Here is an update on the EEOC’s E-RACE (Eradicating Racism and Colorism from Employment) Program. Ongoing for the past several years, E-RACE focuses on race and color discrimination in the workplace with a particular focus on employment screening methods (such as background and credit checks) that are prone to have adverse impact. Here, it is important to recall that adverse impact occurs whenever a seemingly neutral “test” unintentionally results significantly lower selection rates for protected groups of persons. (A classic example is that if the physical ability requirements are extreme, many women will be disqualified from certain labor jobs.)

Since credit and background checks are quite susceptible to having adverse impact, businesses must be sure that their use is job related (just as they must for any assessment method that has adverse impact). Not only is this consistent with the law, it also prevents the needless disqualification of job applicants who otherwise may become excellent employees.

Reid Klion

One of the major reasons to use an assessment is to ascertain if a candidate is actually capable of doing the job. While there other ways to accomplish this, such as reviewing references and resumes, these approaches can fall short. Unfortunately, employers often do a poor job of actually checking references and many of us don’t verify a candidate’s educational history. (There haven been some well-documented cases of people in high profile positions who don’t have the background they claimed. For example, there is the former director of admissions at MIT didn’t have any of the degrees listed on her resume and George O’Leary who was the head football coach at Notre Dame for 5 days until it was discovered that both his claims to have played college football and having a graduate degree were false.)

Another challenge in credentials verification is the apparent growth of degree granting universities that may not have particularly stringent academic standards. There is growing concern  about U.S. military personnel getting degrees (almost wholly paid for by the government) from propriety, for profit institutions. While the students who enroll in these programs do so with good intentions, they often discover their degrees are not well-regarded by employers because of the nature of the schools. In a similar vein, there is a physics professor at the University of Illinois who has essentially been on a crusade against diploma mills, businesses often based outside the United States where one can essentially purchase a degree without fulfilling any requirements at all. When it comes to vetting a job candidate’s credentials, it is important the employers have a way of verifying that an individual actually has the qualifications to do the job well. Whether it be with looking into a candidate’s credentials or using an assessment, this is critical information to have before making a hiring decision.

Reid Klion

A recent article by Filip Lievens, Deniz Ones, and Stephan Dilchert looked at the relationship between personality and medial school success. This  follows the path of other researchers who are looking at non-cognitive factors in predicting academic outcomes.

They followed 600 Belgian medical students longitudinally throughout their academic careers. (Differing from the US model where medical school is essentially a 4-year graduate program, European students typically enter medical school directly from high school in what is a 7-year program.) They found that personality differentially predicted medical school outcome based upon the changing demands of medical school. (Especially in the European model, the first few years are comprised almost exclusively of basic science while latter years have an increased focus on clinical work and patient contact.) For example, openness and extraversion had increased validity in predicting performance over the 7-year period. Similarly, they found that while conscientiousness predicted grades throughout a medical student’s career, its validity increased from .18 to .45.

These specific findings aside, the article also is a good reminder that it can be important to study the validity of a predictor over time, especially in situations where task demands are dynamic and change predictably over time.

Reid Klion

The Merit Systems Protection Board, a federal agency charged with ascertaining that other federal agencies carry out personnel-related activities in compliance with the law, recently released a report on the use of job simulations in assessing job candidates.  While written specifically for the federal context, it is a good source of information to anyone interested in the topic.

For those who may not be familiar, a job simulation presents a realistic work situation and assesses how an applicant responds to it. When you think about it, the set of tasks that might be considered job simulations is rather broad to include things like having welders demonstrate their skills on standard tasks, having pilots demonstrate their skills in a flight simulator, or a store manager asking applicants how they might respond to specific customer inquiries. While they may differ in terms of fidelity to actual work tasks, job simulations often provide good information about a job candidate’s skill level with a high degree of face validity.  The MSPB report discusses the different types job simulations, their relative benefits and weakness, as well as how to create and conduct them. The document also goes on to detail how simulations might be more broadly used by federal government. Some very useful information at the right price...

