SELECTION METHODS

Selection Methods

Selection Methods

Introduction

“Personnel selection is the systematic process of making decisions about which individuals to employ to fill open positions within an organisation” (Lievens, 2002: p580). The main goal of selection is to identify and employ those individuals who have the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) to successfully complete the work of the organisation. The volume and quality of this work directly affects organisational success (Posthuma, 2002). The individuals selected may be new entrants to the organisation identified through an external recruitment process. Alternatively, those selected may be internal applicants current employees who move to new positions within the organisation and who are identified through the internal recruitment process (Barrick, 2005: 159).

Selection measures must demonstrate the test construction properties of reliability and validity in order to demonstrate their usefulness. “Reliability refers to the consistency, dependability, and stability of the scores generated by the selection instrument” (Robertson, 2001: p443). Selection methods that are reliable will yield the same results if administered at two different times or if used by different raters. Reliability is a necessary but not sufficient condition to ensure that the selection measures are useful (Potosky, 2004).

Validity refers to the extent to which the selection measures actually do assess the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for successful job performance. Validity provides evidence that the measure can predict future job performance. In the context of selection, when KSAs have been identified for a particular job, the HR specialist has formulated testable hypotheses about the worker characteristics required for job performance. “Validity refers to the process of determining if those worker characteristics are indeed related to job performance” (Barrick, 2005: 161).

There are two major forms of validity. Content validity involves systematically using subject matter experts (e.g., practitioners and academics in the field of work) and job analysis information to develop the items to include in the selection measure. Accountants would be most knowledgeable about the questions to ask on an accounting test or the questions to ask in an interview for accounting jobs (Wilk, 2003).

Empirical validity is the statistical demonstration that there is a significant correlation between the scores on the selection instrument and the scores on measures of job performance. Predictive and concurrent validity are types of empirical validity. In both types, scores are collected for a group of individuals on both the selection instrument and the job performance measure. Statistical analysis is then performed to determine if the correlation between these two scores is high enough to be greater than chance. “If the correlation is statistically significant, there is evidence that applicants with higher scores on the selection measure will perform well on the job” (Lievens, 2002: p582).

Laura Colossi aims to compare the two social research methods: Reliability and Validity. She describes reliability as “consistency of measurement” and validity as “strength of conclusions, inferences or propositions”. Colossi further elaborates these concepts by explaining the different types of reliability and validity.

Laura distinguishes two types of reliability: test/retest reliability and internal ...