ABSTRACT
This chapter is motivated by a simple question: Do professionally developed personnel selection practices offer strategic value to the fi rm? Most industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists would answer this question with an enthusiastic “Yes!” The belief that hiring better people will result in better job performance, which will in turn contribute to better functioning organizations, is imbued early in most I-O psychologists. Utility analyses indicate that selection systems with high validity will generate monetary returns far in excess of the costs associated with selection. How then, despite nearly a century of research demonstrating the consequences of effective selection at the level of the individual, does the question posed above remain a real concern amongst practitioners, consultants, and academicians?
