 Liam
Healy & Associates
chartered occupational psychologists
Selection System Design
The correct match between job requirements and
individual characteristics will produce happier
employees and a more efficient organisation hence
the need for an efficient and effective selection
system. The financial and functional
consequences of ineffective selection can be
considerable, and can drag a company to its knees.
The major part of our work involves designing
selection systems and delivering selection services
on behalf of clients, either for a specific job, or
on an organisation wide basis. This can entail either
evaluating an existing system or
developing a new system from scratch.
Many of the systems we develop are designed to be
used on line, and because of our Human Factors/User
Psychology expertise, we can combine high quality
selection system and practical on line user
interface design under one roof. Typically we will
design the selection process and the user interface,
then we work closely with a small number of specialist
IT solutions providers to provide the programming and
code development framework. Effective risk management
and control is always part of the staged delivery model
we use.
The systems we design can involve all or some of the
standard phases of the selection process. The first
stage of the selection process involves carrying out an
analysis of the job itself to identify the key elements
or dimensions involved in it. From this a person
specification is produced. This stage also involves
identifying the criteria that can be used to assess the
effectiveness of the system as well as attracting
suitable applicants. Next, the tools available to the
selector are assessed in terms of their psychometric
proprieties (reliability and validity) and their
suitability for the particular purpose before being
incorporated into a selection system and used to arrive
at a decision. The final and possibly most important
stage is that of evaluation of the system used in terms
of its effectiveness and the effect it has upon the
candidates.
1. Job Analysis
Job Analysis is carried out
to determine the key tasks in a job. These then become
the basis of the criteria to be predicted. This allows
the tools subsequently used to be structured, that is,
directly related to the knowledge, skills, abilities and
other factors that have been shown by job analysis to
determine effective job performance.
There are two basic approaches to job analysis -
A logical or
task oriented approach includes methods
that involve only a small inferential task in the
observation and report of task variables and then a
larger inferential task in determining the attributes
needed to do the task.
Person/theoretically
oriented methods are more psychological because there is
a larger inferential task involved in the report of
worker variables from the observation of a task and then
a smaller one between that and the deduction of the
required attributes. Similar methods include observation
and expert analysis, which can provide high quality
information and are well suited to situations where
there are only a few job holders.
2. Success Criteria
Before producing the person specification we must
develop criteria, or the standards against which the
predictive value of the selection system may be
subsequently measured. Failure to choose criteria with
care is the root of much poor prediction. In many
cases expediency dictates the choice of criteria and
that the convenient availability of a criterion is
erroneously viewed more important than its
adequacy
By deciding upon the criteria before the system
begins to operate, we can devise a method to collect the
relevant information as the job goes on, and we can
evaluate the selection system fairly. Delaying the
choice of criteria until the system is in use invites
choosing those criteria which support the methods that
have been used.
Criteria can be at three levels - immediate level,
level of expected results, and ultimate or
organisational level. We can also identify three
different types of criteria - production,
personnel or judgmental. Criteria must
also be reliable i.e. consistent over time. and valid
i.e. measure true performance at work. We also need to
take account of criterion coverage; contamination;
dynamism; and interrelationships between criteria.
3. Producing the Person
Specification
If the purpose of a job analysis is to produce a
description of the key tasks or elements in a job then
the person specification is a
description of the characteristics required of a person
who can carry out those activities. The person
specification is usually based on a plan, the points on
which should be relevant, independent, assessable and
should have enough questions to avoid hasty conclusions
but not so many so as to be laborious. There are a
number of different models, one of the more
straightforward and commonly used ones is Rodger's
Seven Point Plan. To reflect the fact some
characteristics are more important than others, a
distinction is usually made between those which are
essential and those which are desirable.
We must be sure that the person specification is an
accurate reflection of those individual human attributes
that are actually required to do the job, this is
difficult but it is possible and must be done at a
detailed level since global estimates are unlikely to be
sensitive enough.
Often, the behavioural i.e. competency, related part
of the person specification is the most difficult to
define. This is a very large area to cover, please read
the discussion on
competencies.
4. Attracting and Dealing
With Candidates
This is the most often overlooked part of selection,
and a high candidate withdrawal rate is often a symptom
that the organisation has failed to effectively engage
with applicants. We see selection as a series of
interactions between the organisation and the applicant,
and at each stage both decide
whether or not to continue the interaction. This
continues until either party withdraws from the process
or a job offer is made and accepted. This demonstrates
the importance of the careful use of the information
on which applicants base their decisions.
We know from research that that applicants are
initially concerned with functional information, but
also place great weight on information which they obtain
from personal sources, when this is not displayed it
can be offset by presenting a high level of information.
Applicants also prefer selection to be participative
and non directive, so they feel that they can exert some
control over the process, they like to be able to see
the relevance of the procedures used, how information
obtained will be used and prefer methods which provide
them with a lot of feedback on their performance.
5. Choosing and Using The
Correct Assessment Tools
We pointed out earlier that the tools used must be to
be structured, that is, directly related to the
knowledge, skills, abilities and other factors that have
been shown by job analysis to determine effective job
performance. They also need to meet minimum
reliability and validity criterion. Depending on the
outcome of the Person specification we have a wide range
of existing tools.
Very often, clients wish us to develop new assessment
tools which they, the client own and are free to use.
6. Making a Decision
There are two ways of making a decision; the
clinical method, where a person uses
their own expertise and judgement to make a decision,
and the actuarial method where
a number of factors are considered according to some
model of decision making, this is generally the more
reliable and valid method. While there were some cases
of the clinical method equalling the actuarial, there a
few none where it is actually better. However, the
difference is not likely to be large, in cases such as
one off appointments it can still be appropriate.
Some characteristics may be valued more highly than
others, in which case each may be given a weighting, by
which a mark can be multiplied to reflect the different
values attached. Usually this is the most practical
method, but in cases where there are a number of
applicants (100 or more) and follow up data is
available, then a multiple regression approach can be
used to discover the best combination of predictors of
work performance. (NOTE: The multiple regression
approach assumes that deficiencies in one area can be
made up for by strengths in others but where this is not
so minimum cut off points may be used to filter out
those applicants who do not come up to scratch on the
essential requirements of the person specification.)
A common approach which we are often asked to design
is worth mentioning here is PROFILE
MATCHING. In profile matching a profile of
what the scores on various measures of what an ideal
candidate might look like is produced, and an attempt
is made to match the profiles of candidates to it.
The candidate with the smallest sum of
differences (which should be squared
before adding to reflect the difference in importance
between large and small differences) is the one chosen.
However, there are problems with what to use as criteria
and correlation cannot be used as a method of
measurement since it is particularly sensitive to the
relative rather than absolute shape of the profile.
For these reasons we tend to advise against this
approach.
7. Evaluating the
Selection System
The most overlooked part. Please read the sections on
Selection System Audit and
Validity for an overview of
how we evaluate a selection system.
|
