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The Road to
I/O Psychology
at the RCMP
November 2011
James Lea, Director
Assessment and Research
HR Sector, RCMP
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Overview
• Background
• Current job
• Working in the applied world
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University road…
• B.A., Psychology, McGill
• M.A., General Experimental Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier
University
• Ph.D., Basic and Applied Psychology, Queen’s
• Post-Doctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley
• Assistant Professor, Queen’s (one-year term)
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Crossroads: University or applied…
Job hunting…
• Another post-doc?
• Another one-year term?
• Personnel Psychology Centre?
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Industrial and Organizational Psychology
• Personnel Selection
• What measured
• How measure
• Legal context
• Performance
Management
• Learning and
Development
• Organizational change
• Teamwork
• Org attitudes and
behaviours
• Occupational Health
• Work motivation
• Leadership
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Personnel Psychology Centre
• Part of Public Service Commission of Canada
• Test Development, Assessment Centres, Executive
Counselling, etc.
• My tasks
• Revising a management simulation exercise for economists
• Development of a job analysis training workshop
• Working at assessment centres for management trainees, middle
managers, entry level economists
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• Heard about another opportunity…
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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police
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A safe and secure Canada
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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police
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Human Resources Sector
• Classifying
• Selecting
• Training
• Staffing
• Compensating
• Occupational Health and Safety
• Employee and Management Relations
• Etc…
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Assessment and Research, HR Sector
• Internal Consultants
• Industrial/Organizational Psychology
• Currently 5 professional staff
• Collaborate with Policy Centres on a range of projects
• Job analyses and competency profiling
• Assessment tool development and administration
• for Recruiting, promotion, performance management, etc.
• Organizational Behaviour Research projects
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Some A&R specific projects
• Develop police officer and civilian tests and interviews
• Processing thousands of answer sheets annually
• Train interviewers
• Lead job analysis and competency profiling workshops
• Implement Computerized Adaptive Testing
• Improvements to many selection systems
• Int’l Promotion process web survey
• Demographic research and requests
• Research approval board
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Some A&R specific projects
And some tasks that take a huge chunk of time:
• Putting out fires
• Making policy recommendations
• “Debating” with other units re how systems should
change….
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Some work done on own
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Much work is collaborative
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A&R Practical Challenges
• Persuading management that HR (e.g., personnel
selection) is more than “common sense”
• Getting best practice knowledge on the discussion table
• Cooperation with people with different backgrounds and
agendas
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Management reviews an HR program
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Benefits in RCMP HR include…
• Working for a national icon that’s in the news
regularly!
• Deal with a wide range of interesting jobs
• Easy to see positive impact of work done by
organization (safe homes, safe communities)
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Committees, networks…
• Unlike much research, a broad mandate / range of
activities
• People doing very similar work around Ottawa, Canada
and the world
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Professional associations
• Ottawa I/O Psychology Group
• Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational
Psychology
• Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
• Conferences, on-line discussions, etc.
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Applied work: Challenges
• Less control over research topics
• Logic doesn’t always carry the day…agendas…
• Usually generalists rather than specialists
• Often explaining (and lobbying for) the basics
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Applied work: Benefits
• Rule of law; much more structured
• 9 to 5 (ish)
• Social
• Easy to see contribution
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Lessons Learned
• Not everyone has faith in expertise and research
• Goals and agendas can be very different
• Power of informal communication networks
• Importance of “soft skills”
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How to prepare for an applied job….
• Broad technical knowledge (at fingertips)
• Soft skills (communication, planning, …)
• Teamwork
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QUESTIONS
james.lea@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
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Practical Challenges in HR
Schmidt & Hunter, 1998 –
Meta-analysis
Work sample tests, r = .54
Intelligence tests, r = .51
Structured interviews, r = .51
Job knowledge test, r = .48
Trg & Exp beh. consistency ratings, r = .45
Job try-out procedure, r = .44
Schmidt & Hunter, 1998 –
Meta-analysis
Integrity tests, r = .41
Unstructured interviews, r = .38
Assessment centres, r = .37
Biographical data measures, r = .35
Situational judgment tests*, r = .34
Conscientiousness tests, r = .31
Reference checks, r = .26
Schmidt & Hunter, 1998 –
Meta-analysis
Job experience (years), r = .18
Trg. & exp. point method, r = .11
Years of education, r = .10
Interests, r = .10
Graphology, r = .02
Age, r = -.01
Schmidt & Hunter, 1998
– Meta-analysis
General mental ability AND
 Integrity tests, R = .65
 Work sample tests, R = .63
 Structured interviews, R = .63
 Conscientiousness tests, R = .60
 Job Knowledge tests, R = .58