Industrial/ Organizational Psychology
Chapter 4: Eyee Selection: Recruiting and Interviewing
Aamondt
Recruitment
● attracting people with the right qualifications
(as determined in the job analysis) to apply for
the job.
● Internal recruitment - is to promote someone
from within the organization.
● External recruitment - to hire someone from
outside the organization.
“Internal promotions can be a great source of
motivation, but if an organization always promotes
employees from within, it runs the risk of having a stale
workforce that is devoid of the many ideas that new
employees bring with them from their previous
employment settings. “
Steps in Selecting Employees
1. Job analysis
2. Selection of testing methods
3. Test validation
4. Screening
5. Testing
6. Selecting
7. Hiring/ Rejecting
Media Advertisements
Newspaper Ads
● Newspaper advertisements typically ask the
applicant to respond in one of four ways:
○ Calling - Applicants are asked to
respond by calling when an
organization wants to either quickly
screen applicants or hear an applicant’s
phone voice.
○ Applying in person - Organizations use
this when they don’t want their phones
tied up by applicants calling, want the
applicants to fill out a specific job
application, or want to get a physical
look at the applicant.
○ Sending a résumé directly to the
organization - It is when the
organization expects a large response
and does not have the resources to
speak with thousands of applicants.
○ Sending a résumé to a blind box
i. the organization doesn’t want
its name in public.
ii. the company might fear that
people wouldn’t apply if they
knew the name of the
company.
iii. a company needs to terminate
an employee but wants first to
find a replacement.
● Electronic Media
Situation-Wanted Ads
● These are placed by the applicant rather than
by organizations.
● This appear to be a useful way of looking for a
job, and given that they don’t cost an
organization any money, they may be a
beneficial method of recruitment.
Point-of-Purchase Methods
● It is is based on the same “POP” (point-of-
purchase) advertising principles used to market
products to consumers.
● In employee recruitment, job vacancy notices
are posted in places where customers or
current employees are likely to see them:
■ store windows
■ bulletin boards
■ restaurant placemats
■ the sides of trucks.
○ Advantage - it is inexpensive and it is
targeted toward people who frequent
the business.
○ Disadvantage - is that only a limited
number of people are exposed to the
sign.
Recruiters
Campus Recruiters
● The behavior and attitude of recruiters can
greatly influence applicants’ decisions to accept
jobs that are offered
 ● Virtual job fairs - in which their students and
alumni can use the Web to “visit” with
recruiters from hundreds of organizations at
one time.
● applicants can talk to or instant-message a
recruiter, learn more about the company, and
submit résumés
Outside Recruiters
● Private employment agencies and executive
search firms - these are designed to make a
profit from recruitment activities
● Public employment agencies - these are
operated by state and local public agencies and
are strictly nonprofit.
Employment Agencies and Search Firms
Employment Agencies
● They operate in one of two ways.
● They charge either the company or the
applicant when the applicant takes the job.
● Disadvantage - a company loses some control
over its recruitment process and may end up
with undesirable applicants
Executive Search Firms
● better known as “head hunters”
● the jobs they represent tend to be higher-
paying, non–entry-level positions such as
executives, engineers, and computer
programmers
● reputable executive search firms always charge
their fees to organizations rather than to
applicants
● fees charged by executive search firms tend to
be about % of the applicant’s first-year salary
Public Employment Agencies
● These are designed primarily to help the
unemployed find work, but they often offer
services such as career advisement and résumé
preparation
Employee Referrals
● current employees recommend family members
and friends for specific job openings
● Although this is an effective means of recruiting
employees, care must be taken when
developing a referral program to ensure that
the referral pool is representative of the ethnic
and racial make-up of the qualified workforce.
Direct Mail
● An employer typically obtains a mailing list and
sends help-wanted letters or brochures to
people through the mail
● It is especially useful for positions involving
specialized skills.
Internet
Employer-Based Websites
● An organization lists available job openings and
provides information about itself and the
minimum requirements needed to apply to a
particular job.
Internet Recruiters
● It is a private company whose website lists job
openings for hundreds of organizations and
résumés for thousands of applicants.
