ABSTRACT
111Inside Tips
UNDERSTANDING THE HIRING AND ASSESSMENT PROCESS
In this chapter we will continue our look at how employees are selected into organizations by focusing directly on assessment techniques used in hiring. As mentioned earlier, we will be applying some of the research and measurement methods discussed in Chapter 2, so make sure to review the concepts if necessary.
A study hint for organizing and understanding the many screening and testing procedures presented in this chapter is to consider those processes in the context of some of the methodological issues discussed previously. In other words, much of the strength or weakness of any particular employment method or process is determined by its ability to predict important work outcomes, which is usually defined as “job performance.” The ability to predict future employee performance accurately from the results of employment tests or from other employee screening procedures is critical. However, other important considerations for screening methods concern their cost and ease of use, or in other words, their utility. Hiring interviews, for example, are considered to be relatively easy to use, whereas testing programs are thought (rightly or wrongly) to be costly and difficult to implement. Often, our own experiences in applying for jobs give us only a limited picture of the variety of employee screening methods.