Reid Klion

We are often concerned about the role of self-presentation during hiring situations. For example, much attention has been devoted to understanding hown “faking good” may impact personality assessments, the potential role of cheating on exams, and the fact that people tend to exaggerate their qualifications during interview situations. That being the case, at least the folks who engage in these behaviors are making an effort to present themselves in a positive light (and, as have some like Bob Hogan argue, the ability and willingness to present oneself positively is often a critical job qualification in and of itself).

In contrast, consider those individuals who fail to put their best foot forward when applying for a job (and the reaction this tends to elicit from hiring personnel). For example, virtually all of us can recount instances of job candidates who have multiple misspellings on their résumés, manifest a complete lack of phone etiquette, and the like.  To this end, a recent CNN article took an informal survey of hiring managers on some of the grossly inappropriate behaviors they have seen during interviews. These include job candidates answering cell phones during an interview, acting bizarrely, and being completely uninformed about the company or what it does. While it has been well-established that non-structured interviews are poor predictors of future job performance, it is also clear that certain interview behaviors are too salient and extreme to be ignored even by the most heavily research-based interviewer.

Reid Klion

Jack Jones, Ph.D.,  respected colleague and Vice President of Human Capital Sciences at Vangent (a long-time pan content partner) has a recent article in Talent Management on how poor economic conditions may increase the prevalence of problematic behavior at work. While some of the factors cited include the fairly obvious such as increased general stress and financial needs, he also outlines how more subtle dynamics such as decreased levels of supervision due to staffing cuts or even poor maintenance of a facility’s physical plant can also contribute. The latter may be related to the “broken window” concept in urban sociology which argues that if vandalized windows are quickly repaired, it tends to dissuade further acts of minor anti-social behavior in the neighborhood. Similarly, if there is an increased sense of disorder at work, it may influence the increased expression of deviant behavior.

The article goes on to describe the extent to which candidates will admit to specific counterproductive behaviors as assessed by the Reid Report with the most common  being fired from prior jobs, having multiple unexcused absences from work, and giving unauthorized discounts. A brief case example of ROI is provided citing a retailer that estimated an annual savings of $6 million by screening out high risk candidates.

Reid Klion

John Callender (Biodata Online) and Jack Smith (Kingwood Group), two respected testing and assessment experts and long-time pan content partners, will  discuss how the current economic climate impacts recruitment and assessment strategies.  Some of the topics to be covered include how investing in assessments makes economic sense and the potential benefits and consequences of shifting to a lower cost assessment program. Please join us!

Thursday, September 17 @ 1PM ET     Register

Reid Klion

Rob Tett and colleagues published a recent paper in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology that looked at personality test norms. Examining a large set of data from the Hogan Personality Inventory, they took the norms derived from several large samples of individuals employed in sales, trucking, clerical work, finance, and management. No big surprise, there were some rather significant differences in average scale elevation between groups (e.g., the truckers were substantially less sociable than the sales group). However, a bit unexpected were the differences in mean scores between samples within the same job family. As an illustration, some samples of sales personnel had much higher scores on scales measuring ambition and sociability than did others. Indeed, there were cases where the differences within job family were nearly as great as those between job families.

There are a handful of takeaway points to consider. First, relying solely on job type to select a normative sample can be problematic. Rather, factors such as organizational culture of the work group where the samples were obtained or whether the data were derived from job applicants vs. incumbents need to considered. (The latter is important because applicants tend to obtain higher scores than incumbents, something I will blog about in the near future.)  Secondly, this article also analyzed the impact of sample size on the reliability of normative samples. As a saving grace, they found that a sample of 100 is usually quite sufficient to develop a good set of local norms.

Finally, it should be noted that the importance of norms varies greatly depending upon how a test is being used. For example, if I want to know how the conscientiousness of the  maintenance personnel  in my company compares to that of folks who work in maintenance for other organizations, the normative sample chosen is obviously critical. However, if I am only interested in ranking maintenance job candidates on conscientiousness or have already conducted a validation study to determine cut scores, the use of norms isn’t particularly relevant or useful as we could use untransformed scores for these purposes.

