Employee Selection and References

1. CHAPTER 5
Employee Selection: References and
Testing

2.  Common belief is that the best predictor of future
performance is past performance.
 For example: if you want to hire a sales person, the
best applicant might be a successful salesperson.
 Verifying previous employment is not difficult, but it
can be difficult to verify the quality of previous
performance.
Predicting Performance using references
and letters of recommendation

3.  REFERENCE CHECK: is the process of confirming the
accuracy of information provided by an applicant.
 REFERENCE: is an expression of an opinion, either
orally or through a written checklist, regarding an
applicant ability, previous performance, habits,
character, or potential for future success. Content
and format are determined by person or organization
asking for reference.
 LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION: letter expressing an
opinion regarding an applicant’s ability, previous
performance, work habit, character, or potential for
future success.

4. 1.Confirming details on a resumes:
•It is not uncommon for applicant to engage in resume
fraud.
•Thus, one reason to check reference or ask for letters
of recommendation is simply to confirm the
truthfulness of information provided by the applicant.
•Resumes fraud may not initially seem like a great
problems, but consider these examples:
Reasons for Using References and
Recommendations

5. • In 2007, Marilee Jones, the dean of admission at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, resigned after
admitting that she had lied about having college
degrees from three different universities.
• In April of 2005, Federiqkoe DiBritto was fired from
his $100,000job as a fund-raiser at UCLA after it was
discovered that his résumé listed phony credentials.
This was not the first time DiBritto had engaged in
résumé fraud; he had also doctored his credentials so
that he could obtain previous jobs as a Catholic priest, a
youth counselor, and the executive director of the
Southern California chapter of the national Kidney
Foundation.

6. • In July of 2004, Glenn Cyprien was fired as the basketball
coach at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette after an
anonymous caller said that Cyprien did not actually have the
bachelor’s degree that was listed on his résumé.
• In October of 2002, Kenneth Lonchar was forced to resign
after serving as the chief financial officer of Veritas for five
years when the company discovered he had lied about
having an MBA from Stanford.
• In June of 2002, Charles Harris resigned on his first day as
the new athletic director at Dartmouth University when a
call from a previous employer indicated that Harris did not
earn the master’s degree in journalism he had listed on his
résumé.

7. 2.Checking for discipline problems: A second reason to
check the reference is to determine whether the
applicant has a history of such discipline problems such
as :
1.Poor attendance
2. Sexual harassment
3. Violence
Such a history is important for an organization to
discover to avoid future problems as well as to protect
itself from a potential charge of negligent hiring.

8. • Negligent-hiring cases are typically filed in court as
common-law cases, or torts. These cases are based on
the premise that an employer has the duty to protect its
employees and customers from harm caused by its
employees or products.
• In determining neglect hiring court look at the nature
of the job.
• Organizations like police department, day care
centers, must conduct more through background and
reference checks than organizations like retail stores.
• A study about reference checking shows that 12.6% of
applicants had undisclosed criminal background.

9. FOR EXAMPLES
• A child care center in California hired an employee
without reference checking. A few months later
employee molested a child at the center. The employee
had a record of child abuse that would have been
discovered with a simple call to his previous
employers.
• In Virgina, an employee of a grocery store copied the
address of a female customer from a check. The later
employee went to the customer home and raped her.

10. 3. Discovering new information about the applicant:
• Former employers and professors can provide the
information about an applicant’s work habit, character,
personality, and skills.
For example:
• A reference might describe a former employee as
“difficult to work”, implying that everyone has trouble
working with the applicant.
• It may be however that only the person providing the
reference had trouble working with the applicant.
• Thus, reference checkers should always obtain
specific behavioural and try to get consensus from
several reference.

11. 4. Predicting Future Performance:
• that the best predictor of future performance is past
performance. References and letters of
recommendation are ways to try to predict future
performance by looking at past performance.
• References are commonly use to screen and select
employees, they are not have been successful in
predicting employee future success.
• Leniency – most of the recommendations are positive
• Negligent reference – if a company fails to divulge a
fact to other company
• Knowledge of the applicant – the person writing the
letter often does not know the applicant well.

12. • Reliability – involves lack of agreement between two
people who provide references for the same person.
Letters of recommendation may say more about the
person writing the letter than about the person for
whom
it is being written
• Extraneous factors – the method used by the letter
writer is often more important than the actual content.
Thus letters of recommendations often are not great
predictors of performance.

