Assignment 1: Discussion

By the due date assigned, respond to the assigned Discussion Question. Submit your responses to the Discussion Area. Start reviewing and responding to your classmates as early in the module as possible.

Each stakeholder in the selection process - line managers, coworkers, and applicants - has distinctly different needs, desires, and goals for selection. Discuss whether each stakeholder's needs, desires, and goals for selection should be equally weighted. Explain why or why not giving specific examples to support your response. Refer to Chapter 3 for information on the selection process.

Selecting the new employees and classifying them as suitable or unsuitable for the job are accomplished by a variety of techniques, including application blanks, interviews, letters of recommendation, assessment centers, and psychological tests. Hiring decisions typically are based not on a single technique but on a combination of methods. In addition, testing for drug use is now widespread for many types of jobs (see chapter 12). Some jobs also have physical requirements and may require tests of strength and endurance.

The next step in the selection process is to test the selection procedures to determine if they succeeded in identifying the best workers for the jobs. In our example, after the initial 200 workers have been hired, the human resources department must track their progress to see how they perform on the job. This is the major test of the worth of a selection program.

Every new selection program must be investigated to determine its predictive accuracy or validity. This is done by evaluating the performance of the employees selected by the new procedures. For example, after the new workers are on the job for 6 months, their supervisors can be asked to rate their job performance. By comparing these ratings with performance on the selection techniques, we can determine how the two measures correlate. We want to know whether the selection techniques were able to predict which of the applicants turned out to be the better workers.

Suppose we learn that the employees who received high ratings from their supervisors had performed an average of 10 points above the cutoff score on a test of manual dexterity and had earned a high school diploma. Employees who received low ratings from their supervisors performed within 1 or 2 points of the cutoff score on the manual dexterity test and had not completed high school. These findings tell us that the two factors (manual dexterity and a high school diploma) were able to distinguish between potentially good and potentially poor workers. In the future, then, the human resources department can use these criteria with confidence to select the best people for these jobs.

Keep in mind that to evaluate employee selection procedures we must have some measure of job performance with which to compare performance on the selection techniques. Some ways to appraise and measure work performance are discussed in chapter 5.