This week, I had the opportunity to work with a coworker on two different projects. The first was within her area of expertise, and I needed her help to complete my responsibilities. The second was in my area of expertise, and she came to me for assistance.  It occurred to me that in my job, I rarely accomplish goals by myself. I nearly always rely on others to help me get the job done, even if it is just bouncing ideas off of my boss before implementing a solution for a client.

In a previous posting, I wrote about the importance of developing employees to help make them productive team members. However, it is also important to look at an individual’s propensity for teamwork during the selection process. Assuming the job for which you are hiring does, in fact, require teamwork, you may benefit from using selection assessments and behavioral interview questions to identify job candidates’ tendencies towards collaboration and cooperation. Job candidates whose assessment results or interview performance indicate high levels of traits, such as extroversion and agreeableness may be more effective on the job-- simply because they are more likely to work with others to accomplish organizational goals.

Jocelyn Courtney-Hays

While perusing Amazon.com for good books recently, I came across the Penn and Teller tome, How to Play in Traffic.  Generally, I wouldn’t mention such mundane details of my life, but I wanted to make note of it here.  You see, it has come to my attention that there are some people who make playing in traffic their full-time job.

You may remember from my previous post that I am an Indy 500 fan. However, the excitement here in town is that NASCAR will be at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this weekend for the Brickyard 400. In almost any form of racing, a key part of any race are the pit stops where tires are changed, and…well, I actually don’t know what happens aside from the tires, but I’m sure it’s all very important and mechanical.  While I was at the 500, it occurred to me that the people who work in pit row are dealing with cars moving in and out of the pits at high speeds.  I have read stories of injuries, from the minor to the severe, occurring due to pit crew members coming too close to the racecars, and seeing the pit stops in person made me realize just how easily injuries could happen.

There are probably a number of important attributes that make for a good pit crew member.  I’m willing to bet that in addition to having a high level of mechanical skill and knowledge, you also need to be diligent, conscientious, and focused on safety – not only for your own well-being but also for that of your driver, fellow pit crew members, and competitors.  How many other jobs require this same commitment to safety?  I can think of a few-- assembly line employees, truck drivers, healthcare workers.  Given the inherent risk in these jobs, it is important to hire people who will be safe at work. While training is an important part of workplace safety, there are also a number of assessments that can help identify job candidates who are (and are not) well-suited for work in dangerous environments.

Jocelyn Courtney-Hays

When I was in high school Biology during the early 90s, my teacher spoke of a new emerging technology called the Internet. It had been around for a while but had not really caught on outside of scientific and academic circles as computers were for geeks, and most people didn’t see their benefit over using a typewriter. He spoke of the ability to access information about breakthroughs in science as if you you were down the hall from the actual experiment and having immediate access to information from all over the world. Most people thought this type of technology was for large companies like AT&T and IBM, and the idea a personal computer could retrieve information from some nebulous place on the other side of the world was completely foreign and pretty much inconceivable.

In my naiveté, I did not realize he was really referring to the emergence of the global community. The Internet is something which joins everyone together and enables interaction with someone across the world without ever leaving the comforts of the living room. Transactions can be conducted by anyone with access to a computer, and what was once an exotic item from a foreign country is now a few clicks away on sites like Amazon and EBay. All that is required is the belief that the person on the other side of the connection is legitimate.

In the past, the beginning of trust was largely based on who people commonly knew. If a friend endorsed someone, that person was probably trustworthy.

A few weekends back, I was at home watching a golf tournament on TV.  As I’m sitting on the couch, I see the familiar faces of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Anthony Kim making their way around the course.  But during one stretch of action, something caught my eye – player after player wearing Nike apparel.  I thought back to my junior (pre-Tiger) golf days when Nike had a limited golf line with just the basics – shirts, shoes, socks, hats, and the like. Now, though, you can head to your local sporting goods store and pick up Nike golf balls, bags, headcovers, and even clubs.  It is amazing what one endorsement contract has done for that company.

