Welcome!

1. Mgmt 441-01 Staffing Prof. Howard Miller Welcome!

2. Staffing Function • Among several human resource functions • Benefits • Compensation • Safety • Labor Relations • Training

3. Staffing . . . • Involves getting people in, or out, of a company • We’ll concentrate on the “getting people in” part

4. Staffing has 2 main purposes • “Get the best talent” for the firm at the price we can offer • Conform to national, state and local regulations concerning staffing practice, or in short “keep it legal”

5. How to Staff? • Derive “demand for labor” • Update job requirement information • Identify knowledge, skills and abilities required for success on job • Develop measures of job-related KSA’s • Recruit from relevant labor markets • Screen using “valid” tests • Make offer, provide orientation to accepts

6. Staffing Project Steps • Choose job to study • Find real setting to perform job analysis • Perform job analysis • Develop job description, job specification • Find/develop tests to measure job specifications • Identify “Relevant” labor markets • Define recruiting methods • Spell out hiring process to client in full detail

7. What do you mean “valid test”? * Note importance of Supreme Court case Watson v. Ft Worth Bank and Trust (1988) Supreme court states (paraphrasing): “A test is any hurdle you have to clear to get a job” - especially important for interviewing, which was at core of case * A “valid test” is a hurdle that allows better talent to get over, while lesser talent is screened out

8. How do we establish if a test is “valid” • Note importance of “The Uniform Guidelines for Employee Selection Procedures” (1978) Uniform Guidelines link • Three methods recognized by courts – “Content validation” “Criterion-related validation” “Construct validation”

9. The logic of hiring validity illustrated • Consider classic payoff matrix, which we’ll label “selection decision matrix” in our setting. • Good decisions result when applicants who will succeed are hired (“true positive”), and applicants who will not succeed are rejected (“true negative”) • Bad decisions involve rejecting people who will work out (“false negative), and accepting those who don’t work out (“false positive”)

10. Selection Decision Matrix

11. Content validation … • A logical analysis by subject matter experts (SME’s) of the overlap between the content of screening tests and the content of job requirements • Note the deceptive simplicity of the requirements for a typist at the university

12. Criterion-related validation • The main way it’s done • 2 types: Predictive Validation and Concurrent Validation • Predictive uses test data from applicants, and job performance data from those hired • Concurrent uses both test and performance data from current employees

13. Construct Validation . . . • More complex than the other two • One has to show that measures of applicant traits and job performance really measure those things (Classic construct validation) • AND then show trait measures correlate with job performance measures

14. the vast majority of the time we’ll be referring to “concurrent, criterion-related validity evidence” because of it’s overwhelming use

15. Valid tests mean lower error rates in hiring decisions • More true positives and negatives • Fewer false positives and negatives • Lower exposure to successful litigation • Higher “utility” of the staffing function

16. Research on validity tells us what works! • Find tests that are shown to be valid • How is this done? • Within the “concurrent, criterion-related validation” approach, it means showing a significant correlation between test scores and job performance scores – the essence of a concurrent validity study.

17. What would such validation data look like? • See “Ma and Pa Consumer Electronics Store” data set illustration • Ma and Pa Consumer Electronics Data Set 1.xls

18. Valid Hiring Tests • A hiring test – anything you must get through to get the job • A “Valid” hiring test – one where applicants who score better on the test do a better job if hired • In criterion-related empirical test validation, it is one where there is a “significant correlation between hiring test scores and job performance scores”

19. Empirical validation • Obtain a representative sample of people • Have them take the hiring test(s), and measure their job performance • Compute the statistical correlation of hiring test scores and job performance scores • Compute the “statistical significance” of the sample correlation • If “significant”, cross-validate in new sample • If correlation remains significant, put test(s) into use

20. Some key statistical concepts • “Mean” the average score for a group of people • “Standard Deviation” the average variability around the average score for a group of people • “Correlation” a number that reveals the degree of linear association between hiring test scores and job performance scores

21. Correlation properties • Correlation is notated with lower case “r” • It can range in value from -1.00 to +1.00 • r=0 means “zero” correlation, no linear association between the test (x) and job performance (y) – that’s not happy • r=+1.00 (or r= -1.00) means there is a perfect association of hiring test and job performance - doesn’t happen in reality, tho’ we’d love it if it did! • Correlations from real samples RARELY exceed values of r=.50

22. More on correlation • Correlation can be used to “summarize” the pattern in a 2-variable scatterplot, like the hiring test (x axis) versus job performance (y axis) scatterplot • In this application, correlation is a special case of linear regression – using a straight line to summarize what’s happening in a data set • Plot interview score against job performance in the Ma and Pa data set

23. Statistical analysis of interviews in relation to monthly sales • Compute the correlation of hiring test scores with job performance scores • Compute the regression of job performance scores (Y) on hiring test scores (X)