The use of Psychometric tests and interviews in employee selection - 2475 Words

The use of Psychometric tests and interviews in employee selection (Essay Sample) Content: The use of Psychometric tests and interviews in employee selection Studentà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s name University Course The use of Psychometric tests and interviews in employee selection Recruitment and selection of employees is of the priorities that human resource personnel base on so much. This is important in ensuring that the right qualities, skills, and employee attributes are selected from the pool f potential applicants that may deem qualified for the job. According to Thompson McHugh (2009, P.12), this is a planned and rational activity comprising of a sequence of linked phases within the which forms the basis of a human resource strategy in the organization. Further, Costello (2009, P. 48) argues that choosing the rightt employee assists the organization to meet it goals. This is because human resource has been used in strategic management to ensure the organization meets its strategic needs through aligning the employees towards organizational goals. Therefore recruitment plays a pivotal role that ensures that the organization selects the required employees to include into the organization. However, selection methods depend on the need for employees. Selections are base on replacing employees who have left based on many reasons or recruitingg new employees to increase the number due to organizational development. Employers choose specific recruitment methods based on the operations of the organization and a series of outcomes that the organization intends to gauge on an employee. This means that the skills, and abilities that are require d for a particular job play a key role in the recruitment method that can be used within the organization (Opayemi and Oyesola 2013, p . 97). This means that a human resource manager must choose the right selection methods that can be used to select employees. This essay compares and contrasts two employee selection methods(interview and Psychometric tests) and their validity versus the perception of employees towards these methods. The essay will define each method through giving an overview of the elements that define the method and t hen draw a comparison and contrast between the methods about the perception that employees have over the validity of the two methods. Interviews are the common employee selection methods since they provide an opportunity for managers and the recruiting team to meet directly with the candidate. On the other hand, the employee learns more abut the organization trough sharing with the management and prove their worth through giving all the information that can convince the employer that they are fit for the job (Wilk Cappelli 2011, P. 114). This method influences the hiring decision since it gave the candidate the oportunity to prove their best by expressing their knowledge and abilities. The selection method is based strictly on the applicants or response and inquiries. This enables the recruiting team to predict the job performance of the candidates through an established score. Interviews take different forms ranging from structured to unstructured interviews. Here a list of questions is developed that defines the line of questioning by the interviewing pannel. Each response that the employee gives is scored against the question and an overall score is done where the candidate with the highest score is regarded as the best candidate for the job. Therefore the candidate has to be armed with communication and verbal fluency skills, that will enable a proper response to the line of questioning. The nature of the interview may also vary with some organizations carrying out face to face interviews while others using phone calls or other communication tools like Skype. The interviewing panel is supposed to rate the candidate based on constructs and standard evaluatin methods. The scales can be behaviourally anchored or personality anchored to measure the qualities of the candidate. However, the basis of an interview is of the five variables of job knowledge, job experience, situational judgment, grade point average, and social skills, (Blackman Funder 2002, p. 110). Psychometric tests are used to provide employers with a reliable and accurate method of selecting the best candidate from the group f potential candidates. These tests measure intelligence, aptitude and personality abilities of the candidate that are used to predict whether the employee can cope with intellectual demands that the position they have applied calls for (Bernadim, 2003, p. 22). These tests are designed to measure emotional or psychological stability of the employee that form an important element in problem planning and problem solving. According to Fortune magazine over 500 organization in USA and 100 in UK are using psychometric tests in selection of prospective employees within the organization. This enables the employer to find the best match of the employee that they want depending on the environment and position that the organization offers. In psychometric testing, personality tests are used to quantify personality by asking you about your feelings, thoughts and behaviour in a variety of situation both at work and outside of work. This enables the employer determine enthusiasm and motivation at work. On the other hand, aptitude tests focus on different abilities of the candidate like diagnosis, mechanical reasoning, spatial ability, abstract reasoning and work sample (Ballantyne, 2009, p. 11). Psychometric tests and interviews both test on the abilities of the individual through different measures. Psychometric tests contain questions that the candidate is supposed to answer under a specific period of time. This, therefore, tests the abilities of the candidate on personality aptitude abilities which may measure different abilities of the candidate like abstract reasoning, verbal and numeric abilities, work sample and data checking. Each of the scores achieved shows different abilities that the individual posses (Ullah 2010, p, 107). Similarly, are used by the employer to predict future jib performance of the candidate through their response on oral queries. The methods are based on standardized, reliable and predictive procedures that are to gauge the candidate and ensure that the candidate can meet the standards that are required. Saks (2006, p. 404) suggests that applicants have rated interviews as one of the possible ways of obtaining th job. Applicants have argued that once shortlisted for interview they believe that this is the way to getting a job. Further researchers have argued that interviews based on structured process are predictive of the candidates job performance and make the interview more valid and reliable. Interviews have been widely used to check the history and background of the employee. This ensures that the employer is able to determine the period that the employee may stay in the organization. Further aptitude tests and interviews allow the employee to express their potential when being assessed and prove their worth for the organization. The methods allow employees to compete on fairly on the grounds that allows each one of them to prove their abilities. Secondly, both interviews and psychometric tests have a score that are used to rate the performance of the candidate and their quality for the interview. The methods offer ways through which the employer can rate and gauge the abilities of the employee. Psychometric tests have scores that are used to measure specific abilities that the candidate possesses. On the other hand, the interview can be structured to follow a sequence of questioning that allows the employer to rate the employee on a set score (Berkson et al 2003, p. 365). In the interview the employer posses questions to the candidate who respond to the best of their knowledge. The responses from the interview are captured using scores as determined the interviewers and the applicant with the highest score is selected as the candidate. On the other hand, psychometric tests contain a set of questions that are answered within a limited period of time. Periatt, Chakrabarty Lemay (2007, P. 23) state that the candidates display their skills, by answering the questions to ensure that they give the best response according to their understanding. Both methods, therefore, are based on the ability of the candidate to display high scores through giving the correct responses. This means that all the employees are subjected to similar conditions under psychometric tests and interviews which enable the employer to determine the best-qualified employee. These methods have been described as being fair since all the candidates are subjected to similar conditions unlike other methods. Therefore adequate human resource planning can give the best candidate for the job after application of a proper selection method. Further employees have regarded recruitment methods that are standardized as being fair since they subject them to equal selection methods. Both methods can be modified to gather important information that can form the basis of the decision in selection. Experts in HR fields have argued that gathering important data on the background of an employee helps the organization to make important decisions regarding recruitment. Through using job description and standard employee requirement, psychometric tests and interviews can be designed to gauge specific attributes from the employee by assessing how they may affect their overall performance. Aspects like problem solving and planning can be measured based on the responses that the candidate gives. The responses can be thoroughly audited to determine whether the employee fits within the organization (Owen Taljaard 1996, P. 28). Practical cases can be used to judge the candidateà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s abilities and how they can respond to situations. These methods have been widely praised since...

