Chapter 06 - Selecting Employees and Placing Them in Jobs

Chapter 06 - Selecting Employees and Placing Them in Jobs

Chapter Six: Selecting Employees and Placing Them in Jobs

Welcome to your guide to teaching Chapter Six, Selecting Employees and Placing Them in Jobs!

This guide will provide you with a chapter summary, lecture outlines, solutions to in-chapter case questions, and discussion questions.

Instructor’s Manual Highlights:

Chapter Six Roadmap

We hope you find each chapter of your Instructor Manual practical and useful, but also, exciting! You can adapt the chapter text, the PowerPoints, and the video to work in an online class environment, a guided independent study environment, or a face to face or on-ground environment.

When presenting Chapter Six, have the students first read the chapter and encourage them to absorb the “big picture” of Selecting Employees and Placing Them in Jobs.

Use the PowerPoint for Chapter Six to frame your lecture.

Have students read and discuss the Cases and their respective Questions.

Have students validate their knowledge of the chapter by working through the Discussion Questions at the end of the Chapter.

Lastly, have students review, journal, or discuss the Key Vocabulary Terms at the end of the chapter.

ROADMAP: THE LECTURE

SELECTING EMPLOYEES AND PLACING THEM IN JOBS

Chapter Summary

This chapter explores ways to minimize errors in employee selection and placement. It starts by describing the selection process and how to evaluate possible methods for carrying out that process. The chapter then takes an in-depth look at the most widely used methods such as applications and résumés, employment tests and interviews. The chapter ends by describing the process by which organizations arrive at a final selection decision.

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, the student should be able to:

1. Identify the elements of the selection process.

1. Define ways to measure the success of a selection method.

1. Summarize the government’s requirements for employee selection.

1. Compare the common methods used for selecting human resources.

1. Describe major types of employment tests.

1. Discuss how to conduct effective interviews.

1. Explain how employers carry out the process of making a selection decision.

1. Introduction

This opening chapter vignette explores the internet company, Groupon, and its innovative and fast-moving selection practices. Groupon is a “daily-deals” website, and it has a strategy based upon innovation. The company puts creativity and flexibility at the top of its list of job requirements. Groupon’s recruiters partner with hiring managers to evaluate candiates based upon “relevance and character” – which means a personality that fits in well with the company’s free-spirited and high-energy culture.

Discussion Question and Suggested Response

1. Imagine that you were a recruiter at Groupon, and you were approached by someone interested in applying for a position at the company. How would you explain, in brief, the selection process for job applicants?

The process includes an applicant applying for a job, followed by a phone screen from a recruiter. If the applicant passes the phone screen, he or she make take a skills test, often available online. If the candidate passes the skills tests, he or she is likely to particulate in a face to face interview. The face to face interview could likely be conducted by up to three people, so that if one person misses an important quality in a candidate, another interviewer may notice it.

II. Selection Process

1. Personnel selection is the process through which organizations make decisions about who will or will not be allowed to join the organization.

2.Selection begins with the candidates identified through recruitment and attempts to reduce their number to the individuals best qualified to perform the available jobs.

3. Figure 6.1, Steps in the Selection Process, identifies the steps involved in the selection process.

1. The steps in the selection process include:

a.Screening applications and résumés

1. Testing and reviewing work samples

1. Interviewing candidates

1. Checking references and background

1. Making the selection

4. Nowadays, the ease of applying online coupled with high unemployment rates of the past few years have made this processing overwhelming for many recruiters. Many employers are coping by automating much of the selection process with an applicant-tracking system.

Best Practices

How Associated Bank Selects the Best, Even in Lean Times

Associated Bank, headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is constantly looking for talent to fill their bank teller positions. Bank tellers need to be able to handle money, have great people skills, be willing to work on their feel for hours at a stretch. Because the skills are relatively high, and the pay is relatively low, teller positions have high turnover, so banks are constantly looking for replacements. Associated Bank streamlined the hiring process for tellers, by purchasing new technology called Voice Advantage. It is a system that conducts the first round of candidate interviews automatically. Associated places an “Interview Now!” link on careers sites, or sends the link to individuals, and candidates click on the link where they are taken to a web page that collects basic information. This process has streamlined the interviewing process, and recruiters an process many more interviews per day than they could before Associated began using Voice Advantage. Not only has it allowed recruiters to identify talent (that the Bank might lose to other companies who are hiring), but it has allowed the Bank to reduce its recruiting staff.

