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Personnel selection
HRM: leading teams / Prof. Grote
17.03.2008
Personnel selection methods
Dr. Hannes Günter
Personnel selection
Personnel selection methods• Prototypical procedure in personnel selection
• Requirements analysis and predictors
• Types of selection methods
• Assessment Center
• Interviews
• Situational / Behavior Description Interview
• Benefits of personnel selection
• Exercise on Behavior Decription Interview
Theory
Exercise
Personnel selection
Selection of predictors (e.g., interview, test)
Job analysis
Job requirements
Pla
nn
ing
Selection of success criteria
Assessment and combination of success criteria
Eva
luat
ion
Validity testing
Cost-benefit analysis
Assessment of predictors
Decision about selection/placementIm
ple
men
tati
on
Prototypical procedure in personnel selection
Personnel selection
Job and requirements analysis
•Purpose: Identification of critical job components and requirements for the job incumbent (KSAOs, i.e., knowledge, skills, abilities, other characteristics)
•Common methods in job / requirements analysis:• Observation (e.g., systematic observation of job incumbents)• Interview (e.g., Critical Incident Technique)• Survey (e.g., descriptions of tasks to be rated on their job
relevance)• Work diary (i.e., log of activities over prescribed period of time)• Document analysis (e.g., analysis of job documentation such as
operating procedures)
Personnel selection
Predictors:•Procedures for assessing fit between person and predefinied requirements
Predictive validity: •Extent to which selection scores predict future job performance•Predictive validity expressed as correlation coefficient (r), i.e., a measure of the strength /
direction of linear relationship between predictor and criterion•Range of r: -1.0 to 1.0, predictive validity in reality mostly between 0 and 0.5
How to determine predictive validity: •Administer predictor to job incumbents but do not include predictor scores in the decision
to hire•Compare predictor scores and performance scores, e.g., 12 months later•Comparison shows benefit over existing selection strategy
Predictors and their validity
Personnel selection
Types of personnel selection methods
1. Disposition
• Measurement of relatively stable traits mainly with psychometric tests
• Example: Cognitive ability tests (e.g., general intelligence), personality assessment (e.g., integrity)
2. Behavior
• Behavioral simulation of tasks representative of the job
• Example: Assessment Center
3. Biographical approach
• Measurement of past behavior to predict future behavior
• Example: Behavior Description Interview
Personnel selection
Assessment Center - Basics
1. Preparing
• Job and requirements analysis
• Training of assessors
2. Conducting
• Roughly 6-12 candidates
• Duration: 1-3 days
• Core idea: multitrait-multimethod combination (and multiple assessors)
3. Evaluating
• Assessors discuss and cross-check their observations and findings, and jointly come to a conclusion for each candidate (and eventually give practical recommendations)
Validity of Assessment Center: r = .37 (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998)
Personnel selection
Components of an Assessment Center
Oral Presentation
Group discussion
Simulation
In-basket / In-tray
Personnel selection
Personnel selection interview
Personnel selection interview: one applicant, one or several interviewers
Content: Professional education, job experience, skills and knowledge, and questions on CV related aspects
Purpose of interview: select qualified candidates, face-to-face meeting to: present the company, learn about applicants‘ expectations, discuss contract issues
Basis for decision-making: Answers and impressions from non-verbal behavior are combined intuitively
Personnel selection
Unstructured interviews
Difficulties in unstructured interviews
• Validity: r = 0.38 (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998)
• Information from the application form influences interviewer‘s behavior and assessment
• Interviewer bias: attractiveness, clothing, facial expressions and gestures (can) influence interviewers‘ predictions
• Impression management strategies (e.g., name dropping) can be used to influence interviewers‘ predicitions
• First impression bias
Personnel selection
Unstructured interviews
Means to enhance validity of interviews:
• Use findings from in-depth job analysis to derive interview questions
• Pose standardized questions in the same order to all candidates
• Standardize evaluation of information gathered in interview
• Train interviewers
• Seperate information gathering and evaluation
• Computate the outcome evaluation via arithmetic combination of ratings on job-relevant dimensions
Validity of structured interviews: r = 0.51 (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998)
Personnel selection
Structured interview
Situational Interview (SI; Latham, Saari, Pursell & Campion, 1980)
• Assesses how candidates would (!) behave (if…then)
• Interview is based on a systematic job analysis known as the Critical Incident Technique (Flanagan; 1954)
• Incidents are turned into interview questions and job applicants are asked to indicate how they would behave in given situations
• Approach is based on goal setting theory (Locke & Latham, 1984)
• To facilitate objectivity, job experts develop behavioural statements that are used as benchmarks. Each answer is rated independently by two or more interviewers on a 5-point Likert scale.
