MOS 1021 Midterm 1 Study Notes: Human Resource Management, Job Analysis, Recruitment, and Employee Selection

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core concepts, legal frameworks, job design techniques, recruitment strategies, and selection procedures from MOS 1021 Midterm 1 notes.

Human Resources Management (HRM)

The system and practice for the effective management of people in organizations, responsible for ensuring that the organization attracts, retains, and engages the diverse talent required to meet operational and performance commitments.

Human Capital

The knowledge, education, training, skills, and expertise of an organization's workforce, representing the intangible resources possessed by its employees.

Employee Retention

The ability of an organization to keep its employees, serving as a strategic goal that provides financial benefits and signals organizational attractiveness.

Corporate Social Responsibility

The practice of maintaining a balance between pursuing profitability and acting in ways that benefit society, such as through charitable giving, volunteering, improving labor practices, and reducing carbon footprint.

Corporate Culture (Organizational Culture)

The identity of the organization consisting of core values, beliefs, and norms widely shared by members that clarify standards of behavior and can develop intentionally or organically.

Corporate Climate (Organizational Climate)

The perceived general atmosphere within an organization, influenced by leadership style, HR policies, and communication, that can change and impact employee motivation, productivity, and satisfaction.

Evidence-Based HRM

The practice of evaluating human resources practices against empirical data (such as internal organizational data, published studies, and expert findings) to ensure they produce desired outcomes.

True Experiment

A research method conducted in a controlled setting where participants are randomly assigned to groups representing levels of an independent variable (IV) and measured on a dependent variable (DV), allowing causal conclusions.

Quasi-Experiment

A research method conducted in field or natural settings where groups representing levels of an independent variable are pre-selected rather than randomly assigned, making results easier to generalize but causal conclusions unrecommended.

Spurious Correlation

An apparent relationship between two variables that appear to be related but are actually not, often caused by coincidence or an unmeasured third variable.

Direct Discrimination

Intentional discrimination that involves deliberately refusing to hire, train, or promote an individual on the basis of a protected characteristic.

Indirect Discrimination

Unintentional discrimination that occurs when a seemingly neutral policy or practice has an unintended adverse impact on members of a protected group.

Bona Fide Occupational Requirement (BFOR)

A justifiable reason for discrimination based on business necessity, consisting of attributes deemed necessary to fulfill the job safely and effectively.

The Meiorin Test

A three-part legal framework used to justify a BFOR by establishing rational connection to job performance, adoption in good faith, and reasonable necessity for accomplishing the job.

Reasonable Accommodation

Modifications to rules, standards, policies, resources, or physical environments to ensure individuals are not excluded based on prohibited grounds, required up to the point of undue hardship.

Undue Hardship

The financial or health and safety limit beyond which an employer is not legally expected to accommodate an employee under human rights legislation.

Balanced Scorecard

A measurement system that translates an organization's strategy into a comprehensive set of performance measures and metrics.

Contingent/Non-Standard Workers

Workers who do not have regular full-time employment status and are utilized to provide flexible, on-demand labor without guarantees of continued employment.

Stare Decisis

A legal principle dictating that the decisions of a higher court act as binding authority on lower court decisions within the same jurisdiction.

Glass Ceiling

An invisible barrier caused by attitudinal or organizational bias that limits the advancement opportunities of qualified designated group members.

Job

A group of related activities and duties held by a single employee or a number of incumbents in an organization.

Position

The collection of tasks and responsibilities performed by one person; a specific instance of a job held by a single employee.

Job Analysis

The systematic process of collecting detailed information to determine the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of each job, as well as the human attributes (KSAOs) required to perform it.

Bureaucratic Structure

An organizational structure common in larger firms characterized by numerous levels of management, narrowly defined jobs, clear top-down communication lines, and distinct separation between units.

Flat Structure

An organizational structure common in smaller firms with few management levels, broadly defined and fluid jobs, employee empowerment, and collaborative workflows.

Matrix Structure

An organizational design ideal for multiple projects or products that features two simultaneous lines of accountability and communication.

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

Individuals who are highly knowledgeable about the tasks, duties, responsibilities, and attributes required for a job, typically including incumbents, supervisors, and job analysts.

Work Simplification

A job design approach that assigns administrative aspects (planning and organizing) to supervisors while giving lower-level employees narrowly defined, repetitive tasks.

Industrial Engineering

A field of study concerned with analyzing work methods and making work cycles efficient through modifying, combining, rearranging, or eliminating tasks, often neglecting human psychological fulfillment.

Job Enlargement (Horizontal Loading)

A technique to relieve monotony by assigning workers additional tasks at the same level of responsibility to increase the number of duties performed.

Job Rotation

A technique involving systematically moving employees from one job to another to relieve boredom, build multi-skilled versatility, and increase task variety.

