Category Archives: Selection

Can Selection in the National Hockey League Have Implications for HR? (Human Resource Management)

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Topic: Selection
Publication: International Journal of Coaching Science (2010)
Article:  Should coaches use personality assessments in the talent identification process?  A 15-year predictive study on professional hockey players.
Authors: C.J. Gee, J. C. Marshall, & J. F. King
Reviewed By: Scott Charles Sitrin

How do you predict athletic performance?  Gee, Marshall, and King (2010) tackled this question as they investigated the mental predictors of hockey performance.  They administered a personality measure, SportsPro, to 124 NHL draftees in 1991, and then tracked their performance over the next 15 years.  It was found that competiveness, need for achievement, independence potential, self-confidence, and coachability predicted number of goals, assists, and total points.

Though unproven, it is suspected that these mental characteristics predict performance in other domains, such as business.  If so, Human Resources may have another tool to use when making hiring decisions.

Gee, C. J., Marshall, J. C., & King, J. F. (2010). Should coaches use personality assessments in the talent identification process? A 15 year predictive study on professional hockey players. International Journal of Coaching Science, 4(1), 1-10.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

 

source for picture: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Outdoor_Sports__Land_g220-Hockey_Game_p16044.html

You have an IQ of 120. Think that makes you smart? (IO Psychology)

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Topic: Selection
Publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2011)
Article: Role of test motivation in intelligence testing
Authors: Angela L. Duckworth, Patrick D. Quinn, Donald R. Lynam, Rolf Loeber, and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber
Reviewed By: Scott Charles Sitrin

Will a person’s IQ vary with his or her level of motivation? In other words, does level of motivation affect performance on intelligence tests? In investigating this question, a recent study had two main findings. First, IQ varies with the amount of incentives offered to the IQ-test takers.

For instance, subject A had a higher IQ when she was paid $100 to take the IQ test than when she was paid $50. Secondly, IQ scores reflect both level of intelligence and level of motivation, and that both predict academic performance and life outcomes. In other words, an individual’s IQ score of 100 is three parts intelligence and on part motivation.

In applying the results to business setting, employers may want to de-emphasize the result of IQ and other intelligence tests as the results of these measures measure more than intelligence and include confounds, such as levels of motivation and interest.

Duckworth, A. L., Quinn, P. D., Lynam, D. R., Loeber, R., & Stouthamer- Loeber, M. (2011). Role of test motivation in intelligence testing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition, 1-5.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

 

source for picture: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Business_People_g201-Businesswoman_p12665.html

Do You Test? Factors Impacting the Use of Specific Selection Methods in Hiring Procedures (IO Psychology)

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Topic: Selection
Publication: International Journal of Selection and Assessment (DEC 2011)
Article: Selection Practices in Canadian Firms: An Empirical Investigation
Authors: Mann, S. L., & Chowhan, J.
Reviewed By: Thaddeus Rada

A persistent paradox in IO psychology is the frequent use, by organizations, of selection methods that research has not shown to be effective for successfully hiring employees (e.g. unstructured interviews), in conjunction with the frequent underuse of methods that research has shown to be effective (e.g. various paper-and-pencil tests). Although this trend is well-established, relatively little is known about the factors that contribute to this science-practice gap. However, a new study by Sara Mann and James Chowhan takes some steps towards increasing our understanding in this area.

Using data from a large number of employees in a wide array of Canadian organizations, the authors investigated the predictive role that a number of organizational and situational characteristics might have in determining which selection methods were used (a personality test, a job-related knowledge test, or an interview). Among their findings, the authors found that having an in-house HR department was a significant predictor for all three selection methods. The authors also found that nonprofit organizations were more likely to use an interview (while for-profit organizations were more likely to use a personality test), and that the application process for permanent (as opposed to temporary) positions was more likely to contain an interview. On the other hand, the number of employees that an organization had did not predict use of any of the three selection methods.

While the results of this study were generated using only Canadian employees, the employees came from a wide range of occupations and organizational settings; as such, it is likely that the authors’ findings should generalize to other country’s organizations and employees quite well. Practitioners might use the results of this study to better understand the organizations that would be particularly likely to incorporate tests into their selection practice, such as those organizations with an in-house HR department and those with unionized employees.

