Evaluating fit in employee selection: Beliefs about how, when, and why.

Abstract

Research strongly supports the use of standardized assessment methods, like structured interviews, to evaluate applicants. Many practitioners, however, continue to prefer unstructured and intuition-based approaches to employee selection. Nonstandardized assessment methods compromise the reliability and predictive validity of employeeselection systems and expose the hiring process to the idiosyncratic beliefs and biases of decision makers. To better understand practitioners' beliefs about decision making for employee selection, this study examines (a) the effects of standardization on the perceived usefulness of assessment methods for evaluating applicants fit with the job (person-job [PJ] fit) and the organization (person-organization [PO] fit); (b) the effects of work proximity on beliefs about the importance of evaluating PJ and PO fit for employee selection; and (c) beliefs about the work-related outcomes that are influenced by PJ and PO fit. Study results provide insight concerning how, when, and why those who make hiring decisions believe these forms of compatibility should be evaluated during employee selection. Suggestions for how this information may be used to help consulting psychologists design employee-selection systems that are more attractive to use, yet retain the predictive validity and legal defensibility of traditional standardized approaches, are offered.

Implementing evidence-based assessment and selection in organizations: A review and an agenda for future research

“…The science-practice gap may also be reduced by influencing the perceptions of other stakeholders like applicants and managers, as they seem to affect the adoption of evidencebased assessment practices (Diab et al, 2011;Nolan et al, 2016). This is important because these stakeholders may not be as well informed about evidence-based assessment as assessment professionals and hence do not feel a need for change (Lawler, 2007).…”

“…Assessment professionals and managers may also have different aims when selecting candidates. Nolan et al (2016) showed that practitioners who did not expect to work together with an applicant considered the fit between the applicant's ability and the job demands more important than the fit between the applicant's values and the organization's characteristics. In contrast, practitioners who expected to work together with an applicant considered the fit between the applicant's values and the organization's characteristics more important.…”

“…Devaluation of professional status. Based on attribution theory's discounting principle (Kelley, 1973), Nolan et al (2016) hypothesized that stakeholders give less credit to HR managers for outcomes of evidence-based assessment methods. Job occupants (N ¼ 468) who evaluated the hiring strategies of their HR manager in a hypothetical hiring scenario attributed the outcomes significantly less to the HR manager when the information collection (unstructured vs. structured interview) and information combination (intuitive vs. computer) methods were standardized (Z p 2 ¼ .14 and .15, respectively).…”

“…Some studies (Nolan & Highhouse, 2014) were based on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) and mostly investigated the effect of the practitioner's autonomy on the use of evidence-based assessment. Other studies were grounded in attribution theory (Kelley, 1973) and investigated specifically how stakeholder perceptions may influence practitioner's use evidence-based assessment (Nolan et al, 2016(Nolan et al, , 2020. In some cases, studies were not clearly based on theory (e.g., Dietvorst et al, 2018;Roulin et al, 2019).…”

“…There are different reasons why evidencebased assessment is unterutilized. Reasons are the unawareness of or disbelief in research findings (Fisher et al, 2020;Highhouse, 2008), the restriction of practitioners' autonomy (Nolan & Highhouse, 2014), and the reduction of the credit received from other stakeholders for decisions made (Nolan et al, 2016). Despite substantial progress in research on performance prediction and decision-making, the challenge of increasing the use of evidence-based assessment in selection has not been resolved in the last century (Ryan & Ployhart, 2014, p. 695).…”