Selecting and Placing Human Resources

Selection is the process of choosing individuals who have relevant qualifications to fill jobs in an organization. Without qualified employees, an organization is in a poorer position to succeed. A vivid case in point is athletic organizations like the Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Braves, and Los Angeles Lakers, who fail or succeed on their ability to select the coaches, players, and other employees to win games.

Selection is much more than just choosing the best available person. Selecting the appropriate set of knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs)—which come packaged in a human being—is an attempt to get a “fit” between what the applicant can and wants to do, and what the organization needs. The task is made more difficult because it is not always possible to tell exactly what the applicant really can and wants to do. Fit between the applicant and the organization affects both the employer’s willingness to make a job offer and an applicant’s willingness to accept a job. Fitting a person to the right job is called placement.

More than anything else, placement of human resources should be seen as a matching process. Gaps between an individual’s skills and the job requirements are common factors that lead to rejection of an applicant. How well an employee is matched to a job affects the amount and quality of the employee’s work. This matching also directly affects training and operating costs. Workers who are unable to produce the expected amount and quality of work can cost an organization a great deal of money and time. Estimates are that hiring an inappropriate employee costs an employer three to five times that employee’s salary before it is resolved.2 Yet hiring mistakes are relatively common.

Good selection and placement decisions are an important part of successful HR management. Some would argue that these decisions are the most important part. Productivity improvement for an employer may come from changes in incentive pay plans, improved training, or better job design; but unless the employer has the necessary people with the appropriate KSAs in place, those changes may not have much impact. The very best training will not enable someone with little aptitude for a certain job to do that job well and enjoy it.

To put selection decisions in perspective, consider that organizations on average reject a high percentage of applicants. In some situations about five out of six applicants for jobs are rejected. Figure 9—1 depicts the reasons why employers most often reject applicants. Perhaps the best perspective on selection and placement comes from two traditional HR truisms that clearly identify the importance of effective employment selection.

• “Good training will not make up for bad selection.” The implication here is that when the right people with the appropriate KSAs are not selected for jobs, it is very difficult for the employer to recover later by somehow trying to train those individuals without the proper aptitude, interests, or other KSA deficiencies.
  

• “If you don’t hire the right one, your competitor will.” There is an opportunity cost in failure to select the right employee, and that cost is that the “right one” went somewhere else.

Criteria, Predictors, and Job Performance

At the heart of an effective selection system is knowledge of what constitutes appropriate job performance and what characteristics in employees are associated with that performance.4 Once the definition of employee success (performance) is known, the employee specifications required to achieve that success can be determined. A selection criterion is a characteristic that a person must have to do the job successfully. A certain preexisting ability is often a selection criterion. One example is the criterion appropriate employee permanence, which considers that a person must stay in a job long enough for the employer at least to break even on the training and hiring expenses incurred to hire the employee. Figure 9—3 shows that ability, motivation, intelligence, conscientiousness, appropriate risk, and permanence might be good selection criteria for many jobs. To predict whether a selection criterion (such as “motivation” or “ability”) is present, employers try to identify predictors as measurable indicators of selection criteria. For example, in Figure 9—3 good predictors of the criterion “appropriate permanence” might be individual interests, salary requirements, and tenure on previous jobs.

The information gathered about an applicant should be focused on finding predictors of the likelihood that the applicant will be able to perform the job well. Predictors can take many forms, but they should be job related, valid, and reliable. A test score can be a predictor of success on the job only if it is valid. Previous experience can be a predictor of success if it is related to the necessary performance on the current job. Any selection tool used (for example, application form, test, interview, education requirements, or years of experience

required) should be used only if it is a valid predictor of job performance. Using invalid predictors can result in selecting the “wrong” candidate and rejecting the “right” one.

VALIDITY Validity is the correlation between a predictor and job performance. As mentioned in Chapter 5, validity occurs to the extent that a predictor actually predicts what it is supposed to predict. Validity depends on the situation in which the selection device is being used.5 For example, a test designed to predict aptitude for child-care jobs might not be valid in predicting sales potential in a candidate for a sales representative.

RELIABILITY Reliability of a predictor is the extent to which it repeatedly produces the same results, over time. For example, if the same person took a test in December and scored 100, but upon taking it in March scored significantly higher, the test would not be highly reliable. Thus, reliability has to do with consistency, and predictors that are useful in selection should be consistent.

source by Human Resource Management 9th Edition Robert L. Mathis John H

Careers

A career is the sequence of work-related positions a person occupies throughout life. People pursue careers to satisfy deeply individual needs. At one time, identifying with one employer seemed to fulfill many of those needs. Now, the distinction between the individual’s career as the organization sees it and the career as the individual sees it is very important.

