Interview Validity example essay topic

Staffing has been an important aspect in all types of organizations' development. More and more companies have noticed a good staffing plan could increase productivity and reduce operation costs in terms of lower turnover rate and transition costs. Good staffing could be able to minimize cost in order to maximize profit, because it could assist the company to stay more competitive within the industry. According to the definition by Dr. Green, "staff is the process of identifying work requirements within an organization; determining the number of people and the skills necessary to do the work; and recruiting, selecting and promoting the qualified candidates. It is the selection process of screening and hiring new employees, which includes functions like resume reviewing, interview, drug testing, assessment testing, and background check" (Green, 2003). Different companies have different strategies in how to select their candidates.

Depending on the size, geographic and industry etc, so that their strategies could be very different. Therefore, one specific staffing plan might work for one company, but it might not work for another. "In staffing an organization or an organizational unit, it is important to consider its developmental stage-embryonic, high growth, mature, or aging-in order to align staffing decisions with business strategy" (Casio, p. 268). In the 21st century, due to the reason that new technologies have been invented and improved. That had lead to many organizations change its behavior in terms of the way they deal with customers, suppliers, business partners and employees. Without a careful selection, organizations often hire people that do not fit the job or it is just not the type of work the employee wants to do.

There are people who could not keep up with the technology trend working in a place where new technologies always come into place. There are people who could not deal with other people, or with no patient working as a teller in the bank, or going into the teaching field. There are so many different examples in today's world where people apply for jobs that they could not be successful, or in many cases that organizations hire people who do not have the qualifications for the job. Organizations have encountered some problems that associated with which method to use in the selection process. There are so many tests that organizations could use to select whom to hire, for example: recommendations, reference checks, employment interviews, drug tests, handwriting analysis, polygraph examinations, work-sample test and etc. Organizations could select one or more of these tests, but they have to be careful of the reliability and validity of all the results.

Some results might be different depending on the environment of the testing area, or the relationship between the applicants and their previous employer / manager. Many organizations depend only on the result of the test without taking the reliability and validity into considerations, which that might lead to in hiring the wrong people. What is the difference between reliability and validity? "Reliability is the consistency and the stability of a selection measurement and validity is the degree to which a measure predicts on-the-job performance" (Green, 2003). For instance, the consistency of a test is made for to measure reliability and what kind of method to use to test the candidate is to measure validity. Since reliability and validity are both important aspects in the selection process, let's look at several methods that are used in today's industries.

College Grade Point Average (GPA) is one of the areas that employers look at and might weighted heavily in the selection process. According to a study, "grades have a fully corrected validity in the mid. 30's for predicting job performance" (Roth, BeVier, Switzer, & Schippmann, 1996) and "a validity for. 20 for predicting starting salary" (Roth & Clarke, 1998).

However, those results do not take into other considerations like the ethnic background of the college students. In the 20th century, many companies weight GPA very heavily in determine a candidate should be hired or not, but what does GPA tell us? " GPA represents both verbal and mathematical ability, like SAT, but it is most strongly represents personal motivation" (Brown & Campion, 1994). With a group of candidates that without any working experiences, GPA has more valid reason to use as a method in the selection process. However, in most cases, there are many people from different backgrounds that apply for the same job. Some of the candidates might have a high GPA without any working experiences, and some of them might have a moderate GPA with working experiences.

How could the employer decide which one is the best fit for the position? "The career planning literature suggests GPA is sometimes rated as moderately important" (Posner, 1981). But it is typically rated as one of the most important pieces of information considered in the interviewing process. "Hypotheses indicated that GPA will change as students progress through college as well as students from different ethnic group" (Roth & Bobko, 2000, p. 400). Many studies have shown that Whites tend to have a higher college GPA than Blacks, "Use of college GPA to select for employment is associated with fairly large ethnic group differences for seniors. Although college GPA has moderate validity for predicting job performance" (Roth et al., 1996), the large ethnic group difference means that many Blacks might be screened out of jobs".

