standardized, and focused on
accomplishing a small number of goals oriented to skills and
behaviors that are observable.
b. Interviewers should plan to come out of each interview with a
quantitative rating.
c. Interviewers should also have a structured note-taking system that
will aid recall when it comes to satisfying the ratings.
2. A situational interview is an interview procedure where applicants are
confronted with specific issues, questions, or problems that are likely to
arise on the job. They consist of:
a. Experience-based questions
b. Future-oriented questions.
B. References, biographical data, and applications blanks gather background
information on applicants before an interview. These techniques are, at best,
weak predictors of future job success. Typically, references are very positive
since only those who the applicants know will give a good reference are asked to
do so. Many suites have been filed against past employers’ revealing too much
information beyond job title and years of service. The biggest concern with the
use of biographical data is that applicants who supply the information may be
motivated to misrepresent themselves.
C. Physical ability tests may be relevant for predicting not only job performance but
to predict occupational injuries and disabilities as well. Criterion-related
validities tend to be quite strong, although adverse impact on the disabled and
women is highly possible. These tests measure:
1. muscular tension
2. muscular power
3. muscular endurance
4. cardiovascular endurance
5. flexibility
6. balance
7. coordination
D. Cognitive ability tests differentiate individuals based on their mental rather than
physical capacities. One of the major drawbacks to these tests is that they
typically have adverse impacts on some minority groups. Indeed, the size of the
differences is so large that some have advocated abandoning these types of tests
for making decisions regarding who will be accepted for certain schools or jobs.
1. Verbal comprehension refers to a person’s capacity to understand and use
written and spoken language.
2. Quantitative ability concerns the speed and accuracy at which one can
solve arithmetic problems.
3. Reasoning ability refers to a person’s capacity to invent solutions to many
diverse problems.
E. Personality inventories categorize individuals relative to what they can do,
personality measures tend to categorize individuals by what they are like.
Common dimensions assessed are extroversion, adjustment, agreeableness,
conscientiousness, and inquisitiveness (text Table 6.3 lists corresponding
adjectives for these dimensions).
Competing Through Sustainability:
When Do the Unemployed Become Unemployable?
Unemployment can be both an immediate and a long-term problem for many workers. It appears
that many US workers have been unemployed “long-term” – that is over 5.5 million workers for
over six months, and 4 million for over 12 months. That is a problem in the immediate term for
obvious reasons. However, perhaps the bigger problem is that some workers may no longer have
the up-to-date skills necessary to re-enter the workforce. This is compounded by the fact that
many employers assume the workers lack skill without properly investigating their skill-set and
other perceive that these long-term unemployed workers are unemployed simply because they
are either lazy, unmotivated to find work, or prefer not to work and collect unemployment if they
can.
Discussion Question
1. How might a systematic and comprehensive system of testing and reference checking
help eliminate some sources of long-term unemployment?
The answer here seems to be somewhat obvious – such a system would remove
2. On the other hand, in what sense does the solution to this problem go beyond hiring
practices of employers?
On the other hand, there is something to be said for personal responsibility. One could
F. Work-sample tests attempt to simulate the job in a prehiring context to observe
how the applicant performs in the simulated job. Work samples are job-specific
and tend to be high in criterion-related and content validity and low in adverse
impact. The disadvantages are that generalizability tends to be low, and they are
relatively expensive to develop. The technique used in managerial selection is the
assessment center, which is a process in which multiple raters evaluate
employees’ performance on a number of exercises.
H. Honesty tests and drug tests—The Polygraph Act of 1988 banned the use of
polygraph tests for private companies except pharmaceutical and security guard
suppliers. Paper-and-pencil honesty testing attempts to assess the likelihood that
employees will steal. Since these tests are new, there is little evidence on their
effectiveness.
Integrity in Action:
Local Politics and Hiring Collide for Contractors
Some US municipalities, in an effort to protect their local economy and citizenship, have passed
laws requiring contractors doing work for the municipality to hire local residents for those
projects. There are a multitude of issues with this – none the least is the fact that this restricts the
contractor for potentially hiring the best qualified people to do these jobs. One side of the
argument is that these jobs are not “important enough” to be a concern, whereas the other side of
the argument is that the integrity in structure when building a building is important.
Discussion Question
1. As this box shows, employers are often caught in a bind where government officials place
restrictions on whom they can hire, but at the same time, hold employers liable for any
hiring mistakes they make. How can employers meet both of these challenges when it
comes to making successful hiring decisions?
This is a true dilemma. Employers have to work to ensure they have hired the best
1.1.2.2 A Look Back
In the vignette that opened this chapter we saw how the demographic composition
of the U.S. is changing, and some of the implications this has for personnel selection
in the future. The decisions that organizations make regarding who is going to be
part of the team and who is going to be turned away, are some of the most important
decisions that the firm will make in terms of gaining a competitive advantage. These
decisions have to be based upon procedures that have been empirically validated
and not left to idiosyncratic judgments of untrained individuals who may be subject
to stereotyped biases. Firms that routinely recruit and select the “best of the best,”
regardless of the occupation leave their competitors with labor pool leftovers that
will constantly limit their ability to compete. This chapter has summarized hundreds
of years of research and demonstrated a large and varied set of tactics that firms can
use to make the right hiring decisions when it comes to the selection process.
1.1.2.2.1.1.1
1.1.2.2.1.1.2
1.1.2.2.1.1.3
1.1.2.2.1.1.4 Questions
1. Based on this chapter, what are the best methods of obtaining information about job
applicants?
Students answers may vary, but could include the following: interviews, references and biological data,
2. What are the best characteristics to look for in applicants, and how does this depend on
the nature of the job?
Students could include personality, interpersonal style, job knowledge and skill, and verbal, quantitative, and
3. If you could use only two of the methods described in this chapter and could assess only two of the
characteristics discussed, which would you choose, and why?
Interviews and references could be the two methods and interpersonal styles and job knowledge and skill could