● It reaches more people over a larger geographic
area than do newspaper ads
Job Fairs
● These are designed to provide information in a
personal fashion to as many applicants as
possible.
● These are also held when an event or disaster
occurs that affects local employment.
Incentives
● These incentives often come in the form of a
financial signing bonus, other types of
incentives are increasing in popularity.
Nontraditional Populations
Recruiting “Passive” Applicants
● Because “the best” employees are already
employed, recruiters try to find ways to identify
this hidden talent and then convince the person
to apply for a job with their company
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Recruitment Strategies
● Cost per applicant - which is determined by
dividing the number of applicants by the
amount spent for each strategy.
● Number of qualified applicants
● Cost per qualified applicant
● The first theory suggests that rehires or
applicants who are referred by other employees
receive more accurate information about the
job than do employees recruited by other
methods
● The second theory postulates that differences in
recruitment-source effectiveness are the result
of different recruitment sources reaching and
being used by different types of applicants
Realistic job preview
● It involves giving an applicant an honest
assessment of a job
● The logic behind RJPs is that even though telling
the truth scares away many applicants, the ones
who stay will not be surprised about the job.
Expectation-lowering procedure
● It lowers an applicant’s expectations about
work and expectations in general
Effective Employee Selection Techniques
● Effective employee selection systems share
three characteristics:
○ They are valid
■ Is one that is based on a job analysis
(content validity)
■ Predicts work-related behavior
(criterion validity)
■ Measures the construct it purports
to measure (construct validity).
○ Reduce the chance of a legal challenge
■ It will reduce the chance if their
content appears to be job related
(face validity)
■ The questions don’t invade an
applicant’s privacy, and adverse
impact is minimized.
○ Cost-effective.
■ These are also cost-effective in
terms of the costs to purchase or
create, to administer, and to score.
Employment Interviews
Types of Interviews
Structure
● A structured interview is one in which
1. The source of the questions is a job
analysis (job-related questions)
2. All applicants are asked the same
questions
3. There is a standardized scoring key
to evaluate each answer.
● An unstructured interview is one in
which interviewers:
1. Are free to ask anything they want
2. Are not required to have
consistency in what they ask of
each applicant
3. May assign numbers of points at
their own discretion.
Style
● It is determined by the number of
interviewees and number of
interviewers
● One-on-one interviews - involve one
interviewer interviewing one applicant.
● Serial interviews - involve a series of
single interviews
● Return interviews - are similar to serial
interviews with the difference being a
passing of time between the first and
subsequent interview
● Panel interviews - have multiple
interviewers asking questions and
evaluating answers of the same
applicant at the same time
● Group interviews - have multiple
applicants answering questions during
the same interview.
Medium
● Face-to-face interviews
○ Both the interviewer and the
applicant are in the same room.
 ○ Provide a personal setting and allow
the participants to use both visual
and vocal cues to evaluate
information.
● Telephone interviews
○ Are often used to screen applicants
but do not allow the use of visual
cues
● Videoconference interviews
○ Are conducted at remote sites.
○ The applicant and the interviewer
can hear and see each other, but
the setting is not as personal, nor is
the image and vocal quality of the
interview as sharp as in face-to-face
interviews.
● Written interviews
○ Involve the applicant answering a
series of written questions and then
sending the answers back through
regular mail or through email.
Advantages of Structured Interviews
Problems with Unstructured Interviews
Poor Intuitive Ability
● Interviewers often base their hiring decisions on
“gut reactions,” or intuition
● However, people are not good at using intuition
to predict behavior:
○ Research indicates that human intuition
and judgment are inaccurate predictors
of a variety of factors ranging from
future employee success to the
detection of deception
Lack of Job Relatedness
● These questions are not related to any
particular job.
Primacy Effects
● “first impressions”
Contrast Effects
● The interview performance of one applicant
may affect the interview score given to the next
applicant.
Negative-Information Bias
● It apparently weighs more heavily than positive
information
● It seems to occur only when interviewers aren’t
aware of job requirements
● It seems to support the observation that most
job applicants are afraid of being honest in
interviews for fear that one negative response
will cost them their job opportunities
Interviewer-Interviewee Similarity
● Research suggests that an interviewee will
receive a higher score if he or she is similar to
the interviewer in terms of personality, attitude,
gender, or race.