13. Raynes (2005) list three ethical guidelines that reference
providers should follow.
1. Explicitly state your relationship with person you are
recommending. This is, are you the applicant’s professor,
boss, co-worker, friend, relative. This is important because
people have dual role: A person may be a supervisor as well
as a good friend.
2. Be honest in providing details. A referee has both
ethical and legal obligation to provide relevant information. A
good rule of thumb is to ask, “If I were in reference seeker’s
shoes, what would I need to know?”.
3. Let the applicant can see your reference before
sending it, and give him chance to decline to use it.
Ethical Issues

14. • It is common that applicants must have a minimum
level of education or training to be considered.
• Meta-analyses indicate that a student’s GPA can
predict job performance, training performance,
promotions and graduate school performance.
• GPA is most predictive in the first few years after
graduation.
Predicting Performance Using Applicant
Training and Education

15. Predicting Performance Using Applicant Knowledge
• job knowledge tests are designed to measure how
much a person knows about a job.
• Common examples of job knowledge tests include
tests of computer programming knowledge, knowledge
of electronics, and knowledge of mechanical principles.
Predicting Performance Using Applicant Ability
• Ability Tests – tap the extent to which an applicant
can learn or perform a job related skill. Used primarily
for occupations in which applicants are not expected to
know how to perform the job at the time of hire.

16. • Cognitive ability - oral & written comprehension, oral
& written expression, reasoning. Important for
professional, clerical, & supervisory job. Commonly used
because they are excellent predictor of employee
performance. Abilities from this dimension are useful
for such occupations as machinist, cabinet maker, die
setter, and tool and die maker
• Perceptual Ability - it consists of vision (near, far,
night, peripheral), color discrimination, depth
perception, glare sensitivity, speech (clarity,
recognition), and hearing (sensitivity, auditory
attention, sound localization) . Psychomotor abilities
are useful for such jobs as carpenter, police officer,
sewing-machine operator, post office clerk, and truck
driver.

17. • Physical ability tests - are often used for jobs that
require physical strength and stamina, such as police
officer, firefighter, and lifeguard.
 Job Relatedness - is the requirement that an
employer be able to demonstrate that a particular
action, policy or job requirement is related to the
actual job.
Passing Scores - means the minimum acceptable
score that an applicant is required to obtain on an
examination as determined by the Board.
When the Ability Must Be Present

18. Predicting Performance Using Applicant Skill
Work Sample -- the applicant performs actual job-related tasks.
For example, an applicant for a job as automotive mechanic
might be asked to fix a torn fan belt; a secretarial applicant might
be asked to type a letter.
Assessment Centers - is a selection technique characterized by
the use of multiple assessment methods that allow multiple
assessors to actually observe applicants perform simulated job
tasks. Its major advantages are that assessment methods are all
job related and multiple trained assessors help to guard against
many (but not all) types of selection bias. For a selection
technique to be considered an assessment center, it must meet
the following requirements.

19. jj
 The assessment center activities must be based on
the results of a thorough job analysis.
 Multiple assessment techniques must be used, at
least one of which must be a simulation.
 Multiple trained assessors must be used.
 Behavioral observations must be documented at the
time the applicant behavior is observed.
 Assessors must prepare a report of their
observations.
 The overall judgment of an applicant must be based
on a combination of information from the multiple
assessors and multiple techniques.
 The overall evaluation of an applicant cannot be made
until all assessment center tasks have been
completed.

20. Development and Component
 The In-Basket Technique – designed to simulate the
types of daily information that appear on a manager’s
or employee’s desk.
 Simulations - enable assessors to see an applicant
“in action”. Includes role plays, work samples, place an
applicant in a situation that is similar as possible to
one that will be encountered on the job.
 Leaderless Group Discussions. - applicants meet in
small groups and are given a job-related problem to
solve or a job-related issue to discuss
 Business Games - allow the applicant to demonstrate
such attributes as creativity, decision making & ability
to work with others

21. Predicting Performance Using Prior Experience
Experience Rating - The basis for experience ratings is the
idea that past experience will predict future experience.
Support for this notion comes from a meta-analysis by
Quiñones, Ford, and Teachout (1995) that found a
significant relationship between experience and future job
performance (r= .27). In giving credit for experience, one
must consider the amount of experience, the level of
performance demonstrated during the previous experience,
and how related the experience is to the current job.
For example, given the rapid changes in technology, would
a computer programmer with 20 years of experience
actually have more relevant knowledge than one with five
years of experience?

22. Biodata - a is a selection method that considers an applicant’s life,
school, military, community, and work experience. Meta-analyses have
shown that biodata is a good predictor of job performance, as well as
the best predictor of future employee .
Biodata instruments have several advantages:
 Research has shown that they can predict work behavior in many
jobs, including sales, management, clerical, mental health
counseling, hourly work in processing plants, grocery clerking, fast-
food work, and supervising.
 They have been able to predict criteria as varied as supervisor
ratings, absenteeism, accidents, employee theft, loan defaults,
sales, and tenure.
 Biodata instruments result in higher organizational profit and
growth (Terpstra & Rozell, 1993).
 Biodata instruments are easy to use, quickly administered,
inexpensive, and not as subject to individual bias as interviews,
references, and résumé evaluation.

23. Development of a Biodata Instrument
 file approach - we obtain information from
personnel files on employees’ previous
employment, education, interests, and
demographics.
questionnaire approach - is that information
cannot be obtained from employees who have
quit or been fired.

