Selecting
Employees
DeNotra Geddis
April 11, 2005
Why Do Organizations Hire
Employees?
• Employees are hired to fill newly
created positions in organizations
• Employees are hired to replace
individuals who have left the
organization
Four Steps to Employee
Selection
• Planning the
need for new
employees
• Getting
appropriate
persons to apply
for positions
(recruitment)
• Deciding whom
to hire (selection)
• Getting the
selected people
to take jobs
Diagram of Acquiring New
Employees
Planning
Selecting Applicants
Acquiring Applicants
Hiring
Planning Of Human
Resource Needs
• To Maintain the livelihood of an
organization, it must have a
steady supply of human
resources, or people.
• To do a good job of recruiting the
people needed by an organization,
careful planning is necessary
Recruiting Applicants
• Organizations need to be able hire
qualified people. In order to fulfill
this requirement there must be a
large number of job applicants to
choose from.
Six Possible Sources Of
Applicants
• Advertising
(newspapers,
fliers, etc.)
• Employee
Referral
• Employment
Agencies
(Unemployment
Offices)
• School
Recruiters (Job
fairs)
• Walk-ins
• Web (Monster.
com)
Issues with Recruitment
• Different sources of job applicants do not
necessarily attract the same quality of
applicants.
• According to Zottoli and Wanous (2000)
reviewed 50 years of research on applicant
sources and found consistent evidence that
inside sources, employee referrals of
acquaintances or friends, rehires or those
who had previously worked at the
organization and transfers from inside the
organization provided employees who
performed better and remained on the job
longer on average than outside sources.
How do Organizations
Select Employees?
• Most often used approach,
manager interviews the applicant
and decides subjectively whom to
hire.
• Purely subjective hiring
procedures are likely to be biased
and inaccurate.
Important Elements in
Employee Selection
• Employers must know what the
criterion is for the job in question.
• The second element is the
predictor, which is anything that
relates to the criterion.
• The previous techniques can be
used to assess KSAOs
Validation Studies
• Validation studies are research studies that
attempt to show that the predictor relates to
the criterion.
• Both the criterion and predictor are qualified.
• Data is collected for a group of employees on
both variables.
• The correlation coefficient indicates how well
the two variables relate to each other. If the
two variables are significantly related, it can
be concluded that the predictor is valid in
terms of the criterion.
Conduction a Validation
Study
•
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Conducting a validation study
involves five steps:
Conduct a job analysis
Specify job performance criteria
Choose predictors
Validate the predictors
Cross-validate
Conducting a Job Analysis
• Provides information about the
tasks involved in a job
• Also provides information about
the KSAOs needed to do the job
successfully
Specifying Job Performance
Criteria
• Once an employer has a good
idea about what a job entails,
criteria for good job performance
can be developed.
Choose Predictors
• As an organization develops
criteria for a job, it also chooses
potential predictors of job
performance on those criteria.
Validate the Predictors
• Measures of the criterion and the predictors are taken
on a sample of people to see whether the predictor
relates to the criterion.
• By conducting field studies in the settings in which
selection tools will ultimately be used, the likelihood of
generalization is maximized.
• There are 2 types of study designs.
• Concurrent validation and predictive validity studies.
• Concurrent validation both the criterion and predictor
scores are collected from a sample of participants at
more or less the same point in time.
• Predictive validity, the predictors are measured before
the criterion.
Cross-Validation
• The final step in a validation study is to
cross-validate, or replicate the results
of one sample with those of another
sample.
• 2 samples are needed to conduct a
cross-validation. The first sample is
used to determine whether the criterion
and the predictor are significantly
correlated. A second sample is used to
see whether the significant found in the
first sample can be repeated on the
second.
Validity Generalization
• Validity generalization means that
validities of selection devices are
generalizable or transportable
from job to job and organization to
organization.
How Predictor Information
is Used for Selection
• Multiple Hurdles: approach sets a
criterion for each predictor. If an
applicant achieves that criterion, then
the hurdle is passed. It is efficient to
use multiple hurdles in a specified
order and eliminate applicants as the
assessment process goes from hurdle
to hurdle.
• Regression Approach: this approach
uses the score from each predictor in
an equation to provide a numerical
estimate of the criterion.
Alternatives to Conducting
Validation Studies
• An alternative approach is to rely
on the established validity of
selection tools that can be linked
to KSAO requirements.
Getting Applicants to
Accept Job Offers and Keep
Jobs
• Ensure that salaries are comparable to those
of other organizations for similar jobs in the
same area.
• Negotiate salary and other rewards with the
potential employee.
• Cafeteria benefits allow employees to pick
and choose benefits from a long list of
possibilities, such as different types of
insurance policies, stocks and bonds.
• Care must be taken to present conditions at
the work honestly and accuraretly.
Realistic Job Preview (RJP)
• Used to give job applicants accurate
information about the job and the
organization. It is most typically
accomplished with a brochure or
videotaped presentation.
• A good RJP provides an accurate view
of both favorable and unfavorable
aspects of a job, so that a person who
accepts a job will do so with accurate
and realistic expections.
How Valid Selection
Devices Work
• Utility analysis: The analysis of the
financial benefits to an
organization of taking a course of
action.
• Three basic concepts form the
foundation of utility analysis
Base rate
Selection ratio
Validity
• Baserate: is the percentage of applicants who
would be successful on the job if all of them
were hired.
• Selection Ration: the proportion of job
applicants that an organization must hire. It is
calculated as the number of positions to fill
divided by the number of applicants
• Validity: The validity of a selection device is
the magnitude of correlation between it and
the criterion. The correlation, the more
accurately the criterion can be forecast by
selection device.
Legal Issues
• Prior to 1964 in the United States,
discrimination against ethnic minorities
and women was widespread for many
jobs, particularly for the most desirable
and highest-paying ones.
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made it
illegal to discriminate against minorities
and other areas of life in U.S. society.
Protected Classes
• Comprise of persons who have
been the target of discrimination in
the past, namely AfricanAmericans, Hispanics, Native
Americans, and women.