Interviewee Appearance
● This states that physically attractive applicants
have an advantage in interviews over less
attractive applicants
● Applicants who dress professionally receive
higher interview scores than do more poorly
dressed applicants.
Nonverbal Cues
● The use of appropriate nonverbal
communication is highly correlated with
interview scores.
Creating a Structured Interview
● To create a structured interview, information
about the job is obtained (job analysis)
● Questions are created that are designed to find
out the extent to which applicants’ skills and
experiences match those needed to successfully
perform the job.
● These questions are incorporated into an
interview form used by all interviewers for all
applicants.
Determining the KSAOs to Tap in the Interview
1. To conduct a thorough job analysis and write a
detailed job description.
2. Determine the best way to measure an
applicant’s ability to perform each of the tasks
identified in the job analysis.
Creating Interview Questions
● Clarifiers allow the interviewer to clarify
information in the résumé, cover letter, and
application, fill in gaps, and obtain other
necessary information.
 ● Disqualifiers are questions that must be
answered a particular way or the applicant is
disqualified.
● Skill-level determiners tap an interviewee’s
level of expertise.
● Future-focused questions (situational
questions), ask an applicant what she would do
in a particular situation.
● Past-focused questions (Patterned behavior)
description interviews (PBDIs), differ from
situational interview questions by focusing on
previous behavior rather than future intended
behavior.
● Organizational-fit questions tap the extent to
which an applicant will fit into the culture of an
organization or with the leadership style of a
particular supervisor.
Creating a Scoring Key for Interview Answers
● Right/Wrong Approach
○ Some interview questions, especially skill-
level determiners, can be scored simply on
the basis of whether the answer given was
correct or incorrect.
● Typical-Answer Approach.
○ The idea behind the typical-answer
approach is to create a list of all possible
answers to each question, have subject-
matter experts (SMEs) rate the
favorableness of each answer, and then use
these ratings to serve as benchmarks for
each point on a five-point scale.
○ Increasing the number of benchmark
answers will greatly increase the scoring
reliability.
● Key-Issues Approach
○ SMEs create a list of key issues they think
should be included in the perfect answer.
○ Or each key issue that is included, the
interviewee gets a point.
○ The key issues can also be weighted so that
the most important issues get more points
than the less important issues.
○
Conducting the Structured Interview
Job Search Skills
Successfully Surviving the Interview Process
Scheduling the Interview
● Before the Interview
● During the Interview
● After the Interview
Writing Cover Letters
● It tells an employer that you are enclosing your
résumé and would like to apply for a job.
● Salutation - If possible, get the name of the
person to whom you want to direct the letter.
● Paragraphs - The opening paragraph should be
one or two sentences long and communicate
three pieces of information:
○ the fact that your résumé is enclosed
○ the name of the job you are applying
for
○ how you know about the job opening
● Signature - Personally sign each cover letter;
and type your name, address, and phone
number below your signature
Writing a Résumé
● These are summaries of an applicant’s
professional and educational background.
● Views of Résumés
○ Résumés can be viewed in one of two ways:
■ As a history of your life
■ As an advertisement of your skills.
● Characteristics of Effective Résumés
○ The résumé must be attractive and easy to
read.
○ The résumé cannot contain typing, spelling,
grammatical, or factual mistakes.
○ The résumé should make the applicant look
as qualified as possible—without lying
● Types of Résumé
○ Chronological résumés list previous jobs in
order from the most to the least recent.
○ Functional résumé organizes jobs based on
○ the skills required to perform them rather
than the order in which they were worked.
 ■ It is especially useful for applicants who
are either changing careers or have
gaps in their work histories.
○ Psychological résumé it contains the
strengths of both the chronological and
functional styles and is based on sound
psychological theory and research.
■ Priming, preparing the reader for what is
to come
■ Primacy, early impressions are most
important
■ Short-term memory limits, the list
should not be longer than seven items.
■ Unusual information should be included
when possible, as people pay more
attention to it than to typical
information.
○ Averaging versus adding model of
impression formation, which implies that
activity quality is more important than
quantity.