An Introduction to the Various Techniques of Selection and Assessment

• The Interview
• The Structured Interview
• Psychometric Tests
• Assessment Centers
• Biodata

Personnel selection and assessment activities are integral parts of organizational life. The contemporary economic climate has seen an ever increasing  level of staff turnover and personnel reorganization, and the abolition of the  traditional view of ‘a job for life’. Consequently, there is more pressure now on organizations and HR managers to fill vacant positions quickly and with the  most appropriate individuals. Decisions about hiring and classifying applicants  are based on expectations or predictions about their future work behaviors. When a company needs to recruit new staff or make promotion decisions about employees, there are various methods of assessment at its disposal.

This article examines  different methods of assessment and selection commonly used by organizations today;  the interview, psychological tests, assessment centers and biodata.

Whatever selection procedure is used, it should yield the right type of information and lead to correct decisions being made. If a technique is successful it is said to be ‘valid’. The validity of an assessment is basically what the procedure measures and how well it does so. Validity of a procedure can be represented as a single figure, indicating the strength of agreement between the average individual’s score on an assessment and their later success in the selected field. This success is often called ‘success on the criterion’. Research, however, has highlighted a gap that exists between what is recommended by professional HR or management consultants and what actually occurs in many organizations.

• The Interview

In good selection practice each of the tools used are validated by examining how job-related they are and how well they predict a candidate’s subsequent job   performance. The job-relatedness of the traditional selection interview, which   typically follows no particular pattern, is generally regarded as low. Interviews   are still the most widely used selection tool by far, despite the fact that   they are typically unreliable, invalid and subjective. Personnel selection interviews   take a variety of forms but are essentially a conversation between a candidate   and one or more interviewers with a specific purpose. The ubiquitous use of the unstructured selection interview in organizations attests to the faith that   both employers and applicants have in the casual and unrestrained face-to-face   conversation as a technique for selection. While it may be accepted that interviews   will always be necessary in some shape or form, it is when a company relies   solely on the interview that concerns over validity arise. One explanation for   the consistently low validity in the unstructured interview is that different interviewers may rate the same information differently, and features that are irrelevant to the personal attributes required for the job such as age, race, appearance, sex, experience of interviews and the job market situation introduce bias into how interviewers evaluate information.

• The Structured Interview

A structured interview usually involves questions which have been developed through a form of job analysis, thereby limiting the traditional subjectivity of assessment. Every candidate is asked each of the questions, or standardised versions of the questions, previously devised. Responses are rated by the interviewer using an objective, behaviorally-anchored scoring system. By removing the subjectivity from the interview, standardising the procedure, and introducing a direct link between the interview content and job success, it follows that structured interviews have a much higher degree of job relatedness and validity than their unstructured counterparts. The drawback with highly structured interviews, however, is that they often remove from the interview situation those interpersonal aspects which are often valued by interviewers and interviewees alike. The interview has retained its popularity despite its sometimes poor validity record as it serves a much wider purpose than merely assessment, such as ‘selling’ the job to the candidate   and communication of organizational values and norms to applicants.

• The Psychological Test

Special tests are often used to assess the mental abilities or personality characteristics of job candidates. Psychological, or psychometric, tests are standardised methods of gaining a set of responses from a candidate which may then be compared to a comparable sample group of people. Candidates are required to answer a carefully derived set of questions, which may focus on specific aspects of ability or facets of personality. Cognitive tests may be divided into tests of achievement and of aptitude. The major difference between tests   of aptitude and tests of achievement is that achievement tests are retrospective, focusing on what a candidate has learnt and what they know, whilst aptitude tests are prospective, focusing on what an individual is capable of achieving in the future (their potential to learn). Cost is often a major factor which influences whether psychometric testing is used for selection in an organization. Whilst these kinds of test are expensive to design and develop, they are sufficiently inexpensive to purchase that the financial benefits of improved productivity deriving from their use typically far outweigh the cost. Scores on some tests require a trained consultant for their interpretation and no test should be   administered or interpreted by a person lacking appropriate training. Perhaps it is the mystique or confusion that surrounds psychometric testing that prevents its wide usage. A well designed test can be an extremely valid and inexpensive selection tool, yet there is still a mismatch between its relatively high validity and relatively low popularity amongst HR practitioners.

•  Assessment Centers

ACs have become increasingly popular over the recent years to obtain the best possible indication of an individual’s actual or potential competence to perform at a target job. The term ‘assessment center’ usually conjures up an image of a building with a multitude of rooms where various seminars and exercises are carried out. This is a common misconception. It is important to realise that an AC is not a place, but in fact a method or approach for assessing individuals. The AC’s approach or procedure for achieving this objective is to combine a range of assessment techniques so that the fullest and clearest indication of competence is achieved. When properly designed and carried out, ACs have been consistently successful in making valid and reliable predictions of candidate   success. Assessment centers involve a combination of selection methods which are given to a group of candidates over the course of a day, or several days. Often, an AC will consist of a series of simulations and exercises that aim to reflect the tasks involved in the target job. Overall, applicants often favour ACs because of their use of work sample tests and the opportunity that they provide to meet assessors and to perform job-related exercises alongside other candidates. Candidates of an AC are assessed, either in a group or individually, on a series of job-relevant dimensions. In group assessment it is common to   be assessed by a team of assessors who are each responsible for two or three candidates Typical dimensions assessed are often quite complex. Dimension labels such as interpersonal skills, analytic skills, leadership, sensitivity, tolerance of ambiguity, and decisiveness are all common. There are both advantages and disadvantages to such a clinical and statistical method of assessment and selection. A reliable and valid AC will successfully combine the art of selection with the science of statistical analysis, limiting the imperfections of each technique. Irrespective of their downfalls, when correctly used, ACs can give a highly accurate indication of an individual’s potential at a job.

• Biodata

The process of analysing and pre-screening application forms for a job is often aided by   the use of biographical data, or ‘biodata’. This is a far more objective alternative to the traditional ‘paper sift’ approach to pre-selection. Biodata permits a candidate to describe themselves in terms of demographic, experiential, or attitudinal variables presumed or demonstrated to be related to personality structure, personal adjustment or success in social, educational or occupational pursuits. Items may range from objective features such as date of birth, examination successes, positions of distinction in previous jobs, through to items that resemble those that might be asked in a personality test, such as preferred characteristics of jobs. Biodata is used to varying degrees in most selection procedures irrespective of the position being applied for. One of the most basic levels of biodata usage is pre-screening based on previous job information or examination results, serving to provide a minimum standard of applicant. This can escalate up to highly complex scales, often of more than a hundred items. The use of biodata assumes that the way an individual has responded in particular situations in the past is a promising source of information on how that individual will respond to similar situations in the future.