A complete summary of 4.3 Personnel Selection for Positive Organizational Psychology at the Erasmus University. This includes all literature, notes from lectures, formulas and answers to the assignments.
4.3C Personnel Selection
A complete summary of all lecture,
resources, exercises and questions
Course Code: FSWP426AO
Academic Year: 2019-2020
Professor: dr. prof. M.P.H. Born
, 4.3P Personnel Selection – Erasmus University Rotterdam (2019-2020)
Lecture 1: Introduction
Introduction
The goal of this course is to gain knowledge of the theories in personnel selection and the state-of-the-art in personnel selection. The
major themes in the lectures and tutorial groups will be: (1) predicting, deciding, and common selection methods, (2) diversity and
fairness, (3) utility, and (4) judgement in the selection process. To understand these topics, one must understand the methods which are
used to calculate certain scores (using an algorithm or machinery). The tutorial meetings will consist of exam type questions made by
the students in the group, which can be used to make the exam. Furthermore, preformulated questions will be answered as the literature
is too difficult to brainstorm on. In this course, it is essential to be able to explain concepts as well as name examples of these concepts
to show your understanding. The practical consists of a simulation of a selection procedure. There will be three guest lectures: two by
Alec Serlie and one by Annemarie Hiemstra. Furthermore, there will be a visit to a consultancy during this course.
Hypothetical Example: Principle of Effectiveness
The situation is the following: the number of students in the Psychology department has to be reduced due to cutbacks. This is done
through numerous fixus (an fixed amount of number of people which will be accepted). The consequence of this is that there must be a
selection before the program starts. This allows the university to work on their image of their educational program as they can now
control which students get in. This can for example be done through a first come first serve principle (e.g., subscribing for your thesis
topic). Another example is a pure random selection based on a lottery (e.g., getting a green card in America). There is also a type of
selection which is called a weighted random selection in which people are grouped in to category based on their previous performance
and based on this a person with better previous achievements has higher odds of being selected than a person with lower previous
achievements (e.g., the selection for medicine program). The method which is most similar to the methods discussed in this course, is
the top-down selection. This means that one selects based on excellence. People can either be rank ordered based on their abilities or
be selected based on a cut-off point. Finally, one can use multiple hurdles (different types of tests are used to make the selection decision).
If one were to rank these methods, it would look like this (0 being the lowest score and 4 being the highest): the first come first serve
principle scores about a 1 as it does not help to select the best candidate but it may show motivation, the pure random selection scores
about a 0 as it does not select candidates based on their abilities at all, weighted random selection scores about a 3 as it does discriminates
between higher skilled people and lower skilled people, and top-down selection (multiple hurdles) scores about a 4 as the method is
fully based on distinguishing skilled people from less skilled people. The striving of the organization is usually to maximize the chances
of the most talented individual who applies. That means that the order from least to most effective is: (1) pure random selection, (2) first
come first serve, (3) weighted lottery, and (4) selection procedure focused on selecting the best. This also reflects increased possibility
to control the outcome, increasing information about the applicants and reflects the differences between educational and commercial
settings (even though universities are now also using commercial practices).
The selection procedure is used to (1) predict information about the candidate and (2) make the decision on the basis of the prediction.
To make sure you can predict the future, one should determine the criterion (meaning what you want to measure; e.g., organizational
tenure). Furthermore, you should determine the predictor (meaning with what you want to measure; e.g., personality test). Nevertheless,
one should determine beforehand what the definition of a successful job performance of the organization is. This is often related to the
organizational goal and the extent to which the employee contributes to the organizational goal. This strongly depends on the type of
organization (e.g., profit or non-profit). It seems that successful performance is harder to capture in a term for a non-profit organization
than a profit organization. When applying this to the example of Psychology program, the goal of the university is to educate general
problem solvers, educate experts, educate responsible citizens, provide opportunity for self-enhancement, and to increase the state
income.
After determining what the goal of the organization is, one can determine the conceptual criteria. A conceptual criterion is different
from the operationalization of the criterion, which relates to how the concept is measured. An example of a concept is that a student
should have general knowledge about a topic. This is not related to the measurement, but rather to the outcome of the measurement. The
conceptual criteria differentiate for every goal of the organization. To measure these conceptual criteria, one uses operationalizations
(e.g., successfully passing exams on the content of the course). The predictor should be theoretically, logically, and empirically related
to relevant criteria. For example, if you want to assess one’s general knowledge, it is possible to measure previous study success (e.g.,
SAT or GPA of the student).
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, 4.3P Personnel Selection – Erasmus University Rotterdam (2019-2020)
Predictors should fulfill the following requirements: (1) reliable being the extent to which the test produces the same result every time,
(2) construct validity, being the extent to which the measurement is actually measuring the concept, (3) predictive validity, (4) practical
being the extent to which it is easy to use and the applicants have good experience doing it, and (5) fair/impartial being the extent to
which the test is not different for different groups of people. The most important requirement for predictors is predictive validity (the
extent to which the result will predict future behavior).
