IO Psych Ch. 4

Realistic job preview (RJP)

A method of recruitment in which job applicants are told both the positive and the negative aspects of a job.

Give applicants an honest assessment of the job.

Most effective when given in an oral format and at the time of the job offer.

Expectation-lowering procedure (ELP)

A form of RJP that lowers an applicant’s expectations about the various aspects of the job.

3 characyeristics of ffective employee selection systems

1. They are valid; based on a job analysis ( content validity), predicts related behavior (criterion validity), and measures the construct it purports to measure (construct validity)

2. They reduce the chance of a legal challenge if content is job-related (face validity), questions don’t invade applicants privacy, and adverse impact is minimized.

3. They are cost effective in terms of the costs to purchase or create, to administer, and to score.

Huffcut, Conway, Roth, and Stone found that most interview questions try to reveal info about which constructs?

Personality

Mental ability

Knowledge and skills

Social skills

Interests and preferences

Organizational fit

Physical attributes

Job interviews vary on 3 main factors, which are

Structure

Style: determined by number of interviewees and interviewers.

Medium

Structured interviews

Interviews in which questions are based on a job analysis, every applicant is asked the same questions, and there is a standardized scoring system so that identical answers are given identical scores.

Proven to be a better job predictor due to their standardization across applicants, and also the ability to gain a wide variety of applicants info.

Unstructured interview

An interview in which applicants are not asked the same questions and in which there is no standard scoring system to score applicant answers.

Interview style

One-on-one: one interviewer interviewing one applicant

Serial interviews: series of single interviews (different interviewer every hour during appointment)

Return interviews: returning to interview with a different interviewer.

Panel interviews: multiple interviewers asking questions and evaluating answers for one person at the same time.

Group interviews multiple applicants answering questions during the same interview.

Possible to have combo (ex: serial-panel-group interview)

Interview medium

Differing in the extent to which they are done in person.

Fact-to-face: physically in the same room

Telephone: screening applicants without visual cues

Video-conference: virtual (e.g., Zoom, Teams)

Written: answering questions and sending them back via mail or email

Incremental validity

Adds predictive power to the use of cognitive ability tests in structured interviews

Advantages of structured interviews

1. Based on job analysis

2. Result in substantially lower adverse impact

Problems with unstructured interviews

Poor reliability and validity:

Poor intuitive ability

Lack of job relatedness

Primacy effects

Contrast effects

Negative info bias

Interviewer-interviewee similarity

Interviewee appearance

Nonverbal cues

Primacy effects

Info presented early in an interview carries more weight than info presented later

To reduce this effect, judgments should be made throughout the interview

Contest effects

When the performance of one applicant affects the perception of the next applicant.

Negative information bias

The fact that negative info receives more weight in an employment decision than does positive info.

Types of interview questions

Clarifier

Disqualifier

Skill-level determiner

Past-focused (patterned-behavior description interviews; PBDIs)

Future-focused (Situational)

organizational fit

2 main methods of scoring most answers

Typical-answers approach: compares an applicant’s answer with benchmark answers.

Key-issues approach: provides points for each part of an answer that matches the scoring key.

3 rules for a resume

1. Attractive and easy to read

2. Does not contain mistakes

3. Makes applicant look as good as possible

Averaging vs adding model

A model proposed by Anderson that postulate that our impressions are based more on the average value of each impression than on the sum of the values.

In other words, activity quality is more important than quantity.