Blacks will be screened out at higher rates than Whites if cumulative GPA is used in selection" (Roth & Bobko, 2000, p. 404). Does that mean employers should hire Whites instead of Blacks? Definitely not, GPA is just one of the ways to determine if the candidate have verbal, mathematical skills and personal motivation, but does not mean a person might have a lower GPA would perform worst than a person with a higher GPA at work". Interviews are notoriously unreliable and invalid in predicting on-the-job performance, interviewers' decision are overly influenced by first impressions, non-relevant individual characteristics, contrast effects and general impressions" (Dr. Green, Spring 2003). Some companies require a telephone interview before a face-to-face interview, because there would be cheating problems associate with just conducting a telephone interview alone. With regards to the unreliable and invalid information that has been given out to the interviewers, why do most companies require at least one interview in order to consider the candidate?

Telephone interview has the problem that "the interviewee might have someone else take the interview for him or her" (Schmidt & Rader, 1999, p. 454). Therefore, the employers think that they need to met and talk to the candidate in person to confirm the information that was given during the telephone interview, and to get information like the personalities of the person. Finally, the employers decide whether the candidate is the best fit for the job. This method might not be as reliable and valid as I had mentioned earlier, many candidates could pretend or act the specific way that they think the employer would like them to be. So how could companies avoid the problems associate with interviews? "Several studies have reported practically useful valid ities for structured interviews and the results of several meta-analyses indicate that structured interviews are more valid and more reliable than unstructured interviews" (Brtek & Motowidlo, 2002, p. 185).

What is structure interview? Campion, Palmer, and Campion (1997) defined structure as "any enhancement of the interview that is intended to increase psychometric properties by increasing standardization or otherwise assisting the interviewer in determining what questions to ask or how to evaluate responses" (p. 656). If structure interview is more valid and more reliable, why companies do not use this method? What are the problems associate with structure interviews? "We cannot always assume that interviewers use a structured format as its developers intended, and if they do not, there is no reason to expect their judgments to be any more valid than judgments based on an unstructured format" (Brtek & Motowidlo, 2002, p. 185).

Managers and interviewers are human beings, they often tend to follow their first impressions, contrasts and non-relevant individual characteristics. It has been very difficult to ensure every interviewer has followed the right and structured process. By holding interviewers accountable would increase the validity of the interview". Holding interviewers accountable would involve making them "answerable to external audiences for performing up to certain prescribed standards thereby fulfilling obligations, duties, expectations, and other charges" (Schenker, Britt, Pennington, Murphy, & Doherty, 1994, p. 634). Being accountable in this sense means being monitored and evaluated by others for the quality of one's judgment or decision, being obligated to others, or having to justify one's thoughts or actions to others (Brtek & Motowidlo, 2002, p. 185). It is very important to make sure the interviewer is only accountable for the interview procedures and not the interview outcomes and not to have a hiring quota.

If they are held accountable for a quota or the outcomes, they will not be able to make a good judgment in selecting and hiring the employees. "One reason that procedure accountability might improve interview validity is that it might compel interviewers to be more attentive during the interview. As a result, they will encode more relevant information about applicants and therefore make more valid judgments" (Brtek & Motowidlo, 2002, p. 186). Many companies use methods like cognitive ability tests, work samples test, achievement tests, job knowledge tests and personality tests in their selection process. "A number of quantitative reviews have demonstrated that personality inventories can be useful predictors of job performance, particularly if specific, job-relevant personality constructs are used to predict specific criteria" (Levin, 1998, p. 634).

Although it is valid, problem associated with this method is that the effect of response distortion on personality inventory scores. "Given the motivation to make a good impression, applicants are likely to want to convey an image that (a) reflects the self-concept but is biased in a positive direction, (b) matches perceived role demands, and (c) exhibits the attributes of the prototypic or ideal employee" (Leary & Kowalski, 1990). Candidates often answer the test questions in terms of their role expectations, overstating their abilities and describe themselves as well adjusted, dependable, and achievement oriented in order to be most attractive to the employer as possible (Levin, 1998). One way to solve this problem that was suggested by Rosse, Stecher, Miller and Levin is "if all job applicants had responded similarly to the pressure to look good when applying for a job, the effect would simply have been to increase the average scores for the desirable traits, with no change in the rank ordering of applicants. Background check is another important issue in the selection process. "If a company puts forth individuals who lie about their backgrounds, it loses credibility with its stakeholders" (Gardner, 1998)...

