Selection interview: a dialogue initiated by one or more persons to gather information and evaluate the qualifications of an applicant for employment.Disadvantages of a selection interview: Unreliable, low in validity, biased against a number of different groups, costly, and subjectivity.

Increase the utility of the personnel selection interview:+ Keep the interview structured, standardized, and focused on accomplishing a small number of goals => quantitative ratings.+ Ask questions dealing with specific situations that are likely to arise on the job, and use these to determine what the person is likely to do in that situations => types of situational interview items.

Situational interview: an interview procedure where applicants are confronted with specific issues, questions, or problems that are likely to arise on the job.Two types of situational judgment items: Experience-based items, and Future-oriented items.

Situational interviews are effective when assessing sensitive issues dealing with the honesty and integrity of candidates.

Information can also be solicited from the people who know the candidate through reference checks. References are weak predictors of future success on the job. + The low validity is caused by the positive reference letters. The applicant usually gets to choose who writes the letter and can thus choose only those writers who is most positive. + Second, because letter writers can never be sure who will read the letters, they may fear that supplying damaging information about someone could come back to haunt them. In general, the validity of reference checks increases when the employer goes beyond the list provided by the applicant.

Cognitive ability tests: include three dimensions: verbal comprehension, quantitative ability and reasoning ability. + Verbal comprehension refers to a person’s capacity to understand and use written and spoken language.+ Quantitative ability concerns the speed and accuracy with which one can solve arithmetic problems of all kinds. + Reasoning ability refers to a person’s capacity to invent solutions to many diverse problems.

Personality measures tend to categorize individuals by what they are like. There are five major dimensions of personality, known as “the Big Five”: (1) Extroversion, (2) Adjustment, (3) Agreeableness, (4) Conscientiousness, (5) Inquisitiveness.+ Team contexts require that people create and maintain roles and relationships, and several traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness seem to promote effective role taking. When there is a strong team culture, everyone shares the same views and traits, promoting harmony andcohesiveness.+ Putting people on the team that have different values and personalities => diversity of opinion that promotes internal debate and creativity.

The concept of “emotional intelligence” is used to describe people who are especially effective in flexible and socially intensive contexts. Emotional intelligence is traditionally conceived of having five aspects:1. Self-awareness 2. Self-regulation3. Self-motivation4. Empathy5. Social skills

Work-sample tests attempt to simulate the job in a pre-hiring context to observe how the applicant performs in the simulated job à role plays. Drawbacks: Generalizability is low, and tests are relatively expensive to develop. The utility of cognitive ability tests is rated higher than work-sample tests, despite the latter’s higher criterion-related validity.

Work-sample tests are typically the cornerstone in assessment centers, which is a process in which multiple raters evaluate employees’ performance on a number of exercises. Because assessment centers employ multiple selection methods, their criterion-related validity tends to be quite high. => One of the best combinations of selection methods includes work-sample tests with a highly structured interview and a measure of general cognitive ability.

Many problems that confront society also exist within organizations, which has led to two new kinds of tests: honesty tests and drug-use tests.

Reliability: the consistency of a performance measure; the degree to which a performance measure is free from random error.

Estimating the Reliability of Measurement

Standards for Reliability

Validity: the extent to which a performance measure assesses all the relevant – and only he relevant – aspects of job performance.

Criterion-related validity

Content validation

Generalizability: the degree to which the validity of a selection method established in one context extends to other contexts.

2 primary “contexts” over which we might like to generalize:+ Different situations (jobs or organizations);+ Different samples of people.Just as reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity, validity is necessary but not sufficient for generalizability.

Validity generalization is a three-step process:1. Evidence from previous criterion-related validity studies conducted in other situations.2. Evidence from job analysis to document.3. If the company can show that it uses a test that is the same to that used in the validated setting, then one can “generalize” the validity from the first context to the new context.

Utility: the degree to which the information provided by selection methods enhances the effectiveness of selecting personnel in real organizations.

Other factors relate to the utility of a test, f.e.:+ The value of the product or service produced by the job incumbent plays a role.+ the cost of the test, plays a role.

All selection methods should conform to existing laws and existing legal precedents.