Predictors: R

1
Predictors Résumés are among the most popular
screening methods

• This makes sense
• Applicants perceive them as fair (Steiner
  Gilliland 1996)
• Detailed background on what a person has done
• Can be linked to job analysis information
• No cost to collect them

• This also seems strange
• Easy to fake
• Biased information (only good things are
  mentioned)
• Hard to compare
• Expensive in terms of employee time

2
Predictors Seniority and Experience

• Definitions
• Seniority
• Length of service with organization, department,
  or job
• Experience
• Not only length of service but also kinds of
  activities an employee has undertaken
• Why so widely used?
• Direct experience in a job content area reflects
  an accumulated stock of KSAOs necessary to
  perform job
• Information is easily and cheaply obtained
• Protects employee from capricious treatment and
  favoritism
• Promoting senior or experienced employees is
  socially acceptable -- viewed as rewarding loyalty

3
Predictors Seniority and Experience

• Employees typically expect promotions will go to
  most senior or experienced employee
• Relationship to job performance
• Seniority is unrelated to job performance
• Experience is moderately related to job
  performance, especially in the short run
• Experience is superior because it is
• a more valid method than seniority
• more likely to be content valid when past or
  present jobs are similar to the future job
• Experience is unlikely to remedy initial
  performance difficulties of low-ability employees
• is better suited to predict short-term rather
  than long-term potential

4
Predictors Seniority and Experience

• Experience is nearly universally used to select
  individuals
• There are many different ways to conceptualize
  experience however
• Levels of specificity do you measure just the
  specific tasks (from job analysis) the person is
  doing, or do you measure the entire scope of the
  job?
• Measurement mode do you measure quantity,
  quality, or type of experience?

5
Predictors Seniority and Experience
Quinones, Ford, Teachout (1995) showed that
work experience is not a unitary concept by
demonstrating by meta-analysis that the overall
correlation of experience and job performance is
.27 (Time number of years, months practiced,
times performed. Type experience similar in
type and size to target job. Athe the unit of
analys of task, job, organization
6
Predictors Seniority and Experience

• (McDaniel, Schmidt, Hunter, 1988) N 16,058
• The correlation between job experience and job
  performance moderated by two variables
• length of experience
• job complexity
• The highest correlations were found for those
  with
• low mean levels of job experience
• for jobs that place low levels of cognitive
  demands on employees

7
Predictors Education and Job Performance

• Arguments for using education (Roth Bobko,
  2000)
• Indicator for job skills
• Measures how smart people are (r.50)
• Measures conscientiousness (r.35)
• Cheap and objective

• Arguments against using education
• Why not measure intelligence and skills directly?
• Years of education is vague
• Potential for adverse impact against minorities

8
Correlations between Education and Performance
Predictors Education and Job Performance
(Roth, BeVier, Switzer, Schippmann, 1996)
9
Predictor Job Specific Knowledge and Aptitude
Tests

• Work samples
• Actual physical mock up of job tasks
• In-basket exercises for managerial tasks
• Relationship with job performance r0.54
• Job knowledge
• Questions regarding factual and procedural
  elements of the job
• Relationship with job performance r0.48
• Advantages and disadvantages of testing directly?

10
Predictor Situational Judgment Tests

• Present job applicants with realistic, job
  related scenarios and evaluate their responses
  based on a careful analysis of the tasks
  performed on the job
• Scores are relative to those provided by experts
  in the content area
• Results from studies of organizations show that
  SJTs
• are predictive of job performance
• are related to traits like general mental ability
  and personality