Mann, S. L., & Chowhan, J. (2011). Selection practices in Canadian firms: An empirical investigation. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 19, 435-437.

human resource management, organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

 

source for picture: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/search.php?search=canada&cat=

How do you spell success? G.R.I.T. (IO Psychology)

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Topic: Selection, IO Psychology
Publication: Social Psychological and Personality Science (2011)
Article: Deliberate Practice Spells Success: Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the National Spelling Bee.
Authors: A.L. Duckworth, T.A. Kirby, E. Tsukayama, H. Berstein, & K. A. Anders Ericsson
Reviewed By: Scott Charles Sitrin

In 2011, the winning word at the National Spelling Bee was cymotrichous. Now look away, and try to spell that word. If you can, great; you are a championship-grade speller. If you can’t, you should probably practice. Better yet, do some deliberate practice.

Ericsson’s deliberate practice is a form of practice that is characterized by being effortful and not enjoyable. Sounds great, huh? Though doing something that is not fun and hard is not initially appealing, deliberate practice is a powerful tool that has enabled individuals to become experts in a wide variety of fields in the domains of both athletics and arts. Thanks to the work of Duckworth et al., performance in a spelling bee can be added to that list.

Specifically, it was shown that the amount of time the contestants spent memorizing words alone, a form of deliberate practice, predicted performance at the National Spelling Bee. Moreover, the contestants’ level of grit, or their perseverance and focus on long-term goals, affected the amount of deliberate practice they engaged in, and in turn, their performance. It was shown that the grittier contestants engaged in more deliberate practice, and as a result, performed better.

Though few of us aspire to be competitive spellers, the results of this study are tremendously valuable, and can be applied to a multitude of settings. In the world of business, for example, employees must learn new skills and perform under pressure, just as contestants must learn a huge amount of words and compete in a high-stakes tournament. In knowing that grit, through the mechanism of deliberate practice, predicts individuals’ ability to learn and perform, employers deciding which employee to hire could evaluate this characteristic, and use this piece of information in making the hiring decision.

Duckworth, A. L., Kirby, T. A., Tsukayama, E., Berstein, H., & Ericsson, K. A. (2011). Deliberate Practice Spells Success. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(2), 174-181.

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

photo source: http://www.redtutorials.com/2011/07/study-foreign-language-at-college/spelling-bee/

Are You Managing Your High Potentials? (Selection)

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Topic: Selection, Human Resource Management
Journal: Harvard Business Review (OCT 2011)
Title: How to hang on to your high potentials
Authors: Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Boris Groysberg, Nitin Nohria
Reviewed by: Liz Brashier

Does your company have a succession plan? If a top executive were to walk out tomorrow, would you have someone to fill those shoes? Well, if you’re like roughly 85% of North American companies, the answer here is a resounding no. Or perhaps you use a common method – a program that targets “high potential” employees. Programs like these create a steady stream of talent to ensure effective leadership.

Unfortunately, these programs don’t often work well. It is hard to select employees into these talent pipelines, and excellent employees who are not selected end up feeling excluded. Given a significant gap regarding the actual efficacy of these “high potentials programs,” Fernández-Aráoz, Groysberg, and Nohria (2011), launched an analysis of how firms target and manage their top performers. In the course of interviewing executives from over 70 companies, the authors compiled a set of practices worth noting:

1)    Align development to strategy. Make sure that your program matches your corporate strategy. Avoid a cookie-cutter approach; while certain programs might work elsewhere, your program needs to be unique to match your organization.
2)    Select carefully when identifying promising candidates. Combine objective assessments with nominations from managers to increase chances of selecting the right top employees. Don’t waste valuable resources on a program that fails to select the people who are the best fit.
3)    Communicate honestly. Be wary of keeping selections a secret. From the employee’s perspective, the only reason to keep the selection of high potentials hush-hush is because the program is unfair and picks favorites.
4)    Develop targeted employees thoughtfully. Include formal education programs, on-the-job development, and self-directed learning.
5)    Rotate jobs. Put high potentials in a variety of positions that match their goals and experiences.
6)    Create rewards and incentives. Being designated high potential is rewarding, but should never be the only incentive for employees to stay in a program like these. Use financial compensation – at a moderate and reasonable level – to aid in rewarding targeted employees.

Targeting and developing high potentials effectively is essential for organizational success. While the authors are quick to point out that these are not definitive “best practices,” they are worth considering.  If  you do not already have these in place, adopting them may provide your organization with a greater competitive advantage in the long run.

Fernández-Aráoz, C., Groysberg, B., & Nohria, N. (2011). How to hang on to your high potentials. Harvard Business Review, 89, 76-83.