Thinking about what Tiger Woods did for Nike Golf, I wonder if organizations encounter the same situation. Can one superstar employee make a huge difference to a company? Probably so – a story in Inc. cited a case where a programmer at a technology company developed an idea that eventually became a seven-figure revenue generator. In light of stories like that, you have to wonder, What could the one right person do for my company?  And more importantly, how do you find that employee who can help take your business to another level?  

I think there are multiple answers to that question. First, organizations should use the right pre-hire selection criteria. Utilizing valid pre-employment assessments, behavioral interviews, and situational judgment tests can help you to identify high potential job candidates who possess characteristics such as diligence, creativity, and ambition. Once employees are on the job, it is important to foster an organizational culture that encourages idea sharing and open communication. You could host an online discussion forum for idea sharing or sponsor idea generation drives to motivate employees to “think outside the box.” Finally, it is important to invest in employee professional development. Providing opportunities for individuals to grow and learn may lead them to develop ideas they never would have thought of otherwise. In addition, investing in your employees’ development is likely to increase their organizational engagement and may motivate them to contribute at an even higher level to the overall success of the business.

Jenni Ginsburg

One of my favorite places is the lawn at Verizon Wireless Music Center.  Deer Creek, as it is still affectionately known by local residents, is an outdoor amphitheater located just north of Indianapolis.  I have spent many nights there--enjoying alternative rock as a misunderstood (or so it seemed) teenager, classic rock as a cool (or so I thought) undergrad, and contemporary rock as a well-rounded (or so I hope) adult.  

At a recent live show, I took notice of the hundreds of employees at the venue. They are all temporary or seasonal workers – Indiana weather being what it is, the music center is not open in the winter.  I wondered how these people got their jobs.  Some of the security guards looked as if their physical stature alone may have secured them a position.  But what about the young man selling beverages or the ladies working the souvenir stand?  

Temporary employees are a unique segment of the workforce. Selecting them can be a challenge because the jobs hold no promise of longevity or advancement and the most important requirements may be personality traits, such as dependability or a focus on satisfying customers. Staffing agencies and other organizations that hire temporary employees should consider pre-employment assessments as an effective and efficient way to gain information about job candidates without having to spend the time and resources necessary to conduct an interview.  For instance, integrity tests can be used to predict counterproductive behaviors such as absenteeism and theft. Personality-based assessments can be used to determine how conscientious and reliable a person is, likely important in most if not all temporary positions. This type of assessment can also provide information on traits like assertiveness and stress tolerance which may be important in specific roles as security guards or gate/ticket checkers.  Finally, biodata instruments can be used to assess a person’s fit for a certain position in customer service and sales by examining work experience, attitudes, interests, and values.

Jocelyn Courtney-Hays

Being from Northwest Indiana, my husband is wholly dedicated to the Chicago Cubs. Sadly, the Cubs have always struggled. (Their last World Series win was in *sigh* 1908.)  The team’s current problem: poor offense. While the pitching and defensive strategies appear to be working, the Cubbie bats are not swinging like they should be. In mid-June, the Cubs hitting coach fell victim to the slump and lost his job. One Cub player said, “He’s taking the blame for something that’s our fault…” Let’s assume that the coach wasn’t responsible for their poor performance. Yet when results weren’t achieved, he was held responsible. As the team’s offensive leader, the buck stopped with him.

I think the principle of leaders being held accountable for their team’s performance holds true in many organizations. To be effective, managers must ensure their employees are effective. Investing in employees’ professional development not only benefits the employees, it benefits their managers as well. Think about your own organization: Are you dedicating effort to developing your people? Are your superiors committed to your development?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, consider what might be done to change it. Assessments are a great starting point for development because they can provide information about job-related areas where the individual is strong and areas he or she needs to develop. Assessments can be combined with other tools such as interviews, simulations, or role plays to collect comprehensive information about the individual’s strengths and weaknesses. From there, the individual can build a development plan and be coached to improve. Given how much is riding on the effectiveness of your employees, these kinds of development programs can lead to big returns.

Jocelyn Courtney-Hays

Knowing a job candidate’s cognitive aptitude or ability level is one of the most useful pieces of information in making an informed hiring decision. Cognitive ability is one of the best predictors of job success because it tells us both how quickly an individual will learn a job as well his or her likely level of work performance.

