ABSTRACT
Personnel and human resources managers are frequently called upon to give advice as to which person to recruit into the organization, select for promotion, send on particular training courses, provide counselling to or remove from the organization. Biodata represent one objective and systematic way of making use of information about past events to predict future job success. The use of biodata can offer a range of practical advantages to any organization of a commercial, voluntary or even political nature, and there are distinct cost benefits to be gained as well. Biodata are useful in appraising significant, non-cognitive charac-teristics among employees at levels such that substantial and relatively homogeneous abilities can be inferred from prior performance and/or academic record. A few of the more serious problems were examined in detail; fairness and legality, the fakeability and accuracy of biodata, the generalizability of biodata findings across companies and worker groups, and the stability of findings over time.
