Personnel Selection and Training
Chapter 18 in text
 Selecting workers with the right skills
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Visual search
Decision making
Interpersonal skills
Motivation
Poorest Method?
 Interviews and References
 Why?
 However, most common used.
Employment Laws
 Require hiring choices to be justified
 Proven not to be
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Arbitrary
Discriminatory
 Hence, wealth of selection methods
Selection Testing
 Based on a signal detection idea
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HIT: hiring a person good at the job
MISS: not hiring someone who would have been
good at the job
FALSE ALARM: hiring someone who does a
poor job
CORRECT REJECTION: not hiring someone
who would have done a poor job
Signal Detection Idea
MISS
HIT
Job Performance
Acceptable Job Performance
Expensive!
FA
CR
Don’t Hire Hire
Test Score
Test score cutoff
Tests of Cognitive Ability
 Verbal ability
 Perceptual speed
 Memory
 Spatial or mechanical ability
 Reasoning or analytical ability
 Ability to pay attention
Example: Picture Memory Test
 Look at the following picture for 30s
 Write down all the objects you saw
How did you do?
Mental Rotation Test
Which is the same as the object on the left, A or B?
Mental Rotation Test
Which is the same as the object on the left, A or B?
Perceptual Speed Test
Match the house in the top left with its identical match. Put
up your hand when you have found the match.
Used for inspection jobs (airport screeners, xray techs etc.)
Object Displacement Test
Observe the following objects for 15s
Used for determining ability to find objects, follow maps,
remember landmarks
Object Displacement Test
Which object is missing?
Used for determining ability to find objects, follow maps,
remember landmarks
Which one was it?
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Car
Leaves
Frog
Horse
Chair
Plane
Computer
Snowman
Truck
Lion
Personality Testing
 Usually looking for
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Neuroticism
Extroversion
Openness
Agreeableness
conscientiousness
Eysenck Personality Test
 Sample questions for “extroversion”
 ARE YOU INCLINED TO BE SLOW AND DELIBERATE IN YOUR
ACTIONS?
 Y?N
 DO YOU OFTEN BUY THINGS ON IMPULSE?
 Y?N
 DO YOU OFTEN CHANGE YOUR INTERESTS?
 Y?N
 ARE YOU RATHER CAUTIOUS IN NOVEL SITUATIONS?
 Y?N
Catell 16PF Test
 I am carefree.
 Very inaccurate 1 2 3 4 5 Very Accurate
 I don’t mind eating alone.
 Very inaccurate 1 2 3 4 5 Very Accurate
 I take things personally
 Very inaccurate 1 2 3 4 5 Very Accurate
 Problems with “Personality Tests”
 Want to test yourself?
 www.similarminds.com
Work Sample Tests
 Ask candidate to do a work type problem
 Or watch other workers and critique their
work
 Usefulness depends on relevance of the
problem
 Fairly strong predictive validity
Example: Case Interviewing
 You are called in by Pizza Hut to
help them develop a strategy for
entering the home delivery market
in which Domino's has the
dominant position. As lead
consultant on this project, what
would you do?"
Suggested Solutions
 Identify the appropriate framework or
interpretation of the problem.
 Identify the key issues and state them to
show you understand the problem.
 Dig deeper into the key issues, ask questions,
clarification, listen carefully.
Structured Interviews
 Ask all candidates the same questions
 “Critical behaviour” interview
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Built on eliciting past behaviour
Tell me about a time when you had to
facilitate the operation of a team. How
did you get involved? What did you
do? How did it turn out?"
 The MIT “STAR” method for behavioral
interview answers
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Situation
Task
Action
Results
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Example of a STAR Answer
Describe a time when a team member came to you for help. What was the
situation? How did you respond?
Situation: I was a member of a UROP group within MIT's Media Lab where we
were working on a virtual reality project. The team was comprised of one
professor, three graduate students, and two undergraduates (including myself).
Task: The undergraduates were primarily responsible for a specific part of the
program coding. I noticed that an undergraduate team member was having
trouble with their coding and it looked like he wasn't going to be able to meet the
deadline for the next day.
Action: I noticed that he was getting frustrated but I didn't want to upset him by
asking if he needed help. I casually went by and began some small talk.
Eventually he asked me a few questions about the project and as we talked
further he felt more comfortable to ask more and more questions. I spent the rest
of the afternoon coaching him through the project.
Result: He was able to submit his portion of the project on time. The professor
was extremely happy with the results and he consulted with us on future coding
segments of the project.
Preparing for Behavioural
Interviews
 Anticipate the critical behaviours
 Identify a few key stories from your past
 Identify negative and positive stories
 Formulate STAR answers
 Practice them