Chemistry in Everyday Life

The Illusion of Youth - 2846 Words

Katherine Mansfield’s Miss. Brill written in 1920 is a short story a part of Mansfield’s The Garden Party and Other Stories. It is a short story about a middle-aged teacher, who finds joy in spending her Sunday afternoons, sitting in the park. At the park, she finds joy in observing others around her and pretending, they are all actors and actresses on a stage. Miss. Brill finds joy in the illusion that she creates at the park. She is a woman, who lives a very humdrum life and finds joy creating an unrealistic world, where she envisions herself as an actress. She uses illusion as not only an escape from her reality but also from herself. Miss. Brill creates an illusion in order to escape the reality that she is losing her youth.†¦show more content†¦Brill out of the illusion, she has created. She is awakening to the reality that she is not a young fashionable woman but a middle-aged woman, holding onto an item from the days of her youth. After overhearing the girl’s comment, she returns home where she returns the fur to its box. She hears a cry after returning the item but she doesn’t acknowledge the cry comes from her. The acceptance that she has gotten older just like the fur is an inedibility that she denies because she doesn’t want to acknowledge that she is the one that made the cry. She tries to preserve the fur by keeping it in a like-new condition but she admits that the life has dim in â€Å"the little eyes† of the fur because she has to polish them in order to restore the life back. By keeping the fur in like-new condition, she also is keeping the vitality of life. Just like the fur, Miss Brill life lacks vitality but she receives it each time she takes the garment out and wears it on her Sunday afternoons to the park. She is a woman who lives an unfulfilled life, she finds that she receives fulfillment each time she chooses to dress-up in her fur and spend her afternoon at the park. It is there that her life is not only vital but becomes a play, inside her head. Mansfield described her as having â€Å". . . felt a tingling in her hands and arms . . .† (Mansfield 1). She not only feels that her life is vital by her afternoons in the park but also she finds excitement. If she has to lookShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of A Streetcar Named Desire 1372 Words   |  6 Pages12 November, 2016 In Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams explores the internal conflict of illusion versus reality through the characters. Humans often use illusion to save us pain and it allows us to enjoy pleasure instead. However, as illusion clashes with reality, one can forget the difference between the two. When people are caught up in their illusions, eventually they must face reality even if it is harsh. 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An Exploration of Grace Nichols Resentment free essay sample

