Question 12
Article: The H.W. Wilson company/WilsonWeb
A typical interview for most companies is unstructured, rambling and unfocused and it tells the interviewer almost nothing about job candidates. Conventional interviews are miserable predictors of job success and produce a subjective and acutely narrow view of the candidate. That view is likely biased and studies have shown interviewers tend to prefer candidate similar to them and judge candidates on fewer criteria than they think they are judging them on and tend to let biases like race and gender get in the way.
Industrial and organizational psychologists are on the job, seeking the best ways to evaluate candidates. A focused three part approach can make the hiring process standardized and objective and can help predict the best performers.
(1) The system starts with what is called behavioral interviewing. Candidates are asked tough questions about how they have handled specific assignments and problems. Behavioral interviews are based on questions rooted in the past—“Tell me about a time when” rather than hypothetical like “What would you do if?” Behavioral interviewing involves a group of interviewers defining qualities needed for the job, asking candidates to give past examples of how they have demonstrated those qualities, asking the same questions of each candidate and taking notes throughout the interview. The questions should be job related to keep the interview relevant and focused to avoid discrimination complaints. Behavioral interviews are more effective when combined with employment tests.
(2) Behavioral interviewing is followed by two kinds of tests: cognitive and personality tests. Cognitive tests measure intellectual ability and personality tests allow companies to compare candidates with their top performers. Cognitive tests have a slightly closer correlation with job success and personality tests are useful both as a basis for interview questions and employee development.
(3) The third step is asking candidates to do tasks like the ones they have done on the job.
Employers need to know whether a test is appropriate for hiring, what it measures, how it is designed and make sure it is legal. Psychologists evaluate a psychological test by two measures called reliability and validity. Reliability examines whether items measure the same thing (agreeableness or conscientiousness) correlate highly with one with another. Validity asks for proof that scores on test are related to success in specific jobs.
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is using the wrong test. By choosing the wrong test a company can dismiss qualified candidates and even risk getting sued for discrimination. Behavioral interviews have almost tripled the correlation of conventional interviews with job success. To gauge if a hire is successful, academics use measures like the dollar value of an employee’s contribution to the company, his or her relative share in overall output, and later performance reviews, promotions, and raises.
Article: The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology
The most important property of a personnel assessment method is predictive validity: the ability to predict future job performance, job related learning and other criteria. This article presents the validity of nineteen procedures for predicting job performance and training performance and the validity of paired combinations of General Mental Ability (GMA) and the eighteen other selection procedures. Overall, the three combinations with the highest validity and utility for job performance were GMA plus a work sample test (mean validity of .63); GMA plus an integrity test (mean validity of .65) and GMA plus a structured interview (mean validity .63). A further advantage of the latter two combinations is that they can be used for both entry level selection and selection of experienced employees.