Personnel selection and choice
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Personnel selection and choice
Part one
The hiring process is critical to a company's success - the right employee helps the company
to reach its objectives but the wrong employee will cost the company a great deal in time,
money and energy. Furthermore, Arnold, Cooper and Robertson state ‘personnel selection
and assessment is probably the area where the biggest and most consistent contribution has
been made’ in work psychology.
To find the right person for a particular occupation the employers have to formulate a job
description of such a job. In most circumstances, especially in the small companies, where
there is only one leader who manages the process of personnel selection, this aspect is
apparently linked with the manager’s personal qualities. In addition, from the job description
that the employer gives, we can make a brief description of the company’s profile, which
consecutively points to the managing body’s personal qualities and characteristic.
‘An accountant’s, secretary’s or production manager’s job will vary considerably from one
organisation to another, perhaps in the ways that are crucial’ (Arnold, Cooper and Robertson.
1998)
When considering how the director’s personality characteristics influence the organisation’s
behaviour and accordingly the job analysis or opportunity offered, it should be stressed that
in the process of recruiting, employers try to attract individuals with the same qualities as
the whole group. However, Arnold, Cooper and Robertson (1998) state: ‘Job analysis
procedures are generally either worker-orientated or job-orientated’ According to this, it
is clear that for different job positions the managers have to implement different practices.
It emerged our experience of role-playing in the group that we all gave different job
descriptions for the same job within the same company, from which we can conclude that
different individuals perceive
the same team with slight differences and believe the company to be looking for different individuals
to fill their vacancies, according to their needs. In addition, from my point of view, these correlations
have a direct and indirect link with the psychological preferences examined more detailed by Carl
Gustav Jung (1875-1961) and with the different styles of the leadership considered by Michael
Argyle (1964) – Democratic leadership and Aristocratic leadership.
Nevertheless, we all need individuals who will fit in with our groups, as ‘effective teamwork is
essential when targets are to be achieved’ (Mullins 1999). Moreover, Mears and Voehl (1997) state
that ‘Teams and groups are an essential component of life, be that an organisational life or a personal
life. An individual cannot possibly perform all tasks that are required of them. Therefore, groups
are essential in sharing the workload and in gaining results.’ Accordingly, ‘groups have to work
together to become a cohesive unit that combines individual’s strengths and weaknesses to achieve
an optimum working level’ (Mears and Voehl 1997). Therefore, if group is not organised well or
there is a missing link in the chain of the organisation, indicating that a person does not fit in, the
leader of the team and the team as well might not achieve the expected results or even cause the
whole system to collapse. Belbin (1926) rightly states - ‘Teamwork does not of course, guarantee
in itself good results. As in sport, there can be good teams and poor teams. And as in sport, it all
depends on how the players play together.’
In conclusion it is necessary to indicate that team leaders, when trying to recruit staff consider
carefully who to employ in that sense that the new personality may bring to the company prosperity,
or, conversely, have a destructive influence on the whole organisation depending on how that person
‘fits in’. This all in all, seems to be a fundamental part of the selection process not only for the
managing body, but for the whole organisation as well.
Part two
‘The character of social organisations, and of society as a whole, is greatly affected by the
way people are selected to fill different positions. If a firm starts to choose a different kind
of person to occupy the senior posts, the whole atmosphere and character of the firm will
change in a few years’ (Michael Argyle, 1964). Therefore, the entire process of selecting
new members for an organisation need to be quite sophisticated, as has been well defined
by Arnold, Cooper and Robertson (1998) beginning from the interviews and ending with
handwriting analysis. Sometimes a single method is used in the process of personnel selection;
at other hand, depending on the company’s needs and on the seniority of the job position
available, a variety of methods are used. However, as Arnold, Cooper and Robertson (1998)
state, ‘Although a large variety of personnel selection procedures have been developed and
used in organisational settings, the relevant research shows rather clearly that not all of the
methods are equally useful.’
