ABSTRACT
Central to the development of early industrial psychology, employee selection has been a core activity in the field of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology for close to 100 years. Although selection can be interpreted broadly to include vocational guidance and placement, that is, selecting jobs for individuals (Kornhauser, 1922), the emphasis in this chapter is on the narrower definition, choosing among individuals to fill a particular job. Employee selection, of course, predates the efforts of applied psychologists. Economic organizations have always had procedures in place to determine whom to admit or reject. What the early industrial psychologists1 brought to selection was a particular approach, relying on the scientific methodology of the new experimental psychology and grounded in the measurement of individual differences, of empirically verifying the efficacy of their efforts. This approach depended on progress in both measurement and statistics and reflected a pragmatic approach much in harmony with the progressive attitudes of the times.