Organization-Centered vs. Individual-Centered Career Planning

Career planning can be somewhat confusing, because two different perspectives exist. Career planning can be organization centered, individual centered, or both. Organization-centered career planning focuses on jobs and on constructing career paths that provide for the logical progression of people between jobs in an organization. These paths are ones that individuals can follow to advance in certain organizational units. For example, a person might enter the sales department as a sales counselor, then be promoted to account director, to sales manager, and finally to vice-president of sales.

Individual-centered career planning focuses on individuals’ careers rather than organizational needs. It is done by employees themselves, and individual goals and skills are the focus of the analysis. Such analyses might consider situations both inside and outside the organization that could expand a person’s career.

Organizational retrenchment and downsizing have changed career plans for many people. They have found themselves in “career transition”—in other words, in need of finding other jobs. Small businesses, some started by early retirees from big companies, have provided many of the new career opportunities.

How People Choose Careers

Four general individual characteristics affect how people make career choices.

1. Interests: People tend to pursue careers that they believe match their interests.
2. Self-image: A career is an extension of a person’s self-image, as well as a molder of it.
   
3. Personality: This factor includes an employee’s personal orientation (for example, whether the employee is realistic, enterprising, and artistic) and personal needs (including affiliation, power, and achievement needs).
   
4. Social backgrounds: Socioeconomic status and the educational and occupation level of a person’s parents are a few factors included in this category.
   

Less is known about how and why people choose specific organizations than about why they choose specific careers. One obvious factor is the availability of a job when the person is looking for work. The amount of information available about alternatives is an important factor as well. Beyond these issues, people seem to pick an organization on the basis of a “fit” between the climate of the organization as they perceive it and their own personal characteristics. Many factors may influence job choice, including the gender of the job informant who passed along job information.

Career Plateaus

Those who do not job-hop may face another problem: career plateaus. As the babyboom generation reaches midlife, and as large employers cut back on their workforces, increasing numbers of managers will find themselves at a career plateau. Plateauing may seem a sign of failure to many people, and plateaued employees can cause problems for employers when frustration affects performance. Perhaps in part because of plateauing, many middle managers’ optimism about opportunity for advancement has declined. Even though these managers have more responsibility and less influence in the decision-making process, the result has been leaner, more competitive organizations with few promotion opportunities.

Moonlighting As a Career Strategy

Moonlighting traditionally has been defined as work outside a person’s regular
employment that takes 12 or more additional hours per week. More recently, the
concept of moonlighting has been expanded to include such activities as selfemployment, investments, hobbies, and other interests for which additional remuneration is received. The perception that moonlighting is a fixed outside commitment is no longer sufficiently broad, because the forms that it may take
are varied and sometimes difficult to identify.

Moonlighting is no longer just a second job for the underpaid blue-collar worker but also a career development strategy for some professionals. A growing number of managers are dividing their work efforts by moonlighting as consultants or self-employed entrepreneurs. Consulting not only increases their income but also provides new experiences and diversity to their lives. Many individuals also view such activities as providing extra security, especially in these times of layoffs among middle managers.

Most moonlighting managers cannot afford to walk away from their corporate salaries, but they are looking elsewhere for fulfillment. An HR manager at a TV network moonlights by working for a training firm that she and a friend set up. An advertising executive at a cosmetics company accepts freelance assignments from his employer’s clients. A computer software expert secretly develops a home computer program to market on his own.

If someone is working for a company and freelancing in the same field, questions bout whose ideas and time are involved are bound to arise. Some organizations threaten to fire employees who are caught moonlighting, mainly to keep them from becoming competitors.36 But that does not seem to stop the activities. Other organizations permit freelance work so long as it is not directly competitive. Many believe that staff members should be free to develop their own special interests.

There is evidence that some people who hold multiple jobs work a second job in preparation for a career change. Whether or not a career change is sought, the concept of “job insurance” plays a role, as mentioned earlier. Moonlighting can be viewed in the same context as auto, car, home, or life insurance. The second job can serve as a backup in the event the primary job is lost.

Moonlighting is not without its problems. The main argument against moonlighting has been that energy is being used on a second job that should be used on the primary job. This division of effort may lead to poor performance, absenteeism, and reduced job commitment. However, these arguments are less valid with a growing number of employees.

Key for employers in dealing with moonlighting employees is to devise and communicate a policy on the subject. Such a policy should focus on defining those areas in which the employer limits employee activities because of business reasons.

source by Human Resource Management 9th Edition Robert L. Mathis John H