Decision Making
One cannot simply state that if the predictive validity of the test is good, the selection procedure will be improved based upon
implementing the new selection methods. There are other forces at play which influence the strength of decision making. Decision
making is based on the basic concepts of: (1) actions, (2) circumstances (meaning whether someone is a successful employee or not),
and (3) decision outcomes. The action during the selection process is to reject or accept an applicant. The circumstances can be that an
employee turns out to be sufficient of insufficient. The decision outcomes are all the combinations between the two.
Reject Accept
Sufficient Miss Hit Circumstances
Insufficient True negative False positive
Activities
Miss is the combination of a rejection when someone should actually be sufficient for the job. A hit is the situation in which one is hired
and one can successfully perform the job. A true negative is rejecting someone when someone is actually not fit for the job. A false
positive is hiring someone who is actually not fit for the job. The success rate is thus based on the hits / (hit + false positives) or amount
of people which are successfully hired/total amount of people who are hired (also called the selection ratio). If you want to measure the
base rate (meaning that you would not apply any selection but want to assess the amount of people which are actually effective) you
have to add the misses and the hits as this reflects all the people who have the potential to be sufficient.
That means if you don’t use a selection procedure, the amount of productive people in the organization is the same as the base rate.
Therefore, the selection outcome does not only depend on the predictive validity but also on the selection ratio and base rate. If one
wants to calculate the true positives (or hits) you must include the base rate and selection ratio (see first formula). If you have calculated
the misses, hits, true negatives, and false positives you can calculate the proportion of valid outcomes (which is the hits and true
negatives) and the success ratio (which is the hits/selection ratio). If you know the selection ratio (e.g., = 0.5) and you know that this is
a combination of hits and false positives, you can calculate the hits and subtract this from the total selection ratio to find the false
positives. The same applies to the base rate, which is based on the misses and hits. If one is using multiple selection methods, one should
take into account the incremental value of the assessment methods in combination with each other.
To know how the predictor relates to the criterion, one can use a scatterplot (see figure for example) which can
reflect a linear relation. The downside of this method is that you must use a large sample size to measure the
actual relation between these two variables for the whole population. Every predictor score shows a distribution
within the scores on the criterion. This is minimized when making a linear plot. The linear regression one can
predict the most probable value, using the smallest sum of square principle. This means that you statistically
average the different scores in the scatterplot on the predictor and criterion, allowing for a line to be recreated.
The linear relation must be as close to all the dots as possible for the linear regression to be most accurate. This
is of course more difficult when the dots in the scatter plot don’t follow a central tendency.
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, 4.3P Personnel Selection – Erasmus University Rotterdam (2019-2020)
Theme 1: Foundations (Predicting, Deciding, and Common Selection Methods)
Vignet 1: From Organizational Goals to Operational Predictors
The job of a hospital relates to the following organizational goals (Hospital of Uillinious, 2019):
✓ Safety
✓ Timeliness
✓ High quality care & high satisfaction
✓ Financial stability
The job of a nursing assistant relates to the following goals (O*Net, 2019):
✓ Quality patient care
✓ Perform duties such as feed (and measure food intake), bathe, groom, or move patients (support in physical activities)
✓ Be able to work alongside autonomous robotic coworkers but also be able to work with software of the organization
✓ Answering patients call signals
✓ Oral comprehension/expression, problem sensitivity (alert), vision are important skills
Organizational Goal Conceptual Operational Criterion Conceptual Operational Predictor
Criterion* Predictor**
Safety Adherence to rules How often one has Agreeableness and Big Five measurement
broken rules conscientiousness (self-reported)
Efficiency Using new technology How well they have Knowledge of Knowledge test or
used technology in the technology behavioral test (self-
past? reported)
Being able to plan Do they have a Conscientiousness Big Five measurement
schedule? How well (self-reported)
they have kept to a
schedule in the past?
High quality care & Communication/social How well they can Oral expressiveness, Interview and Big Five
high satisfaction skills communicate with staff extraversion etc. measurement (self-
and patients reported) or behavioral
test (e.g., group exercise)
Knowledge of How well their Educational level, Self- or other-reported
healthcare knowledge of education background, evidence (e.g., CV) or
healthcare is (specific) work experience, job knowledge test
addition courses etc.
Financial stability Good use of resources How they have used Counterproductive Self- or other-reported
resources in the past work behavior evidence (e.g., CWB test
or references)
Low absenteeism How many days one Counterproductive Self- or other-reported
has been absent in the work behavior evidence (e.g., CWB test
past or references)
*Conceptual Criterions are behaviors one would like from an employee to have whilst working (or an performance outcome)
**Conceptual Predictors are behaviors one would like from an employee whilst working but one has to predict future performance by
measuring a trait of this employee to estimate the behavior one wants in the future
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