11
Predictor Situational Judgment Tests

• Sales Scenario
• You are a Business Representative in the MSD
  Group. You have been in contact with an import
  company, CREO Imports, that is developing its
  electronic equipment import business. This
  company has never had any personal contact with
  XYZ and has never shipped with XYZ. Most of its
  shipments have been truck to local markets, but
  the company is very interested in extending its
  reach. Its orders in these new markets correspond
  to 45 loads worth 110,000 in the first month,
  which represents a significant opportunity for
  XYZ.The only relationship between CREO Imports
  and XYZ is your series of phone calls. You feel
  that a face-to-face meeting with them will be the
  most effective way to further the relationship
  and help them feel comfortable with using your
  services.For each of the following questions,
  choose the best possible response.1. What
  information would MOST help you to convince your
  management of the potentialopportunity at
  CREO?A. Comparison numbers for electronic
  equipment traffic vs. other traffic.B. A review
  of XYZs service capabilities from the ports.C.
  The customers projected shipping volume and the
  revenue generted.D. Revenue and volume
  information on all electronic equipment import
  customers.2. What would be the MOST important
  thing to ask the customer to help you plan
  themost productive first meeting?A. What the
  customer hopes to accomplish at the meeting.B.
  What the customers strategic market goals
  are.C. What the customer takes into
  consideration when choosing a transportation
  provider.D. How the company is currently
  shipping.3. What should be the primary focus of
  your initial meeting with the customer?A. The
  benefits XYZ can offer the company as it moves
  into new markets.B. Basic shipping information
  for inexperienced shippers.C. Potential problems
  that may occur.D. Other electronic equipment
  traffic that XYZ ships from ports.

12
Predictor General mental ability for selection

• Critical area for measurement
• Everyone agrees that they want smarter employees
• Intelligence would seem to matter for every
  single aspect of job performance
• There is evidence that this is something that is
  fairly stable within a person
• Why are intelligent individuals better at their
  jobs?

13
Predictor General mental ability for selection

• What is it?
• It goes by many names g, general mental ability,
  IQ, intelligence
• A general measure of cognitive functioning that
  should work across several different domains
• First proposed by Francis Galton, an English
  geneticist and relative of Darwin
• It remains one of the most studied of all human
  characteristics
• Is it really a trait? Is it stable?
• Test re-test (age 6 to 180.77 age 12 to age
  180.89)
• Estimates of heritability range as high as
  h20.75
• So whats the alternative?
• The SAT/GRE dimensions
• Howard Gardners theory of multiple intelligences

14
Predictor General mental ability for selection

• After taking into account gender and physical
  stature, brain size is correlated about .40 with
  IQ
• The speed of nerve conduction is also correlated
  with IQ
• Energy expended during problem solving is
  inversely related to IQ levels
• The brain waves of individuals with higher IQs
  respond more quickly to simple sensory stimuli
  (clicks, lights)

15
Predictor General mental ability for selection

• Data clearly show that general mental ability as
  measured by the ASVAB is correlated with
  education levels, income, self-esteem, and weeks
  of unemployment even with a 10-year gap between
  measures

16
Predictor General mental ability for selection
(Hunter and Hunter, 1984 Ree and Earles, 1990)
17
Predictor General mental ability for selection
18
Predictor Personality

• We can train people to do things where skills are
  concerned. But there is one capability we do not
  have and that is to change a persons attitude.
  So we prefer an unskilled person with a good
  attitudeto a highly skilled person with a bad
  attitude
• Herb Kelleher, CEO, Southwest Airlines
• Most organizations want to hire people based on
  their personalities, but personality is
  notoriously difficult to measure

19
Dimensions of personality Meta-analytic results
Predictor Personality
20
Conscientiousness
Predictor Personality

• Tendency towards orderliness, dutifulness,
  achievement striving, self-discipline, and
  caution
• Are there positive features of this trait?
• Are there drawbacks?
• When do you think this would be most important?

21
Conscientiousness
Predictor Personality

• Summary of processes
• Increases goal setting behaviors
• Increases self-efficacy
• Increases value placed on social order and
  conformity
• Summary of situational effects
• Stronger effects when situations are weak or when
  supervision is non-existent
• Average conscientiousness of a group is related
  to group performance
• Can actually decrease performance for novel tasks
• More likely to be entrepreneurs

22
Extroversion
Predictor Personality

• A tendency towards friendliness, gregariousness,
  assertiveness, activity, and excitement seeking
• Are there positive features of this trait?
• Are there drawbacks?
• When do you think this would be most important?

23
Extroversion
Predictor Personality

• Summary of processes
• Decreases blood flow to frontal lobes
• Both introverts and extraverts are trying to
  regulate their level of psychological arousal
• Associated with increased self-efficacy
• Linked to achievement motivation
• Summary of situational effects
• More important in social situations like
  leadership
• Can increase citizenship behavior (helping) in
  some social situations
• Extraversion is a hindrance in distributive
  bargaining
• Higher variability in extroversion linked to
  superior group performance

24
Agreeableness
Predictor Personality

• A tendency towards trust, morality, altruism,
  cooperation, modesty, and sympathy
• Are there positive features of this trait?
• Are there drawbacks?
• When do you think this would be most important?