Firing someone after the company found out the resume fraud after training them, the company loses a huge amount of money in terms of training and transition costs. It is not worth it to spend money on a person who lie about his / her past and fire them afterward. Money should be spending on things like training associates to enrich their knowledge. Companies spend lot of money on verifying the truth of the resume, they have human resources departments to make several phone calls, utilize public information on the Internet or from the local courthouse or the most costly method-hire private investigators. Since it costs a lot to hire private investigators to do the investigation, it is very important to manage the investigations wisely. Gardner suggested three aspects of an effective program, they are 1) the program should be inexpensive, 2) easy to administer and 3) Provide the right types of data.

Through a benchmarking interview with Erika J. Thorson-Garay, the Vice President; staffing manager of the retail bank recruiting of Northern California of Bank of America, she talks about the process of selecting and hiring new employees. Bank of America is on a resume-based system where all resumes of candidates who apply with the Bank are submitted to the database. Recruiters are responsible for reviewing resumes and determining if the candidate is a good fit for the positions that are available. Once the recruiter deems the candidate a viable fit, the candidate is then asked a series of pre-screening questions. If the candidate is eligible to work for the Bank, they are invited in for an assessment for the specific position. If they pass the assessment, they move onto the interview phase, which is two fold - one with the recruiter and a second one with the hiring manager.

If the hiring manager is interested in hiring the applicant, the recruiter then extends a job offer. Once the job offer has been accepted, the recruiter then submits a background check on the applicant. All new associates for Bank of America must successfully complete a background check since they are FDIC insured. There is a little difference in hiring upper management versus lower / entry level positions, which is for upper management position, there are no assessment tests, but other than that, the whole process is the same.

Just like all other methods, there are pros and cons to each one; Ms. Thorson-Garay said this current process ensures that they are hiring the top talented person into Bank of America in turn helping with the turnover numbers and customer satisfaction, the consistency of this system makes it a very smooth process. The cons for the current process is that much of the process is done manually, it is very time consuming. When asked about how valid is the resume that was submitted, Ms. Thorson-Garay pointed out that there had been many cases that resumes are falsified. Therefore, the bank had piloted a program in Los Angels where all resumes information must reviewed by Corporate Security. It is very important for financial institutions to ensure information that was given by the candidate is true.

It is also important that each applicant must agree to take a drug-test if requested; this is asked during the pre-screen process. Drug testing is only done on a random basis, not everyone will need to take before working with the bank. There are many other methods used in the process of selecting the "best" candidate, some of them have been discuss earlier. There are no "best" method or "best" process to all companies, depending on each individual company, one method can work very well in one company but might work very poorly in another. Some studies have shown that interviews are not reliable and valid, but on the other hand, Bank of America uses resume-based system and held face-to-face interviews to all viable candidates, this is the method which work best for them.

Therefore, it is very important for the human resources management to find out what work best for their company. How reliable of the selection method and how valid is the method in terms of how close does it tie to on-the-job performance is the main focus in order to decide which method to use. REFERENCECascio, W.F. (2003). Managing Human Resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits (6th Ed. ).

New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin. Green, S. (2003). Lecture Notes, "Staffing", May, 2003. Schmidt, F.L., & Rader, M. (1999). Exploring the boundary conditions for interview validity: meta-analytic validity findings for a new interview type. Personnel Psychology, 52 (2), 445-456.

Rosse, J.G., Stecher, M.D., Miller, J.L., & Levin, R.A. (1998). The Impact of Response Distortion on P reemployment Personality Testing and Hiring Decisions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83 (4), 634-644. Van der Zee, K.I., Bakker, A.B. & Bakker, P. (2002). Why are Structured Interviews so Rarely Used in Personnel Selection? Journal of Applied Psychology, 87 (1), 176-184.

Bret, M.D., & Motowidlo, S.J. (2002). Effects of Procedure and Outcome Accountability on Interview Validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87 (1), 185-191. Roth, P.L., & Bobko, P. (2000). College Grade Point Average as a Personnel Selection Device: Ethnic Group Differences and Potential Adverse Impact. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85 (3), 399-406.

Gardner, R. (1998). How well do you really know whom you hire? The CPA Journal, 68 (3), 62-65. Brown, B., & Campion, M.A. (1994). Bio data phenomenology; Recrutiers' perceptions and use of biographical information in resume screening. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79,897-908.

Roth, P.L., BeVier, C.A., Switzer, F.S., & Schippmann, J.S. (1996). Meta-analyzing the relationship between grades and job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81,548-556. Roth, P.L., & Clarke, R.L. (1998). Meta-analyzing the relationship between grades and salary. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 53,386-400.