Job Enrichment (Vertical Loading)

Any effort that makes a job more rewarding and satisfying by increasing employee autonomy, responsibility, and decision-making authority.

Ergonomics

An interdisciplinary approach seeking to integrate and accommodate human physical needs into job design by adapting equipment, tools, and environments to human characteristics.

Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ)

A standardized job analysis questionnaire containing 194 items evaluating job elements across six basic dimensions using a 5-point scale, primarily effective for classifying jobs.

Fleishman-Job Analysis System (F-JAS)

A job analysis questionnaire containing 73 items that evaluate jobs based solely on the general enduring human abilities required to perform them, rated on 7-point scales.

Functional Job Analysis (FJA)

A quantitative method used for classifying jobs based on the types and amounts of responsibility involved with data, people, and things.

National Occupational Classification (NOC)

A standardized field-based taxonomy created by ESDC that provides descriptions and requirements for approximately 30,000 occupations across Canada, organized by skill level and type.

Job Description

A written statement outlining the tasks, duties, responsibilities (TDRs), reporting relationships, and working conditions of a job.

Job Specification

A document listing the human capital requirements—specifically the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs)—needed to perform a job.

Competency-Based Job Analysis

The process of describing a job in terms of measurable, observable behavioral competencies rather than lists of specific job duties, supporting fluid roles and high-performance work systems.

Talent Acquisition

An emerging HRM programming concept focused on finding, acquiring, assessing, and hiring job candidates.

Recruitment

The process of searching out and attracting a pool of qualified applicants, beginning with identifying a staffing vacancy and ending with the receipt of applications.

Employer Branding

The image or impression of an organization as an employer based on perceived employment benefits, culture, compensation, and reputation.

Human Capital Theory

A theory stating that the accumulation of firm-specific knowledge and experience represents a joint investment by employer and employee, making internal recruitment mutually beneficial.

Biographical Information Blank (BIB)

A detailed job application form that requests biodata regarding background, experiences, and preferences that are empirically predictive of job success.

Nepotism

The organizational practice or preference of hiring relatives of current employees, which can risk inbreeding and systemic discrimination.

Blind Ad

A recruitment print advertisement in which the identity and address of the hiring employer are intentionally omitted.

Realistic Job Preview (RJP)

A recruitment tool that provides candidates with balanced, truthful information regarding both positive and negative aspects of a job to manage expectations and boost trust.

Selection

The process of choosing among recruited individuals to fill existing or projected job openings, starting when an applicant pool is established.

Selection Ratio

The mathematical proportion calculated as $\text{Selection Ratio} = \frac{\text{Number of Applicants Hired}}{\text{Total Number of Applicants}}$, used to evaluate candidate competition and recruit quality.

Multiple-Hurdle Strategy

A sequential selection approach involving successive filtering stages where applicants must pass each step before moving on to the next.

Test-Retest Reliability

The degree of consistency or stability of a selection test's results across repeated testing occasions over time.

Inter-Rater Reliability

The degree to which different raters or evaluators provide consistent, comparable scores or evaluations when observing the same candidate.

Differential Validity

Confirmation that a selection tool accurately predicts job performance across all employee subgroups without disproportionately discriminating against protected groups.

Criterion-Related Validity

The extent to which scores on a selection tool predict or correlate significantly with actual, observable elements of work behavior and job performance.

Content Validity

The extent to which a selection test adequately and directly samples the knowledge, skills, and actual behaviors needed to perform the target job.

Construct Validity

The extent to which a selection tool measures a specific theoretical psychological construct or trait (such as intelligence or introversion) deemed necessary for the role.

Work Sampling

A selection testing technique where applicants are evaluated on their performance of a representative sample of key tasks taken directly from the job.

Management Assessment Centre

A comprehensive, multi-method assessment process using realistic simulations, management games, objective tests, presentations, and interviews to evaluate managerial potential.

Structured Interview

An interview that follows an established, predetermined sequence of job-related questions across all candidates, yielding higher validity and reliability than conversational styles.

Situational Interview

A type of interview consisting of hypothetical job-related scenarios that prompt the applicant to describe how they would behave in each scenario.

Behavioural Interview

A selection interview featuring questions that require candidates to describe specific past behaviors and actions in actual prior work situations.

Halo Effect

An interviewer bias where a positive initial impression distorts the interviewer's entire assessment, causing them to rate all subsequent applicant information positively.

Contrast Error (Candidate-Order Error)

An evaluation error where an interviewer's judgment of an applicant is distorted by the exceptionally strong or weak performance of the immediately preceding candidate.

Similar-to-Me Bias

An interviewer rating tendency to favor applicants who share similar demographic, personal, or attitudinal characteristics with the interviewer.

Qualified Privilege

A legal protection providing immunity from defamation claims for employers when giving honest, job-related character or reference evaluations in good faith.