Exam 6: Employee Selection

Scenario 6.1 Canadian Fasteners is an Ottawa-based packing firm that packages nuts, bolts, and screws for various Canadian furniture companies. The firm started operations in 2003 with 13 employees and has grown to over 150 employees today. Employees are paid hourly rates with benefits similar to other packing firms across Ontario. The work does not need previous experience. Canadian Fasteners has been struggling to recruit and hire the right employees to take the company into the new millennium. Part of the problem is that workers, especially floor workers, are hired by word of mouth with no formal application process or even an interview. As a result, the company faces a high turnover rate and spends valuable time training new employees who may not have the prerequisite skills to effectively do the job in the first place. -Refer to Scenario 6.1. Which of the following does Canadian Fasteners need to do to gather information about its candidates?

Structured interviews have standardized questions.

Which of the following do personality tests measure?

Scenario 6.2 Computer Direct Inc. is a mid-sized technology firm that specializes in designing, manufacturing, and selling computers. The organization staff complement is very diverse, and most of the company's employees are in the development and design, sales, and marketing departments. Computer Direct has been using only one method to make recruitment decisions for all of its employees, from managerial to technical to clerical. Data is gathered on each candidate, and a committee assigns scores to candidates based on its understanding of the job. Candidates, however, are not given the opportunity to be tested and hired based on their respective scores. Essentially, decisions are made based on personal judgments. -Refer to Scenario 6.2. Which approach best reflects how decisions about recruiting are made at Computer Direct?

What is currently the most effective way to assess a person's honesty during the selection process?

Validity refers to what a selection procedure measures and how well it measures it.

What do we call the process whereby a test or test battery is administered to a different sample (drawn from the same population) for the purpose of verifying the results obtained from the original validation study?

Which of the following measures mental capabilities such as general intelligence, verbal fluency, numerical ability, or reasoning ability?

During her interview for a position as a secretary, Nikki was asked to answer a real phone call from a client. The interviewer used her performance to help with the selection decision. Which of the following types of tests was used in this instance?

Credit checks are the most common form of reference check.

Drug testing is used much more frequently in Canada than in the United States.

A university uses several criteria for accepting students. There is a minimum score that students have to achieve on each of the criteria to get admitted. What type of selection model is being used?

Questions contained in structured job interviews should be based on which of the following?

Intelligence, mechanical comprehension, and anxiety are examples of which of the following?

Compare and contrast the clinical and statistical approaches to decision making in employee selection.

Organization C has developed a new selection system. The company is interested in determining if the system predicts performance on the job, so Organization C gave the selection tests to 100 existing employees. What is the best way to describe this process?

Hypothetical incidents are used in situational interviews.

"Tell me more about your experiences on your last job" is an example of a nondirective interview question.

Organization T uses a decision-making model in which an applicant is allowed to score poorly in one area of the selection tests, as long as he or she scores very high in another area. What is this type of decision-making model called?

Compare and contrast the following four interview approaches: (1) nondirective interview, (2) structured interview, (3) situational interview, and (3) behavioural description interview.