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

The Peril of Excess: Why Moderate Levels of Many Traits Might be Best (Human Resource Management)

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Topic: Assessment, Performance, Selection, Human Resource Management
Publication: Perspectives on Psychological Science (JAN 2011)
Article: Too Much of a Good Thing: The Challenge and Opportunity of the Inverted U
Authors: Grant, A. M., & Schwartz, B.
Reviewed By: Thaddeus Rada

A common assumption in personnel selection practice (and research) in IO psychology is that increasingly high levels of desirable traits are always a good thing. For instance, the Big 5 personality trait conscientiousness has been found to be a good predictor of job performance, such that highly-conscientiousness employees tend to be the best performers. As such, our selection systems are typically designed to identify applicants who are highest on these positive traits, so that they can be selected into the organization.

However, some authors have suggested that very high levels of some traits may actually produce “diminishing returns” and be detrimental to performance. This is the position taken up by Adam Grant and Barry Schwartz in a recent paper that evaluates this phenomenon. Expanding on arguments that can be traced back to Aristotle, the authors point out that for many traits and characteristics, extremely low or high levels of such qualities (such that courage becomes cowardice or recklessness, etc.) can be detrimental to performance and optimal functioning.

Although Grant and Schwartz do not focus specifically on organizations or personnel selection, it is clear that their main ideas have relevance to human resource management. These ideas point to the fact that we may want to consider the possibility of curvilinear relationships between traits and performance, such that the highest performers fall somewhere in the middle of the continuum from low to high possession of a trait.

Grant, A. M., & Schwartz, B. (2011). Too much of a good thing: The challenge and opportunity of the inverted U. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 61-76.

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

Everyone’s on the Same Page: The International Generalizability of Applicant Selection Attitudes (Selection)

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Topic: Selection
Publication: International Journal of Selection and Assessment (MAR 2008)
Article: Fairness Reactions to Personnel Selection Methods: An International Comparison Between the Netherlands, the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, and Singapore
Authors: Anderson, N., & Witvliet, C.
Reviewed By: Thaddeus Rada

Interest in applicant reactions to the selection process has increased steadily in recent years. In large part, research in this area has been motivated by an awareness that negative applicant reactions to an organization’s selection procedures can have a host of negative consequences, including employee withdrawal from the selection process and a damaged reputation in the eyes of rejected applicants. Individuals may often be consumers of the same organizations to which they apply, and negative experiences as a job applicant can impact their behaviors as a consumer. Given these stakes, it is clear that an accurate understanding of applicant reactions to various selection procedures is desirable.

A recent paper by Neil Anderson and Carlijn Witvliet assessed the similarity (or lack thereof) of reactions to selection procedures across six different countries. In contrast to earlier research, the authors found that reactions tended to be very similar from country to country, indicating that reactions are more generalizable than was previously believed. In general, interviews, résumés, and work samples were the selection methods that were viewed most favorably, while graphology (handwriting analysis), personal contacts (having an “in” with someone in the organization) and honesty tests tended to be viewed negatively.

As more and more companies begin to do work internationally, it is important for American I-O psychologists to understand how what we know about workers from the U.S. carries over to the international workplace. This paper by Anderson and Witvliet is an important step towards understanding how selection in other countries is similar (and different from) selection in the U.S.

Anderson, N., & Witvliet, C. (2008). Fairness reactions to personnel selection methods: An international comparison between the Netherlands, the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, and Singapore. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 16, 1-13.

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

Unconscious Stereotyping in Selection

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Topic: Discrimination, Selection, Human Resource Management
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (JUL 2011)
Article: The Role of Automatic Obesity Stereotypes in Real Hiring Discrimination
Authors: J. Agerstrom, D.O. Rooth
Reviewed By: Ben Sher

Research by Agerstrom and Rooth (2011) has shown that if hiring managers harbor negative stereotypes about obese people, they will also be more likely to actually discriminate against them. What makes this study interesting is that these stereotypes were held unconsciously.

The study was based on dual-process theory, which states that people have both conscious and unconscious mental processes. The conscious process concerns the attitudes and beliefs that a person is aware of and can explicitly verbalize, while the unconscious process concerns beliefs that a person is unaware of. The IAT (Implicit Association Test) is a test that was designed to measure these unconscious (or implicit) attitudes, and was used by the researchers in this study.

Here’s what they did. The researchers responded to actual job openings by constructing mock resumes that included a separate page with personal information and a photo of the applicant. Starting with a pool of photos of people who were judged to be similarly attractive, they manipulated half of the photos in a way that made the person look clinically obese. Then they recorded which applicants were invited to job interviews.

Eventually they contacted the hiring managers, and many took an IAT test which measured their unconscious, implicit associations regarding obese people. After this, the hiring managers were also asked to state their preferences about hiring obese people, so that the researchers could also assess their explicit attitudes, meaning attitudes that a person is aware of and professes.

