Psychology of Selection

For the past ten years, companies have complied with the equal opportunity slogan that the public has become so accustomed to seeing. The real question is, are all companies really equal opportunity employers? Through our research, it has become evident that equal opportunity standards are not always applied in the hiring process. There are many factors that contribute to the hiring process. Legally, an employer has the right to hire whoever it wants and it may establish any kind of selection application it chooses. Companies have many different reasons why they hire the people that they do; filling quotas is a large influence as well as race, age, weight, attractiveness, and gender preferences. These factors provide unfair opportunities to specific types of people and often overlook applicants who may be more qualified for a specific position. All of these issues are reasons why highly qualified applicants often are overlooked in the hiring process on an all-too regular basis. Organizational behavior provides a wealth of theoretical reasoning why the psychology of selection can often be an unethical process. Such theory will be used in the subsequent analysis of the current state of hiring practices in business.

The field of organizational behavior cites five characteristics employers desire when reviewing job applicants. The "big five" personality dimensions are as follows; conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extroversion. These five personality dimensions offer an instrument for employers to judge potential employees. However as will be revealed in this paper, there are many outside influences that amend the hiring process in a negative manner.

In the process of hiring, sometimes simply having the necessary skill to do a job is not enough; companies are now beginning to look at more than just the skills of potential employees. The perfectly qualified candidate may not always be the best choice for a specific job. Often times, managers are looking for an individual to have the right fit with their specific company, someone with similar goals, motivation, and the personality to work well in the given environment. To better achieve this fit, about 30% of employers have begun to implement the use of pre-employment personality tests. In most cases, a standardized test of questions designed with heavy input from the fields of the social sciences is being incorporated into the more traditional interview process. Often, a good employee is one whose personality is congruent with the corporate culture. Organizational Behavior uses values congruence to describe this situation, in which two or more entities have similar value systems (Robbins et al, 1994). Personality tests are often the ideal way to measure this level of congruence. Such tests constitute a growing trend in corporate recruiting.

Companies began to realize the benefits of this new $400 million industry by benefiting from better hiring and the cost reduction associated with it. The cost of training a new employee to be fully competent in completing a given task at hand is enormous. It is not uncommon for the costs of the training to actually be greater than the salary the new employee earns. Increasingly, it is the case that this money is spent in vain, because the employee is fired within a few months. In addition, many major companies are not looking to hire employees who will leave after only a couple of years of service, although this cannot be eliminated altogether because of unforeseen circumstances. Many firms are seeking individuals who are more long term career-oriented, and will therefore help to reduce the company's turnover rate, thereby retaining intellectual capital within the firm. Companies that started using these pre-employment personality exams years ago are now saying that the proof is in the results; better overall employees who are able to mesh well within the company and become more productive. Values congruence not only leads to increased productivity, higher job satisfaction, stronger organizational commitment, lower stress levels, and lower turnover among employees (McShane et al, 2005, p.49).

So what exactly are these companies trying to test for in a potential candidate? Some highly desired characteristics will be described in detail later; however, the criteria are obviously different for each company. Some of the more common traits that a company will look for include stress management and the ability to multi-task, characteristics that are vital in today's corporations where job descriptions and role perceptions are broadening through employability (Robbins et al, 1994). In other corporations, managers may design questions to try and determine just how detailed or organized an individual is. Some of the even more common traits are the ability to take direction, as well as display leadership tendencies which could be used if they would be working in more of an independent setting, or in other cases the opposite of that; being open minded to ideas and suggestions from others which benefit team building skills.

However there is a down side to personality testing which leaves many potential candidates rather upset. Many potential employees are highly qualified candidates, yet have been overlooked because of the personality test results. In some cases, individuals find the questions to be loaded. Applicants feel there is no right answer, as was the case with Rebecca Rose, a 43 year old flight attendant of twelve years who applied for a server position at a restaurant (Stafford, 2005). Rose felt she was not offered the position because of how she perceived the questions to be presented. Another problem with the recent extreme enthusiasm over personality tests is that businesses are unable to view the tests from the candidate's position. There is no way of accurately calculating how many employees have missed out on job opportunities in which they could have excelled. Organizations tend to fall into the perceptual error of the projection bias, in which they project their enthusiasm about the tests onto the candidates, completely ignoring the candidates feelings about being tested (McShane et al, 2005, p.90). In time, it can be expected that individuals will start preparing more for the exams, providing the answers that the company wants hear, and if the tests last long enough, someone will most likely try to cash in on this trend by offering courses to help the potentials beat the tests. Undoubtedly this loophole will defeat the whole purpose of the personality test much like any standardized entrance exam.

Overall, there maybe some minor flaws with the process of pre-employment screening, but as a growing number of companies are determining that it can be used very effectively in finding the right person for the company, especially when values