Moreover, nowadays is increasingly popular the interview within organisations trying to
recruit new candidates. It is evident that in most cases the interview process has priority
over all other ways of selection (from the small groups to large organisations) for the reason
that ‘If a person has to communicate something to another and recognises that his aim in
communication is not just to express himself but to give information in a way that the
receiver is most likely to understand he is likely to do it more effectively.’ Peter R. Day
(1977)
Before the process of the interview, some factors must be considered: Where to interview,
when to interview, group or individual interviewing? – These can be quite critical, but
different situation require different approaches. From our role playing experience it was
clear that, when interviewing out of earshot of an audience, individuals were more likely
to discuss freely than in groups. As a result, Confidentiality is an important element in a
successful interview and in finding out more about a person.
Turning to the advantages and disadvantages of the interview, I would like to stress some
frequently encountered issues. Employment decisions have traditionally been regarded as
a privilege exclusive to management. Torrington and Hall, (1991) describe this process in
terms of 'hurdles over which prospective employees have to try to leap to avoid rejection'.
Clearly, it is evident that in the interviewing procedure, a candidate sometimes tries to adapt
himself/herself to the interviewer(s) and may not react honestly. For this reason, there are
‘Psychometric tests’ (Arnold, Cooper and Robertson, 1998), where the candidate may be
low certain which answer is suitable for the employer.
Furthermore, interviews frequently have another element, well described in one sentence
by Keenan (1977) - ‘interviewers assess candidates more favourably if they hold similar
attitudes’. This is good because it helps the interviewer to decide whether that person will
fit in the team, on the other hand not all people with the same attitudes can define the
requisite competencies (knowledge, skills, aptitudes and personal characteristics). Equally,
friendliness and likeability may be pleasant characteristics, but may not be important to
success in some jobs. Returning to the experience from the role-play it was obvious that
some of us would select the individuals who had the same attitudes and interests despite the
fact that these people may have had inappropriate skills. This may possibly affect in a
negative way a successful outcome of the interview, which has a key purpose to distinguish
the individual who can success the job.
In continuation, perhaps it is necessary to devote some attention to the types of the interviews:
Structured and Unstructured. Both have priorities and deficiencies between them. If to
considerate the unstructured type of the interviews, which is wide used in the organization’s
recruiting practice, moreover was also evident from the role-play experienced, possibly we
may state that it has inevitable tendencies to deviate from the planned way of interviewing.
In addition, it is also good to affirm that perhaps these tendencies are main advantages of
the interview processes, as the interviewed persons may communicate useful information
for the
employer, which sometimes, cannot possibly be done so by the structured types of the interviews
or by other types of the selection described by Arnold, Cooper and Robertson (1998).
Another point that may be stressed, relating perhaps to one of the disadvantages of the interviews
is the stereotyping and discrimination, which persist to be present in the people’s psychology and
often could bring to the company ineffective outcome of the interview if these are reflected quite
strong in the interviewer, as people have the ability to make an impression of the person from the
first sight, which sometimes may be wrong.
Furthermore, quoting Michael Argyle (1964) ‘Selection for management and leadership was
traditionally done by interview, together with study of previous performance’ and subscribing to
this opinion, based on our experience of role-play where was obvious that questions formulated by
the interviewers were less or more tangible with finding out the previous experience of candidates,
it could be stated that the interview processes are a crucial element in the selection of a candidate.
Moreover, interviews possibly in comparison to the other ways of selection may have the highest
prediction percent in detection which person will ‘fit in’.
1510 words
Bibliography
Arnold, J., Cooper, C.L. and Robertson, I. T., (1998): Work Psychology- Understanding Human
Behaviour in the Workplace. FT/Pitman Publishing.
Mears, P. and Voehl, F., (1997): Team Building – A Structured Learning Approach. St. Lucie Press.
Michael Argyle, (1964). Psychology and Social Problems. Methuen & Co LTD, London.
Peter R. Day, (1977). Methods of Learning Communication Skills. Pergamon Press, Oxford.
Torrington, D. and Hall, L., (1991): Personnel Management - A New Approach. London: Prentice
Hall.