- Describe job analysis and the initial steps in employee selection
- Understand how employees are assessed and selected
- Describe types of job training and performance assessment
Job Analysis
The branch of I-O psychology known as industrial psychology focuses on identifying and matching persons to tasks within an organization. This involves job analysis, which means accurately describing the task or job. Then, organizations must identify the characteristics of applicants for a match to the job analysis. It also involves training employees from their first day on the job throughout their tenure within the organization, and appraising their performance along the way.
The Job Description
When you read job advertisements, do you ever wonder how the company comes up with the job description? Often, this is done with the help of I-O psychologists. There are two components of the job analysis—the task-oriented side and the worker-oriented side. The task-oriented approach lists in detail the tasks that will be performed for the job. Each task is typically rated on scales for how frequently it is performed, how difficult it is, and how important it is to the job. For example, a retail store sales clerk might assist customers in finding merchandise, answer customer questions, use a cash register to take money and make change, bag the merchandise, and thank the customer, among other responsibilities. If we put this all together, it produces a job description that we can later use to identify training needs and the valuable behaviors that we should reward.
The Job Specification
The second approach is worker-oriented. This approach describes the characteristics required of the worker to successfully perform the job. This is known as job specification (Dierdorff & Wilson, 2003). Traditionally, I-O psychologists have tried to identify several key characteristics of employees, including their knowledge (things they know), their skills (such as skill at persuading others), and their abilities (more stable traits they possess, like mathematical ability), often referred to as the “KSAs” required to perform the job. Returning to the example of our retail sales clerk, we might find that they need to be friendly, detail-oriented, reliable, and have the ability to learn about the merchandise the store has in stock. This information is crucial to developing a selection system that identifies job applicants with the right qualifications to be successful.
The United States Department of Labor maintains a database of previously compiled job analyses for different jobs and occupations. This allows the I-O psychologist to access previous analyses for nearly any type of occupation. This system is called O*Net (accessible at www.onetonline.org). The site is open and you can see the KSAs that are listed for your own position or one you might be curious about (Figure 1). Each occupation lists the tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities, work context, work activities, education requirements, interests, personality requirements, and work styles that are deemed necessary for success in that position. You can also see data on average earnings and projected job growth in that industry.
Candidate Analysis and Testing
Once a company identifies potential candidates for a position, the candidates’ knowledge, skills, and other abilities must be evaluated and compared with the job description. These evaluations can involve testing, an interview, and work samples or exercises. You learned about personality tests in the module on personality; in the I-O context, they are used to identify the personality characteristics of the candidate in an effort to match those to personality characteristics that would ensure good performance on the job. For example, a high rating of agreeableness might be desirable in a customer support position. However, it is not always clear how best to correlate personality characteristics with predictions of job performance. It might be that too high of a score on agreeableness is actually a hindrance in the customer support position. For example, if a customer has a misperception about a product or service, agreeing with their misperception will not lead to the resolution of their complaint. Any use of personality tests should be accompanied by a verified assessment of what scores on the test correlate with good performance (Arthur, Woehr, & Graziano, 2001). Other types of tests that may be given to candidates include IQ tests, integrity tests, and physical tests, such as drug tests or physical fitness tests.
To better understand the hiring process, let’s consider an example case. A company determined it had an open position and advertised it. The human resources (HR) manager directed the hiring team to start the recruitment process. People saw the advertisement and submitted their résumés, which went into the collection of candidate résumés. The HR team reviewed the candidates’ credentials and provided a list of the best potential candidates to the department manager, who reached out to them to set up individual interviews.
What Do You Think? Using Cutoff Scores to Determine Job Selection
Many positions require applicants to take tests as part of the selection process. These can include IQ tests, job-specific skills tests, or personality tests. The organization may set cutoff scores (i.e., a score below which a candidate will not move forward) for each test to determine whether the applicant moves on to the next stage. For example, there was a case of Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate who applied for a position with the police force in New London, Connecticut. As part of the selection process, Jordan took the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT), a test designed to measure cognitive ability.
Jordan did not make it to the interview stage because his WPT score of 33, equivalent to an IQ score of 125 (100 is the average IQ score), was too high. The New London Police department policy is to not interview anyone who has a WPT score over 27 (equivalent to an IQ score over 104) because they believe anyone who scores higher would be bored with police work. The average score for police officers nationwide is the equivalent of an IQ score of 104 (Jordan v. New London, 2000; ABC News, 2000).
Jordan sued the police department alleging that his rejection was discrimination and that his civil rights were violated because he was denied equal protection under the law. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision that the city of New London did not discriminate against him because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the exam (The New York Times, 1999).
What do you think? When might universal cutoff points make sense in a hiring decision, and when might they eliminate otherwise potentially strong employees?