Discussion Question and Suggested Response

1. Explain the advantages of the Voice Advantage automation. What steps did it replace? What steps do you think it cannot replace?

The advantages of the Voice Advantage system are that it allows applicants to phone screen without having to be scheduled and screened “live” by a recruiter. This means that the Bank can collect applicant screens asynchronously, which frees up recruiting time. Recruiters can process many more interviews per day because they do not have to schedule the phone screens. This also means that recruiters can respond and set up interviews for the most qualified candidates faster. The steps that an automated system cannot replace are interviews with hiring managers, because those interviews are done “live.” Additionally, an automated system cannot replace the decision making process of the hiring manager and recruiter, nor can it replace the job offer step of the recruitment and selection process.The best selection methods will provide information that is reliable and valid and can be generalized to apply to the organization’s group of candidates.

1. In addition, selection should measure characteristics that have practical benefits for the organization.

1. Selection criteria must meet legal requirements in effect where the organization operates.

1. Reliability

1. Reliability refers to the extent to which a type of measurement is free from random error.

2. A reliable measurement generates consistent results. Usually, information about the reliability of tests involves statistics such as correlation coefficients. These statistics measure the degree to which two sets of numbers are related. A higher correlation coefficient signifies a stronger relationship.

HR Oops!

Hiring Clones

This vignette explores the hiring strategy of entrepreneur Todd Morris, who brought in individuals like himself—those who pressed hard to get results and worked independently. These qualities are what helped Morris get his company off the ground, but as Morris hired more people, they needed to be able to collaborate. Morris now makes personality testing part of the selection process at his company, BrickHouse, and he looks for people who are less like himself and more like team players.

Questions

1. Morris felt he needed to be hard-driving and independent to get a business off the ground, so he looked for the same kinds of people to carry out the business. How would you rate the validity of his approach to choosing employees? How would you rate its reliability?

Since reliability means the extent to which a measurement is free from random error, it is not entirely clear whether or not Morris’ approach was reliable. If he used a means for determining whether or not someone was hard-driving and independent, and that means was free from error (which could mean, that Morris’s way of identifying candidates consistently identified people who were hard-driving and independent), then his approach was reliable. Morris’ approach was not valid, because it did not accurately predict job performance. Successful job performance necessitated interpersonal skills and collaboration. These were not qualities that Morris’ approach identified; therefore, his approach lacked validity.

1. Besides the addition of personality tests, what other steps of Morris’ hiring process might benefit from change?

Morris might want to consider implementing interviews that include other, current team members, so that data about candidates are collected from multiple perspectives. In addition to a test, in other words, the hiring process might be strengthened from the inclusion of steps that include live interaction between applicants and current, successful employees. Morris might also want to consider conducting job analyses of his positions, and developing job specifications and formal job descriptions. These steps would inform the steps of the hiring process, because in order to ensure reliability and validity of a test or assessment, the job and all of its details must be identified and described.

B.Validity

1. Validity describes the extent to which performance on the measures, such as a test score, is related to what the measure is designed to assess, such as job performance.

1. As with reliability, information about the validity of selection methods often uses correlation coefficients.

3.The federal government’s Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures accept three ways of measuring validity: criterion-related, content, and construct validity.

1. Criterion-Related Validity: Criterion-related validity is a measure of validity based on showing a substantial correlation between test scores and job performance scores.

1. Figure 6.2, Measurements of a Student’s Aptitude, presents information derived by a company making a comparison of two measures – an intelligence test and college grade point average - with performance as sales representative.

1. Two kinds of research are possible for arriving at criterion-related validity:

a.Predictive validation: This research uses the test scores of all applicants and looks for a relationship between scores and future performance.

1. Concurrent validation: This type of research administers a test to people who currently hold a job, and then compares their scores to existing measures of job performance.

1. Predictive validation is more time consuming and difficult, but it is the best measure of validity.

1. Content and Construct Validity: Content validity is consistency between the test items or problems and the kinds of situations or problems that occur on the job. The usual basis for deciding that a test has content validity is through expert judgment. Content validity is most suitable for measuring behavior that is concrete and observable. Construct validity involves establishing that tests really do measure intelligence, leadership ability, or other such “constructs” as well as showing that mastery of this construct is associated with successful performance of the job. Tests that measure a construct usually measure a combination of behaviors thought to be associated with the construct.

1. Ability to Generalize

1. Along with validity in general, we need to know whether a selection method is valid in the context in which the organization wants to use it.

2. A generalizable method applies not only to the conditions in which the method was originally developed – job, organization, people, time period, and so on, it also applies to other organizations, jobs, applicants, and so on.