What they found is that those hiring managers who harbored unconscious, implicit negative attitudes toward the obese were also less likely to invite the obese candidates for an actual job interview. These implicit attitudes were more useful in predicting the discriminatory behavior than the explicit attitudes were. In fact, the managers who explicitly professed a preference against hiring obese people did not, as a group, discriminate against them in their actual hiring decisions.

According to the authors, the results of the study strengthen the case for studying and understanding implicit attitudes. They say that the IAT test of these discriminatory attitudes has been criticized because researchers had a hard time showing that it was related to actual workplace behavior and outcomes. This study, they argue, shows that the IAT is relevant to predicting actual workplace behavior.

Additionally, this study gives much needed attention to workplace discrimination against the obese. Currently, note the authors, 34% of the US adult population is obese. Worldwide, it is estimated that there will be 700 million obese adults by 2015. It is therefore important for researchers to continue to identify and understand the ways that these people may be treated unfairly. Likewise, it is important for practitioners to be aware of the potential for discrimination against the obese, and to understand that this discrimination may be the result of deeply held bias that they are unaware of.

Agerstrom, J., & Rooth, D.O. (2011). The Role of Automatic Obesity Stereotypes in Real Hiring Discrimination. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(4), 790-805.

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

Follow the Yellow Brick Road: the Path to the Understanding Interview Constructs

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Topic: Interviewing, Selection, Human Resources
Publication: International Journal of Selection and Assessment (March, 2011)
Article: An Empirical Review of the Employment Interview Construct Literature
Author: Allen I. Huffcutt
Reviewed by: Jade L. Peters

It can be very easy to assume a structured interview is the best technique when interviewing. It can be easier to forget about what important constructs feed into an interview that makes the interviewers’ ratings change. Much of the Employment Interview literature only focuses on a narrow selection of important constructs. While this article addresses these critical constructs, it reviews and quantifies past literature to strongly support the ideas that both (a) important constructs are being ignored and (b) the structured interview is not error proof.

Like many reviews, a theoretical model was developed to solidify the already scattered literature of the construct related variance. Constructs refer to what is being measured, in this case during an interview. Essentially, the constructs being assessed can create a bias and effect the interviewers’ rating scores, which can accurate measurement of the construct. Job-Related Interview Content, Interviewee Performance, and Personal/Demographic Characteristics are three posits of the implied model that contribute to important constructs in employment interview ratings and represent a gap in the research that struggles to be filled. The structured interview in itself still deserves a fair amount of research, as do any construct used widely in practice.

Though the review was extensive and addressed knowledge summarized many times before, employment interview literature is still up and coming and deserves continued assessment with more critical constructs in mind.

Huffcutt, A.I. (2011). An empirical review of the employment interview construct literature. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 19(1), 62-81.

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

Human Resources Selection: The Promise of Pareto-Optimal Selection Systems

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Topic: Selection, Human Resources
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology (SEP 2011)
Article: Designing Pareto-Optimal Selection Systems: Formalizing the Decisions Required for Selection System Development
Authors: De Corte, W., Sackett, P. R., & Lievens, F.
Reviewed By: Thaddeus Rada

Typically, when practitioners are designing a selection system, they are looking for ways to maximize the quality and diversity of the individuals hired. Meeting this goal can be challenging, and in confronting the dilemmas associated with this goal, practitioners looking to design the ideal selection system have a number of decisions to make. For instance, they must decide which predictors to use, whether low scores on one predictor can be balanced out by high scores on another predictor (that is, will the selection system be compensatory), and the sequence of administering the multiple predictors/screens.  There are many considerations when making these decisions, including level of resources (e.g. time, money), and the characteristics of both the job and the applicant pool.

One way in which these considerations can be effectively accounted for is through the use of a Pareto-optimal selection system.  This means the new solution is identified when no other solution is at least as good on all outcome criteria (predictive validity, impact to diversity) (“Pareto” or Parity/Equal) and has at least one outcome that is more favorable (“Optimal.   De Corte and colleagues discuss a method by which selection systems can be electronically-generated and evaluated for use in a particular situation, in order to identify a system that most effectively balances the tradeoffs inherent in different systems (that is, a Pareto-optimal system).

Ideally, research on Pareto-optimal selection systems will continue, as their use can minimize adverse impact without sacrificing the quality of hires. In the meantime, practitioners should consider using the method that De Corte et al. suggest when designing a selection system. Doing so should result in the design of a selection system that maximizes oft-divergent, dual goals: a system that is both fair and effective.

De Corte, W., Sackett, P. R., & Lievens, F. (2011). Designing Pareto-optimal selection systems: Formalizing the decisions required for selection system development. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96, 907-926.

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management