Personnel selection

Abstract

The main elements in the design and validation of personnel selection procedures have been in place for many years. The role of job analysis, contemporary models of work performance and criteria are reviewed critically. After identifying some important issues and reviewing research work on attracting applicants, including applicant perceptions of personnel selection processes, the research on major personnel selection methods is reviewed. Recent work on cognitive ability has confirmed the good criterion‐related validity, but problems of adverse impact remain. Work on personality is progressing beyond studies designed simply to explore the criterion‐related validity of personality. Interview and assessment centre research is reviewed, and recent studies indicating the key constructs measured by both are discussed. In both cases, one of the key constructs measured seems to be generally cognitive ability. Biodata validity and the processes used to develop biodata instruments are also critically reviewed. The article concludes with a critical evaluation of the processes for obtaining validity evidence (primarily from meta‐analyses) and the limitations of the current state of the art. Speculative future prospects are briefly reviewed.

Publishing at the interfaces of psychology and strategic management

“…appeared in a special issue of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology that celebrated 100 years of the field's achievements at the turn of the 21 st century (Patterson, 2001). Unlike the other contributors to this particular volume -whose papers offered state-of-the-art reviews of the literature pertaining to some of the field's central topics such as personnel selection and assessment (Robertson and Smith, 2001), Performance and appraisal and management (Fletcher, 2001), and wellbeing and occupational health (Sparks, Faragher, and Cooper, 2001) -our paper was intentionally framed more broadly, in an attempt to stimulate a wider-ranging conversation across the IWO psychology community as a whole regarding what we argued was a growing divide between research and practice, with a view to encouraging a re-strengthening of the scientist-practitioner model, arguably the bedrock of the field . Deliberately provocative, our goal was to engender feelings of discomfort among our readers, with a view countering what we saw as some unfortunate consequences of the effort-reward mechanisms in play among the academic and practitioner wings of the profession.…”

Minimally biased weight determination in personnel selection

“…Two useful trends should be noted. First, the use of structured interviews rather than the more freewheeling conversations which once were the more common (and still may be) has increased the validity of the interview (Robertson and Smith, 2001;Cortina et al, 2000). However, the extent to which interviews provide incremental information given that other assessments, notably of cognitive ability and conscientiousness, are available is disputed: Cortina et al (2000) present evidence that highly structured interviews can contribute "substantially to prediction" of performance in the job, while Barrick, Patton and Haugland (2000) think that it does not, although it may be well suited to assess the fit of a candidate within an organisation.…”

A New Fuzzy ELECTRE Based Multiple Criteria Method for Personnel Selection

“…Therefore, naturally, the organizations always seek powerful and reliable methods to categorize, rank, and select appropriate people to achieve speci c goals. Also, the literature is full of studies aimed at contributing to the solutions; refer to Robertson and Smith (2001) for more information [2].…”

“…There are many studies, such as [1,2,[12][13][14][15][16] that combine the concepts of MCDM and fuzzy theory to develop more e cient methods for the problem.…”