D.Practical Value

1. Not only should selection methods such as tests and interview responses accurately predict how well individuals will perform, they should produce information that actually benefits the organization. Methods that provide economic value greater than the cost of using them are said to have utility.

2. The choice of a selection method may differ according to the job being filled.

E.Legal Standards for Selection

1.The U.S. government imposes legal limits on selection decisions. The government requires that the selection process be conducted in a way that avoids discrimination and provides access to employees with disabilities.

2.The following laws have many applications to the selection process:

a.The Civil Rights Act of 1991 – places requirements on the choices of selection methods and prohibits preferential treatment in favor of minority groups.

b.Equal Employment Opportunity Laws – affect the kinds of information an organization may gather on application forms and in interviews.

c.The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1991 – requires employers to make reasonable accommodation to disabled individuals and restricts many kinds of questions during the selection process.

3.Table 6.1 identifies questions that are permissible and questions that are not permissible to ask via applications or interview.

4.Along with equal employment opportunity, organizations must be concerned about candidates’ privacy rights.

5.Another legal requirement is that employers hiring people to work in the United States must ensure that anyone they hire is eligible for employment in this country.

1. An important principle of selection is to combine several sources of information about candidates rather than relying solely on interviews or a single type of testing.

III. Job Applications and Résumés

1.The usual ways of gathering background information are by asking applicants to fill out application forms and provide résumés.

1. Asking applicants to provide background information is inexpensive.

1. A major challenge with applications and resumes is the sheer volume of work they generate for the organization.

A. Application Forms

1. Asking each applicant to fill out an employment application is a low-cost way to gather basic data from many applicants.

2.Employers can buy general-purpose application forms or they can create their own forms to meet unique needs. Employment applications include areas for applicants to provide several types of information:

a. Contact information

b. Work experience

c. Educational background

1. Applicant’s signature

1. Résumés

1.The usual way that applicants introduce themselves to a potential employer is to submit a résumé. An obvious drawback of this information source is that applicants control the content of the information as well as the way it is presented.

2.Organizations typically use résumés as a basis for deciding which candidates to investigate further.

3.Review of résumés is most valid when the content of the résumés is evaluated in terms of the elements of a job description.

1. References

1.Applicants provide the names and phone numbers of former employers or others who can vouch for their abilities and past job performance.

2.References are not always an unbiased source of information.

3.Usually the organization checks references after it has determined that the applicant is a finalist for the job.

4.Difficulties can be associated with providing references for former employees. If the person who is a reference gives negative information, there is a chance the candidate will claim defamation, meaning the person damaged the applicant’s reputation by making statements than cannot be proved truthful. At the other extreme, if the person gives a glowing statement about a candidate and the new employer later learns of misdeeds such as sexual misconduct or workplace violence, the new employer might sue the former employer for misrepresentation.

HRM Social

Will Linkedin Make the Resume Obsolete?

Although job application forms and resumes are still the norm, managers are more companies are starting to think they can find a more realistic assessment of candidates by looking at their online presences. For example, Union Square Ventures, a venture capital firm, asks job applicants to submit links that demonstrate their “web presence.” LinkedIn is offering a tool to increase job applications through its site. The tool is called Apply with LinkedIn, and it allows recruiters to post job openings on their company’s LinkedIn page. Job seekers can click on the button to send their profile to the company. The user’s profile includes not only a resume by also recommendations and contact information. Recruiters also use social media later in the selection process to check whether candidates of interest meet the company’s standards in their online conduct. Present and future job seekers should be sure that their online comments are as courteous and professional as they would be in a meeting at the company they would most like to work for.

1. Identify some points that you learned from this vignette, about job seeking using social media. What are some advantages? What do you think a job seeker should keep in mind, when engaging in social media?

The vignette discussed how social media such as LinkedIn, have developed new recruiting tools that allow recruiters to post job openings using the tool called “Apply with LinkedIn.” This permits the recruiter to be able to read not only the job seeker’s resume, but comments and information from their LinkedIn site such as contacts and recommendations. Although social media make the process of posting jobs, and applying for jobs, perhaps a bit faster and more streamlined than traditional methods of resumes and cover letters, it does provide a word of caution for job seekers to be mindful of their online presence. Recruiters have, according to the vignette, rejected candidates because of something learned during a check of social media.

1. Background Checks

1.A background check is a way to verify that applicants are as they represent themselves to be.

2.Verifying credentials and conducting background checks is more complicated when candidates are not U.S. citizens.