Personnel selection
Structured interview
Example of a question in a situational interview
“Your spouse and two teenage children are sick in bed with a cold. There are no relatives or friends available to look after them. Your shift starts in 3 hours. What would you do in this situation?“
Three answers as benchmarks
1 point: I‘d stay home – my spouse and family come first.
3 points: I‘d phone my supervisor and explain my situation.
5 points: Since they only have colds, I‘d come to work.
(Example taken from Schuler, 2003)
Personnel selection
Structured interview
Behavior Description Interview (BDI; Janz, Hellervik & Gilmore, 1986)
• Questions focus on what applicants have accomplished (or failed to accomplish), and how they went about doing it.
• Underlying assumption: “The best predictor of the future is the past.”
• Aims at collecting detailed behaviour descriptions of actual events from applicants‘ job experiencesDevelopment of BDI:
• Based on Critical Incident Technique
• Critical incidents are grouped into 5 to 10 dimensions (examples: communication skills, conflict management)
• Several questions are developed for each dimension; questions are relatively loosely linked to the critical incident; guiding question + additional questions
Personnel selection
Structured interview
Example of BDI question (e.g., dimension of time management):
Guiding question:
1. Please tell us about one of your projects, which you did not accomplish in time.
Additional questions:
2. Which difficulties did you face during the project?
3. How did you cope with these difficulties?
4. What did you do in order to prevent such difficulties in the future?
Personnel selection
Structured interview
Evaluation of BDI:
• Each dimension (e.g., communication skills) is to be evaluated separately – after the interview
• Evaluation: Read notes that were taken during the interviews, and assess each applicant on a 5-point Likert scale
• Each dimension is weighted according to its relevance
Total score of an applicant:
• Total score of an applicant = (Score dimension1 × weight
dimension1) + (Score dimension2 × weight dimension2)…
Personnel selection
Personality dispositions• General cognitive ability tests ~ .51• Integrity tests ~ .41• Conscientiousness tests ~ .31• Graphology ~ .02
Behavioral simulation• Work samples ~ .54• Assessment center ~ .37
Biographical focus• CV/references ~ .26• Biographical data measures ~ .35• Structured interview ~ .51• Unstructured interview ~ .38
Validity of different selection methods(Schmidt & Hunter, 1998)
Personnel selection
•Success rate (proportion of suitable persons among the selected persons) depends on:
• Predictive validity of predictors (r)• Base rate (BR) = percentage of applicants who would have
acceptable job performance if they were hired• Selection ratio (SR) = percentage of applicants hired
•Chances for selecting the „wrong“ applicant are low if high predictive validity, high base rate, low selection ratio (cf., Taylor-Russel table)
Benefits of personnel selection („utility analysis“)
Personnel selection
Taylor-Russel table: examples
Selection ratio (SR)
Predictive validity (r) .10 .80
.25 47% 33%
.50 65% 35%
Base rate: .30
Figures in red: % of hires that will turn out to have acceptable job performance
Selection ratio (SR)
Predictive validity (r) .10 .80
.25 84% 73%
.50 94% 77%
Base rate: .70
