Personnel Selection
Lectures: - Chapter 7: Personality traits
- Lecture 1 - Chapter 8: Creativity
- Lecture 2 - Chapter 9: Leadership
- Lecture 3 - Chapter 10: Talents
- Lecture 4
- Lecture 5 Extra chapters:
- Lecture 6 - Extra chapter 1: Decision Making
- Lecture 7 in Selection
- Extra chapter 2: Job Performance:
Chapters of the book: Assessment Issues in Personnel
Methods of personnel selection Selection
- Chapter 1: Early, unscientific
methods Papers:
- Chapter 2: The interview - Paper 1: Ryan & Ployhart (2014):
- Chapter 3: Letters of A Century of Selection
recommendations - Paper 2: O’Boyle et al. (2012): A
- Chapter 4: Biodata Meta-Analysis of the Dark Triad
- Chapter 5: Situational judgements and Work Behavior: A Social
tests and GPA Exchange Perspective
Constructs for personnel selection
- Chapter 6: General mental ability
,Lectures
Lecture 1
Personnel selection:
- Usually starts with a vacancy
- Job-analysis or competency modeling (alternatives from each other)
- Maybe an advertisement/recruitment procedure
- Sometimes use of psychologist
- Particularly for more complex positions (e.g. higher levels managers, CEO’s)
- Selection ratio = numbers of people hired / numbers of candidates &
applicants (SR = H/C)
- High selection ratio = not so great, you are basically hiring everyone
that applies = today’s labor market
Job analysis
Job analysis =
- Job focused
- What is needed from the candidate?
- Enhances communication = if you did a proper job analysis, it is easier to
communicate what the candidates needs to do etc
- Prevents succession effects:
- Prevents trying to find the clown of the retired one, but looks more closely
what is needed for the job
Information needed to collect in job analysis:
1. Ask yourself if the function is necessary?
2. What are the core tasks, responsibilities, and activities?
3. How should someone approach these? (culture)
4. Where is it going to take place? (position in organization, hierarchy, location, etc)
5. With whom will people have to deal? (colleagues, clients)
Competency modeling
Competency modeling
- More person-focussed (than job-focused)
- Competencies: a combination of skills, knowledge, abilities, traits, experience, etc,
that enable an individual to perform a task or activity successfully
- There is no agreed upon number of competencies, they differ per firm, and it is not
agreed which ones are the most important competencies
- Mostly based on face validity: the competencies we think that are most important for
the job, but are not tested if they actually are
- Usually misses a follow-up (ask if the person that is selected is doing well or
not/what is missing etc)
Job analysis Competency modeling
Summarizes tasks and responsibilities Provides a summary of the required
competencies
Emphasizes required knowledge and skills Emphasizes attitudes in addition to required
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, knowledge and skills
Emphasizes what needs to be done Emphasizes why and how tasks should be
performed
Is quite static and well-defined Is quite dynamic and future-oriented (more
based on the whole organization)
Central question: what are the job Central question: which competencies are
requirements?` required?
Assignment choosing the most relevant competencies
According to GTP:
Cashier:
- Service-attitude
- Following procedures and instructions
- Stress-resistance
- Accuracy
Waiter:
- Result-orientation
- Diving attention
- Presentation
- Collaboration
- Initiative
- Service-attitude
- Ordiliness
- Following procedures and instructions
- Accuracy
- Stress-resistance
Postman:
- Service-attitude
- Ordiliness
- Accuracy
- Independence
- Integrity
- There is no test that measure all competencies, so you have to make choices
- Different selectors have different sets of competencies
- Happens in practice of personnel selections at lot
Chapter 1 (book)
- Techniques that are used less and less, but are still, unfortunately used
(pre-scientific methods)
- Good selections techniques are needed, since there are a lot of high stakes
- For the selector: explain why you deny candidates (bad-news)
- For the candidates or people that are already working there: mortgages, take
care of children etc.
- Unreliable and invalid
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, - Used because people find it interesting (counterintuitive)
- Handwriting analysis (graphology, physical characteristics, astrology, projective
techniques)
Pre-scientific methods =
- Handwriting analysis (graphology)
- In the 90’s: 38% to 93% graphology was used in Europe (especially in
France)
- Implicit measure of personality (and more)
- Systems to connect aspects of handwriting to personality traits (Michon,
1872)
Conclusions:
- Unreliable and not valid
- No relationship with personality (and why would it?)
- Does not predict job performance
- Individual difference variable, intuitive
- Physical characteristics
- Physiognomy and body build
- Linking physical characteristics to personality traits
- Genes are responsible for both physical characteristics and behavior,
therefore, these two must also be linked
Conclusions:
- Unreliable and not valid
- Physical appearance does play a role in selection (because of the
psychical attractiveness
- Beautiful-is-good stereotype: people tend to think that
people who look good are more intelligent, better etc
- Has effect in an interview setting
- Gender also plays a role
- One downside for physically attractive females, quicker
highered but not for the higher functions
- Body build
- Astrology
- Link between Zodiac sign and behavior (personality)
- Unreliable and therefore not valid
- Used in selection? = yes…
- Projective techniques
- Present ambiguous stimulus
- Response reveals important information about the person
- Associations, construction, completion (the sentence), arrangement/selection,
expression
- Graphology = ‘espression’
- Most well-known examples: TAT and Rorschach
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