25
Agreeableness
Predictor Personality

• Summary of processes
• Associated with values of benevolence and
  traditionalism
• Has a relatively large negative relationship with
  goal-setting
• Breaks into two dimensionsmorality and conflict
  avoidance
• Summary of situational effects
• Agreeable individuals are more helpful in
  minimally constrainted situations
• Agreeable individuals prefer tasks calling for
  helping, but dislike tasks calling for conflict
• Agreeableness does not moderate helping friends
  or familybut agreeableness does moderate helping
  strangers
• Agreeableness is related to citizenship and
  helping performance in groups (not surprisingly)
• Agreeableness is a hindrance in distributive
  bargaining

26
Openness to experience
Predictor Personality

• A tendency towards imagination, artistic
  interests, emotionality, adventurousness,
  intellect, and liberalism
• Are there positive features of this trait?
• Are there drawbacks?
• When do you think this would be most important?

27
Openness to experience
Predictor Personality

• Summary of processes
• Increased activity in the dopamine systems
• More flexible organization of ideas
• Mildly linked to goal setting motivation
• Place more value on universalism and
  self-direction tend to distain conformity and
  tradition
• Summary of situational effects
• Open individuals learn faster in situations
  calling for change
• Openness is very strongly linked to creativity
• More likely to be entrepreneurs

28
Neuroticism
Predictor Personality

• Summary of processes
• Increased sensitivity to environmental stimuli
  due to activation of the sympathetic nervous
  system
• Linked to worry, negative emotional states, and
  increased use of avoidance coping strategies
• Negatively linked to all aspects of motivation
• Summary of situational effects
• Less likely to do well as entrepreneurs
• Higher variability in neuroticism negatively
  linked to team performance
• Interestingnot more likely to turnover from jobs
  and relationships with performance as a whole are
  weak

29
Core Self-Evaluations
Predictor Personality

• Scale items
• I am confident I get the success I deserve in
  life.
• I am capable of coping with most of my problems.
• There are times when things look pretty bleak and
  hopeless to me (R).
• When I try, I generally succeed.
• I determine what will happen in my life.
• I am filled with doubts about my competence (R)

30
Predictor Personality Core Self Evaluations
Normal Personality

• These are measures of core self-evaluations
• Typical features
• Positive self image (self-esteem and
  self-efficacy)
• Internal locus of control
• Low neuroticism
• Stability can be inferred from self-esteem
  measures
• Test-retest correlations among adults over
  periods around two years typically average around
  0.60
• Lower stability in very young and very old
  individuals

31
Predictor Personality Core Self Evaluations
Performance

• People with positive self-evaluations set higher
  goals for themselves, which is a major reason for
  their higher levels of performance (Erez Judge,
  2001)

32
Predictor PersonalityBig Five Personality
Traits at Work
33
Predictor Interviews
Questions

• Would you ever work at a company that didnt
  interview you first?
• Why or why not?
• What do you try to learn in an interview?
• Would you ever hire an applicant that hadnt been
  interviewed first?
• Why or why not?
• What do managers try to learn in an interview?
• As an applicant, what are the best and worst
  interview experiences youve had

34
Interviews are very familiar and very important
Predictor Interviews

• Applicants typically like them
• Asked applicants to rate lots of methods of
  selection
• They liked interviews, simulations, and job
  knowledge tests the best
• They liked personality and life history items the
  least

• Organizations typically like them too
• Interviews are the most common selection method
  in real organizations
• Managers may prefer candidates they have met
  prior to hiring

35
What do interviewees say that theyre looking for?
Predictor Interviews

• In general, research suggests that applicants
  prefer
• Non-invasive questions
• Interviewers who know something about the job
  (preferably not someone from HR)
• Interviewers general interpersonal skills
• Warmth
• Sincerity
• Listening skills
• However, job characteristics are much more
  predictive of applicant intentions to take a job
  than are their perceptions of interviewers
• Interviewers are seen as signals of the companys
  culture