Cognitive aptitude tests are typically comprised of items that measure a job candidate’s ability to learn new material, use logical reasoning, or solve problems. Other cognitive aptitude tests measure more specific topics such as reading ability or math aptitude. The benefit of cognitive aptitude tests is that they are often quite valid in making inferences about job performance. They also tend to be both time and cost effective. However, something to be aware of is that cognitive aptitude assessments may be susceptible to adverse impact. That is, members of protected classes are prone to obtain lower scores on these tests than members of other groups. As a result, it is important that a careful job analysis be carried out before a cognitive aptitude assessment is implemented  to ascertain that cognitive ability is critical for occupational success in the position at hand and that the cut score and decisions rules used with these tests are appropriate.

I love watching sports and the Met's recent loss to the Yankees due to Luis Castillo’s fumble stunned everyone!

I’ve been spending a lot of time at the baseball diamonds watching my son play Little League, on a team ironically called the Mets.  One kid on his team who talked about Castillo’s now infamous dropped ball claimed that he really could have caught it himself. I believe him. Here’s why:

Growing up and playing collegiate athletics taught me many life lessons including the importance of routines and how we all can drop the ball if we don’t use proven techniques that lead to success. For example, using two hands to catch a fly ball is a proven method that leads to success in baseball and softball. We learn this at an early age, but we still see Major league players failing to use both hands all the time.

In the world of employee selection, process plays the same important role. Using a selection assessment that measures exactly what it needs to measure is extremely important. If your organization needs to select safety conscious individuals, but your assessment is measuring the ability to work in teams, this method is unlikely to lead to much success in the long run. Dropping the ball in the selection world may mean you are missing out on a great candidate or selecting someone who may not be the right fit.

My grandma used to say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We can all learn from Luis Castillo and make sure we prevent dropping the ball by using a proven process that leads to success.

Sarah Lacey

Last week, my wife and I celebrated our one year anniversary by taking a trip to San Francisco.  We spent a couple of days in the Napa/Sonoma Valley area tasting and learning about wine.  Being wine novices, we were pretty fascinated by all the factors that go into the taste and quality of each of wine.  It turns out there’s more to making wine than just fermenting some grapes.  Not only are there the grapes themselves to consider, but the soil they’re grown in, the amount of moisture where they are grown, and even the elevation.  Another major factor we learned was the importance of the type of barrel used.  It was interesting to learn how a barrel made from an oak tree in France leads to a different taste than a barrel made from an oak tree in Missouri.  This multitude of factors made what seemed to be a fairly straightforward process into something very complex and interesting.

Being the I/Oish person that I am, I found the complexity of factors that go into making a good wine to be not so different from the complexity of factors that go into finding a good job candidate.  Now of course I’m not talking about storing candidates in barrels to see how well they age, but often times searching for a quality job candidate is mistaken as a fairly straightforward and obvious process.  The truth is that most of the time there are a number of factors that go into what it takes to be successful on a job.  As a result, it is important to use appropriate selection tools available to ensure that we’re accounting for these critical factors.  This can include assessments, behavioral interviews, job simulations, and other kinds of job related tools.  The key is to take the due diligence to appreciate the complexity of truly finding quality job candidates.  Without accounting for this complexity we can be left with sour grapes.

Nate Studebaker

Personality assessments focus on measuring work-related personality traits and psychological aptitudes. There are two major groups of personality assessment inventories. The first set measures a broad range of personality traits. These personality surveys are typically based upon the Five Factor model and cover the personality dimensions of openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and adjustment. These assessments are quite useful for personality profiling because they provide a broad view for understanding a job candidate’s psychological aptitudes.  They are particularly useful in positions that involve interpersonal interaction, teamwork, and serving in leadership roles.

A second set of personality assessment inventories focus on more specific traits or attributes such as integrity, customer service attitudes, or sales ability. In contrast with broad band personality inventories, these personality surveys are only concerned with a specific set of behaviors. They are particularly well-suited for identifying job candidates who have the right psychological aptitudes for a specific job with well-defined requirements such as in customer service or sales.