24. Predicting Performance Using Personality, Interest, andCharacter
Personality inventories are becoming increasingly popular as an
employee selection method, in part because they predict performance
better than was once thought, and in part because they result in less
adverse impact than do ability tests. Personality inventories fall into
one of two categories based on their intended purpose: measurement
of types of normal personality or measurement of psychopathology
(abnormal personality).
 Tests of Normal Personality - measure the traits exhibited by normal
individuals in everyday life. Examples of such traits are
extraversion, shyness, assertiveness, and friendliness.

25. Tests of psychopathology (abnormal behavior) -
determine whether individuals have serious
psychological problems such as depression,
bipolar disorder, schizophrenia. Though used
extensively by clinical psychologists, these tests
are seldom used by industrial-organizational (I/O)
psychologists except in the selection of law
enforcement officers. Because the courts
consider tests of psychopathology to be “medical
exams,” they can be administered only after a
conditional offer of employment has been made
to an applicant.

26. Tests of psychopathology are generally scored in one of two
ways:
 Projective tests - provide the respondent with unstructured
tasks such as describing ink blots and drawing pictures.
Because projective tests are of questionable reliability and
validity and are time-consuming and expensive, they are
rarely used in employee selection.
 Objective tests are structured so that the respondent is
limited to a few answers that will be scored by standardized
keys. By far the most popular and heavily studied test of this
type is the MMPI- . Other tests in this category are the Millon
Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III) and the Personality
Assessment Inventory (PAI).

27. Interest Inventories
 Interest inventory - is a data collection
instrument designed to evaluate and
measure an individual's interest in or
preference for specific vocational areas
or activities; it is also known as an
interest test.

28. What is an example of an interest inventory?
Taking an interest inventory requires completing a
questionnaire with a series of items about your likes
and dislikes. They will measure, for example, your
interests regarding leisure activities, work-related
tasks, people with whom you prefer to work, and
school subjects.
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29. Integrity Tests - is a specific type of personality test
designed to assess an applicant's tendency to be
honest, trustworthy, and dependable. A lack of
integrity is associated with such counterproductive
behaviors as theft, violence, sabotage, disciplinary
problems, and absenteeism.
Integrity tests have been found to measure some of
the same factors as standard personality tests,
particularly conscientiousness, and perhaps some
aspects of emotional stability and agreeableness.

30. What is conditional reasoning test?
 The Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression (CRT-A; James
& McIntyre, 2000) is designed to assess an individual's
implicit preparedness to engage in behaviors intended to
cause harm to others. Each CRT-A problem presents
respondents with four response options.
What is conditional reasoning example?
In conditional reasoning the reasoner must draw a conclusion
based on a conditional, or “if…then,” proposition. For example,
from the conditional proposition “if today is Monday, then I will
attend cooking class today” and the categorical (declarative)
proposition “today is Monday,” one can infer the conclusion.

31.  Graphology - graphology, inference of character from a
person's handwriting. The theory underlying graphology
is that handwriting is an expression of personality; hence,
a systematic analysis of the way words and letters are
formed can reveal traits of personality.
Importance of Graphology
"The purpose of graphology is to examine and evaluate
personality and character. Its use is comparable to
assessment models such as the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator
(which is widely employed in business), or other
psychological testing models.

32. Predicting Performance Limitations Due to Medical and Psychological Problems
Drug Testing – Drug testing is done primarily to screen people
systematically or randomly for evidence of use of one or more
substances with potential for abuse.
Psychological Exams - A psychological test is used to measure an
individual's different abilities, such as their aptitude in a particular
field, cognitive functions like memory and spatial recognition, or even
traits like introvertedness. These tests are based on scientifically
tested psychological theories.
Medical Exams - is an examination carried out to determine the
physical fitness of an applicant for a job, life insurance, etc.

33. Comparison of Techniques
 Validity - Validity refers to how accurately a
method measures what it is intended to
measure. If research has high validity, that
means it produces results that correspond to
real properties, characteristics, and variations
in the physical or social world.
 Legal Issues - A legal issue is something that
happens that has legal implications and may
need the help of a lawyer to sort out. It is a
question or problem that is answered or
resolved by the law.

34. Rejecting Applicants
Rejecting Applicants - Rejection is an
action or a response of refusal by a
recruiter or an employer after
interviewing the candidate. It shows that
the candidate is not selected for the job
position.

35. Interview Rejection Reasons and Job
Rejection Reasons
1. One-Type-Fits-All Resume and Impersonal Application
NOW
2. Under or Overqualified, Exaggerating Experience
3. Social Media Behavior
4. Inappropriate or Untidy Appearance
5. Poor Body Language
6. Lack of Good Communication Skills
7. Vague Responses, Avoiding Questions
8. Unrealistic Career Goals and Job Expectations
9. Early Discussion or Questions About Salary/Benefits
10. No Post-Interview Thank You Note, or Too Frequent
Follow-UPS for Updates