36
Huffcutt, Conway, Roth, StoneConstructs
Measured in Interviews
Predictor Interviews

• Tried to build up a taxonomy of constructs that
  might be relevant for job performance
• Mental capability, since most jobs obviously
  involve some mental operations
• The actual declarative information a person has
  stored regarding the job (knowledge and skills)
• Personality traits as represented by the FFM
• Applied social skills, which are apropos because
  interviews might be especially good for measuring
  these
• Fit with the values of the organization, that
  again might be difficult to assess outside of a
  conversation

37
Research Had Demonstrated GMA Loadings for
Interviews
Predictor Interviews
Interview characteristics Interview characteristics rc
Overall relationship Overall relationship 0.40
Structure Low 0.52
Medium 0.40
High 0.35
Content Situational 0.32
Behavioral 0.18
Ability scores available? Yes 0.59
No 0.38

• Interviews are correlated with GMA
• More structured interviews are less correlated
  with ability
• Situational interviews are more correlated with
  ability
• When scores are available, interviewers engage in
  confirmatory biases
• It may be that structured interviews are
  sometimes designed to avoid ability.
• Huffcutt Roth, 1996

38
Huffcutt, Conway, Roth, Stone Constructs
Measured in Interviews
Predictor Interviews
Structure Structure Structure
Overall Low High
General intelligence .24 .26 .11
Job knowledge .42 .49 .33
Extroversion .33 .22 .40
Conscientiousness .33 .24 .37
Agreeableness .51 .25 .53
Emotional stability .47 .18 .56
Interpersonal skills .39 .31 .40
Communication skills .26 .05 .31
Leadership .47 .40 .40
Org. fit .49 .07 .58

• Interviewers are basically looking for the same
  things that most tests are
• Results suggest that structured interviews may do
  a slightly better job at getting personality

39
Huffcutt, Conway, Roth, StoneConstructs
Measured in Interviews
Predictor Interviews

• Structured interviews appear to be better at
  measuring several constructs that are important
  for job performance
• Unstructured interviews appeared to show larger
  race and sex differences
• Interviews are not really completely different
  from tests, they measure many of the constructs
  we try to assess with tests

40
Are there trade offs in which interview methods
are best?
Predictor Interviews

• Legal defensibility?
• Face validity?
• Content validity?
• Criterion-related validity?

41
Methods for structured interviews
Predictor Interviews

• Situational interviews
• Calculate a product demand forecast given this
  raw data
• Premise performance best demonstrated by real
  life situation
• Development
• Get lists of typical tasks through interviewing
  incumbents and SMEs
• Develop scoring systems based on points for each
  response

• Behavioral interviews
• Tell me about a time that you showed leadership
  skills
• Premise past behavior predicts future behavior
• Development
• Get lists of critical behaviors through
  interviewing incumbents and SMEs
• Develop scoring systems based on points for
  quality of each response

42
Very common, but hopelessly vague questions
Predictor Interviews

• Tell me about yourself
• Problem Totally unstandardized
• What would you say is your greatest strength?
• Problem Again, unstandardized difficult to
  define what a good answer is
• Describe a challenge you faced at your last job
  how did you overcome it?
• No assurance this challenge is similar to the
  current job

43
Common behavioral interview questions
Predictor Interviews

• Describe a time when you independently decided
  that something needed to be done, and you
  independently took responsibility for making
  certain it was done.
• Tell me about a problem that you tried to solve
  (at work) related to task xxx on the job
  description. How did you identify and solve the
  problem?
• Describe a time when you tried to persuade
  someone to do something that he/she was unwilling
  to do.
• Describe a time when you had to do task xxx on
  the job description.

44
Example Developing a behavioral interview
Predictor Interviews

• Tell me about a time when you have worked with
  customers who were angry. If you havent worked
  with customers, tell me about another time you
  dealt with an angry person.
• Examples of behaviors
• 0 points complained about customers and
  explained how they refused to back down
• 1 point gave a full refund or caved in
  completely without any supporting information
  described feeling stressed out
• 2 points politely told the person that policy
  says no refunds are given note customer seemed
  to be happy in the end
• 3 points apologize and explain that while store
  policy requires a receipt, the person is welcome
  to contact the manager with further questions
  note a positive feeling from the customer at the
  end