When I was growing up, the typical procedure for landing a seasonal summer job was to fill out a brief application (i.e., name, age, work experience) and simply keep your fingers crossed.  The challenge of course was convincing the person in charge of hiring that despite not having any formal paid work experience, you would make a great employee at the tender age of 16.  Back then, we typically found ourselves in competition with other equally and minimally qualified teens for entry-level positions in grocery stores, restaurants, and the like.

This summer, teens looking for short-term employment are facing much stiffer competition as they attempt to beat out more experienced and educated adults who are currently unemployed as a result of the ongoing economic crisis.  So what is a hiring manager to do?  

Managers should be encouraged to find the means to compare inexperienced teens with more experienced applicants on a level playing field.  Specifically, hiring managers need to delve into the underlying personality characteristics that have the potential to make teens more viable candidates than their older counterparts.  While many organizations may not have the financial resources to evaluate seasonal candidates with formal personality assessments, they do have the option to utilize behaviorally-based interviews as an alternative, effective and cost-efficient selection procedure.

Thanks in part to a recent initiative rolled out by the Federal Government, the Workforce Investment Act, $1.9 billion in stimulus funds have been set aside for the purpose of training youth for both summer and year-round jobs.  According to Dr. Andrew Sum, Professor of Labor & Economics and Director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, there are multiple benefits to providing teens with early work experience.  First, teens who work at ages 16 and 17 are able to command higher wages at 19 and 20.  Second, working at an early age helps disadvantaged kids to stay in school.  Finally, employers are more likely to provide subsequent training to teens who have previous work experience.

Organizations must now follow the government’s lead in recognizing the importance of employing teens in the workforce.  As a result of the job opportunities they are afforded, teens help to keep companies in business, particularly when customer activity is substantially increased during summer and holiday seasons.  Separately, teens often use the money earned from seasonal jobs to save for upcoming college tuition and related expenses.  Excluding this segment from consideration for ‘09 summer employment could have long-term ramifications.  As pointed out by Dr. Sum, lost work experience generates longer term losses for young people.

Lori Ferzandi

One of the recent hot topics in the assessment world has been debate over the use of non-proctored assessments (NPAs) for pre-employment selection. (For those not familiar, the typical NPA scenario is one in which the employer asks job candidates to complete an unsupervised online assessment as part of the application process.)

While the convenience of NPAs is substantial, a number of potential risks such as cheating, proxy testing taking (e.g., getting my smarter roommate to take the test for me), and item disclosure are also readily apparent. Quite a bit of attention has been directed toward finding ways to control the risks associated with NPA as well as trying to determine the real-life negative impact of non-proctored administration upon test validity (frankly less that I would have expected based upon what has been published and presented).

However, reasonable folks differ quite substantially in their comfort level with NPA and likely will for the foreseeable future. This is a literature I follow pretty closely because pan provides both proctored and non-proctored assessment services. (Here is my presentation at the last SIOP meeting on how technology can help mitigate some of the risks associated with NPA). And given NPA’s rather controversial status, I guess it isn’t surprising that writers haven’t always been particularly nuanced in their positions. Some conclude that NPA is either the best thing since sliced bread while others believe it’s a professional abomination to be avoided at virtually any cost.

Doug Reynolds and colleagues’ recent must-read paper in Industrial and Organizational Psychology does a very nice job of contextualizing the discussion. Their major point is that we need to attend to all the relevant factors when a web-based assessment program is implemented. The issue is not simply whether or not a proctor is present during the test session. Rather, consideration also needs to be paid to factors such as the type of assessment to be implemented, how it is used in the hiring process, the nature of the applicant population, as well as an evaluation of what the alternatives may be.  As Reynolds paper concludes, “by positioning unproctored Internet testing as something that professionals should be either for or against, the underlying complexities associated with broader test deployment conditions will remain obscured.”

Reid Klion

A recent Wall Street Journal article I came across described how the City of Los Angeles is using a new multiple choice test to try and predict the likelihood of a 10-15 year old joining a gang.  The primary purpose of this assessment is to provide gang prevention programs where needed in order to reduce the risk these youths face.  The assessment is still in early developmental stages and it will take several years for the city to determine its effectiveness. 

