Industrial-organizational psychology and employee selection practices

I-O Psychology Articles Review

Employees are the lifeblood of any organization. An organization may have the best product or service on the market, but without the right employees to create, deliver and support this product or service, the organization cannot be successful. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, employee selection becomes even more important to the overall competitiveness of the organization. Industrial-organizational psychology can be useful in this selection process. Following are a review of three articles concerning the employee selection process.

Attracting and Selecting: What Psychological Research Tells Us

Ryan and Tippins (2004) use the misperceptions organizational members commonly have regarding research findings in the area of employee selection as the catalyst for their article. Human resource professionals, in particular, face the challenges of meeting an ever-changing array of organizational recruiting and staffing needs. Their article concludes with three recommendations concerning employee selection. Ryan and Tippins recommends using a professional I/O psychologist to help in the translation of research into effective selection practices. HR professionals should stay current in research concerning recruitment and selection. Lastly, collecting data and performing analysis to understand what is taking place in the organization is also recommended. These suggestions are perfect for implementation into in any organization.

The information from Ryan and Tippins (2004) article can be implemented directly into the HR department of an organization. The authors give very specific tips on this implementation. Contracting an I/O psychologist to help develop organizational selection practices is the most significant recommendation. These new processes can then be utilized to facilitate more effective employee selection. As new tools for employee selection are developed, keeping up with these latest selection methods is also important. Lastly, processes can be implemented to collect and analyze data to see which efforts are the most effective in selecting employees, in order to continually fine tune the process.

Protecting the legal and appropriate use of personality testing: A practitioner perspective

Jones and Arnold (2008) explore the issue of legally and appropriately using personality testing. There are risks that must be managed to ensure personality testing doesn't become restricted, or worse outlawed, by state or federal law. The authors note that "I-O psychologists should never get myopic as to where the real threats might come from in terms of the ongoing use of personality testing or other selection tools used in the workplace." For this reason, Jones and Arnold put forth several recommendations. First, it is necessary to remind test users that combined sex norms should be utilized with job-related personality tests and not tests with separate sex test norms. Although there is a movement to increase the use of Big Five testing assessments in more clinical research and interventions, it is recommended that I/O psychologists make a distinction between these tests used for preemployment selection and those for clinical assessment and diagnosis. I/O psychologists need to be careful how these tests are marketed. In Massachusetts, certain personality tests are restricted if they meet certain criteria, such as: marketing themselves as impacting employee theft and shrinkage, testing items that reflect an individual's honest, or link to employee theft criteria. These are important considerations for organizations.

As personality assessments are a valuable tool organizations can utilize to help in the selection process of new employees, it's important to ensure they are used legally and appropriately, in order to minimize the chance that they will be outlawed in the future. Implementation of this information into the organization involves making certain HR personnel and hiring managers charged with selecting and giving these tests know the vulnerability of these tests. In addition, they need to be informed of the recommendations Jones and Arnold (2008) purpose to help prevent this tool from being removed from the organizational arsenal.

Conclusion

The selection of new employees is a critical process for any organization. Choosing the right employees can increase competitiveness in the marketplace. Choosing the wrong employees can cost the organization dearly. The three articles reviewed center on the employee selection process and give implementation ideas connected with the information presented.