The Atlantic slave trade began in the sixteenth century and was abolished in the British Empire in the early nineteenth century. During four centuries American and Europeans nations obtained enslaved people from African slave-traders (although some were captured by Europeans slave traders). Born in Guyana in 1 950, author and poet Grace Nichols moved into England in 1 977 where she has compiled several books of poetry, many of which discuss the slave trade. Her poem taint is an illustration of her resentment at the legacy of the slave trade. The title of the poem itself is significant; a one emotive word impact: Taint which means spoil, stain or tarnish, a negative word that introduces the reader to whats to come. Would also argue that the lay-out of the poem complements this notion; the layout is effectively disorganized with stanzas and lines of different sizes, which can be qualified as visually unsightly.Her first stanza begins with the word But which would usually imply a response to an on-going conversation but the rest of the sentence gives the impression the author is making a plea: But was stolen by men believe the use of the pronoun at the first person signifies that, however Grace Nichols hasnt lived the experience narrated in the poem, she adopts the persona of her ancestors as if it did happen to her. The first person will be consistently used throughout the poem and contribute in making the reading/experience much more personal.With the use of strong emotive vocabulary such as stolen I believe Grace Nichols wants to show the reader how she felt like a possession. The use of stolen rather than kidnapped inhumanness and the use of passive tense indicates that it was against her will: she was stolen; things were being done to her and she was not in control. All of which contribute to convey a feeling of defensiveness. Making a pause, a one line gap, she then goes on to say: the color of my own skin The phrase doesnt start with a capital which suggests a continuation of the previous sentence.The pause is giving a dramatic aural effect as if the author couldnt write them down or say these words straight away, horrified of the cruel truth they hold. I believe that, through this pause, Grace Nichols wanted to show her resentment at the betrayal of black slave-traders that ruled the slave-trade for centuries, delivering black slaves, slaves of the same color that of their own, to white merchants. The author reinforces the idea of helplessness when she describes herself as being borne away.By means of metaphors and animal imagery, Grace Nichols appears to be comparing these men to the devil itself, she refers to them as men with hoofs and talons, features usually associated with the Devil. Meanwhile it is possible hat the use of verb such as had become and had turned are highlighting her belief that these men went through a transformation and we could recognize that it is their actions that turned them in Devil-like creatures. The last three lines of this stanza are interesting both for their vocabulary and their structure: bearing me down/ to the trail / of darkness Here I believe the author wanted to show that she was held against her will and going to a place she didnt want to go and the use of vocabulary such as darkness seems to indicate the mood of the poem. The lines are becoming shorter and it seems as if it illustrates her state of mind at that moment: low, lower, lowest in the darkness.In the next stanza, the phrase the color of my own skin, used earlier on, is being repeated to emphasis Grace Nicholson disgust at being not only stolen but also traded by her own people. The poet used further animal imagery to describe herself and high effect trillion: traded like a fowl like a goat like a sack of kernels was Once again the imaged vocabulary emphasizes the horror of being inhumanness, devalued and traded like worthless goods (compare to a human life). The author uses another trillion to accentuate her feelings: traded / for beads for pans / for train sets? We can also notice the first (and last) punctuation sign of the poem: An interrogation mark which emphasizes the author disbelief and resentment. It also looks as if Grace Nichols is asking the reader to think about this and as I read the poem I could almost hear her voice asking me Can you believe this? The last two stanzas of the poem are much shorter (2 lines each) and for the iris time the reader is introduce to Grace Nichols of today which brings her views in the actuality.Contradictory vocabulary is used: forget and remember. Think Grace Nichols is acknowledging that she has not come to term with her ancestral history which she seems to have absorb as her own and the fact that she uses the word daily/ seems to indicate that she is still very much dealing with these issues to todays date: Daily I rinse the taint of treachery from my mouth Grace Nichols has effectively uses numerous writing techniques in taint to envoy her ideas and feelings to the reader.As a white reader, I felt uncomfortable reading this poem as if the guilt Of my ancestors (the white tradesmen) was lying on my shoulder. May be this was intended by the author who seemed to be, herself, carrying the suffering of her ancestors (the black slaves). Furthermore it could be argued that Grace Nichols is stressing an issues that is still of actuality in some part of the word and far from a selfish plea, I see in her words an appeal from all those that have suffered, still suffer and struggle to come to term with it.