Assessing risk through the use of behavioral assessments is nothing new in the employment world.  Many companies use assessments early on in the selection process to screen out applicants that pose a risk, whether it is for safety, security, dependability, or other potential areas of risk.  Test publishers have responded to the need for this type of assessment.  We have seen a growth in the development of short, cost effective assessments that are specifically designed to be used early on in the selection process to assess risk.

These assessments have been shown to lead to reductions in safety violations and absenteeism in newly hired workers.  Additionally, some of our clients have also seen direct cost savings with reductions in workers compensation claims.  Finally, screening high risk applicants early on improves the efficiency of the hiring process by not spending time on unnecessary interviews.  While the utility of this type of assessment is not going to be useful for all employment situations, it is certainly worth thinking about for jobs where risk is a concern.

Nate Studebaker

A pan team member recently sent me an online Pepsi commercial that got me thinking that many organizations likely find themselves facing philosophically similar hiring issues.

The current economic conditions have resulted in increasingly larger candidate pools. In turn, hiring managers have found themselves up against the wall with not enough time to thoroughly evaluate all candidates. Fortunately, there are solutions. pan has assisted numerous organizations in creating more efficient and reliable employee selection processes.

pan’s solutions are scientifically-grounded and are available to all types of organizations, private, public, or public sector. Furthermore, each and every solution is customized to meet the client’s needs, which ultimately ensures that solutions are never hampered by job type, candidate pool size, or other challenging workplace situations.

In a recent pan case study, our client, PDS, was challenged to research and develop an employee selection process that would lower worker compensation claims and costs. pan worked with them to assess the most qualified candidates based on a set of criteria.

Rest assured, you don’t have to settle for leftovers. A pan-based solution will free up valuable time and resources and ensure that only the best and the brightest find their way into your organization.

As always, please feel free to post your comments - we would love to hear your interview stories, learn more about your current selection process, or share with you more information about pan.

Sarah Lacey

Three Indianapolis police officers who took a promotional exam have filed a suit are suing because they claim they were given the wrong study prep book. The story is replete with charges (the omission was politically motivated) and counter-charges (it was the officers’ responsibility to make sure they had the correct materials).

It is certainly the case that public sector assessment is often rife with controversy. And, because of the very nature of these disputes, they become public matters. (A great resource for anyone interested in public sector assessment is IPAC-the International Personnel Assessment Council, an organization formerly known as IPMAAC. I have had the pleasure of being active in the group for a number of years and the invaluable opportunity to learn from some very well-seasoned practitioners.)

I think that the critical take-away lesson here is that we need to ensure that personnel decision-making be carried out in an open and equitable manner that is fair to all candidates. And, while testing is anything but a perfect process, a well-developed assessment program is often the fairest and most valid way of making these decisions.

Reid Klion

While I have tried to avoid the massive media coverage of Susan Boyle (the Scottish singer whose sensibilities and personal style are somewhat less than high fashion), I came across a recent article that does a nice job of reviewing current psychological research on stereotyping.

From an evolutionary perspective, it was often life preserving to be able to tell whether the person approaching us in the forest was likely to be benign or pose an immediate threat to our wellbeing. Since aspects of the stereotyping process seem to be “hard wired,” we need to be aware of this and keep an open mind when meeting people. Indeed, much of the sensation about Ms. Boyle seems to lie in the fact that her musical skills were quite inconsistent with our initial impressions of her.

As might be expected, there is quite a bit of research examining how stereotypes can influence interviewers’ impressions of job candidates as well as how interviews are rather poor in predicting job performance. To this end, I think that one of the often unnoticed benefits of using a selection testing program is that unexpectedly positive test results sometimes force us to reconsider job candidates whose initial impressions (either in terms of looks, training, or background) are inconsistent with our stereotype of how potentially successful job candidates “should” appear. By failing to consider candidates who don’t necessarily fit the usual mold, we may be doing our organizations a significant disservice by missing potential star players.

Reid Klion