Module 5 Selection
Module 5 Selection
Introduction
Human resource selection is the process of choosing qualified individuals who are
available to fill positions in an organization. In the ideal personnel situation, selection involves
choosing the best applicant to fill a position. Selection is the process of choosing people by obtaining
and assessing information about the applicants with a view to matching these with the job
requirements. It involves a careful screening and testing of candidates who have put in their
applications for any job in the enterprise. It is the process of choosing the most suitable persons out of
all the applicants. The purpose of selection is to pick up the right person for every job.
It can be conceptualized in terms of either choosing the fit candidates, or rejecting the unfit
candidates, or a combination of both. Selection involves both because it picks up the fits and rejects
the unfits. In fact, in Indian context, there are more candidates who are rejected than those who are
selected in most of the selection processes. Therefore, sometimes, it is called a negative process in
contrast to positive program of recruitment.
According to Dale Yoder, “Selection is the process in which candidates for employment are
divided into two classes-those who are to be offered employment and those who are not”.
According to Thomas Stone, “Selection is the process of differentiating between applicants
in order to identify (and hire) those with a greater likelihood of success in a job”.
In the words of Michael Jucius, “The selection procedure is the system of functions and
devices adopted in a given company for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not candidates possess
the qualifications called for by a specific job or for progression through a series of jobs.”
According to Keith Davis, “Selection is the process by which an organization chooses from
a list of screened applicants, the person or persons who best meet the selection criteria for the
position available.”
Thus, the selection process is a tool in the hands of management to differentiate between the
qualified and unqualified applicants by applying various techniques such as interviews, tests etc. The
cost incurred in recruiting and selecting any new employee is expensive. The cost of selecting people
who are inadequate performers or who leave the organization before contributing to profits proves a
major cost of doing business. Decenzo and Robbins write, “Proper selection of personnel is obviously
an area where effectiveness - choosing competent workers who perform well in their position-can
result in large saving.” According to them, selection has two objectives: (1) to predict which job
applicants would be successful if hired and (2) to inform and sell the candidate on the job and the
organization. Satisfaction of employee needs and wants as well as the fullest development of his
potential are important objectives of selection.
Dale Yoder says, “Selection has long held a high rank in the priority of problem areas in
management. Investments in good people produce a very high rate of return. A good choice of people
can provide a basis for long, sustained contributions.”
Difference between Recruitment and Selection: Difference between recruitment and
selection has been described by Flippo as, “Recruitment is a process of searching for prospective
employees and stimulating and encouraging them to apply for jobs in an organization. It is often
termed positive as is stimulates people to apply for jobs, selection on the other hand tends to be
negative because it rejects a good number of those who apply, leaving only the best to be hired.”
Recruitment and selection differ in following manner:
3. Technical Differences: Recruitment techniques are not very intensive, and not require
high skills. As against this, in selection process, highly specialized techniques are required. Therefore,
in the selection process, only personnel with specific skills like expertise in using selection tests,
conducting interviews, etc., are involved.
Selection Procedure
The selection procedure is concerned with securing relevant information about an applicant.
This information is secured in a number of steps or stages. The objective of selection process is to
determine whether an applicant meets the qualification for a specific job and to choose the applicant
who is most likely to perform well in that job. Selection is a long process, commencing from the
preliminary interview of the applicants and ending with the contract of employment (sometimes).
The selection procedure consists of a series of steps. Each step must be successfully cleared
before the applicant proceeds to the next. The selection process is a series of successive hurdles or
barriers which an applicant must cross. These hurdles are designed to eliminate an unqualified
candidate at any point in the selection process. Thus, this technique is called “Successive Hurdles
Technique”. In practice, the process differs among organizations and between two different jobs
within the same organization. Selection procedure for the senior managers will be long drawn and
rigorous, but it is simple and short while hiring lower-level employees.
The major factors which determine the steps involved in a selection process are as
follows:
• Selection process depends on the number of candidates that are available for selection.
• Selection process depends on the sources of recruitment and the method that is adopted for
contacting the prospective candidates.
• Various steps involved in as selection process depend on the type of personnel to be selected.
All the above factors are not mutually exclusive, rather these operate simultaneously. In any
case, the basic objective of a selection process is to collect as much relevant information about the
candidates as is possible so that the most suitable candidates are selected. A comprehensive selection
process involves the various steps as shown in Figure 1.
Primary Screening
Eliminate those who does not fulfil job requirement.
and Interview
Application Blank
Unfavorable personnel data
Selection Tests
Eliminate those who obtain unfavorable test score
Final Employment
Congratulate
Decision
1. Application Pool: Application pool built-up through recruitment process is the base for
selection process. The basic objective at the recruitment level is to attract as much worthwhile
applications as possible so that there are more options available at the selection stage.
management and as a useful device for storing information for, later reference. Many types of
application forms, sometimes very long and comprehensive and sometimes brief, are used.
Information is generally taken on the following items:
(a) Biographical Data: Name, father’s name, data and place of birth, age, sex, nationality,
height, weight, identification marks, physical disability, if any, marital status, and number of
dependents.
(b) Educational Attainment: Education (subjects offered and grades secured), training
acquired in special fields and knowledge gained from professional/technical institutes or through
correspondence courses.
(c) Work Experience: Previous experience, the number of jobs held with the same or other
employers, including the nature of duties, and responsibilities and the duration of various
assignments, salary received, grades, and reasons for leaving the present employer.
(d) Salary and Benefits: Present and expected.
(e) Other Items: Names and addresses of previous employers, references, etc. An application
blank is a brief history sheet of an employee’s background and can be used for future reference, in
case needed. The application blank must be designed from the viewpoint of the applicant as well as
with the company’s purpose in mind. It should be relatively easy to handle in the employment office.
Application form helps to serve many functions like:
• Its main usefulness is to provide information for reference checking, good interviewing, and
correlation with testing data.
• It helps to weed out candidates who are lacking in education, experience, or some other eligibility
traits.
• It helps in formulating questions to be asked in the interview.
• Data contained in application form can be stored for future reference.
• It also tests the candidate’s ability to write, to organize his thoughts, and to present facts clearly
and succinctly.
• It indicates further whether the applicant has consistently progressed to better jobs. It provides
factual information.
Some organizations assign numeric values or weights to the responses provided by the
applicants. This makes the application form more job related. Generally, the items that have a strong
relationship to job performance are given higher scores. For example, for a sales representative’s
position, items such as previous selling experience, area of specialization, commission earned,
religion, language etc. The total score of each applicant is then obtained by adding the weights of the
individual item responses. The resulting scores are then used in the final selection. WAB is best suited
for jobs where there are many employees especially for sales and technical jobs. It can help in
reducing the employee turnover later on. However, there are several problems associated with WAB
e.g.
• It takes time to develop such a form.
• The WAB would have to be updated every few years to ensure that the factors previously
identified are still valid products of job success.
• The organization should be careful not to depend on weights of a few items while finally
selecting the employee.
4. Selection Tests: Many organizations hold different kinds of selection tests to know more
about the candidates or to reject the candidates who cannot be called for interview etc. Selection tests
normally supplement the information provided in the application forms. Such forms may contain
factual information about candidates. Selection tests may give information about their aptitude,
interest, personality, which cannot be known by application forms. Types of tests and rules of good of
testing have been discussed in brief below:
A. Aptitude Tests: These measure whether an individual has the capacity or talent ability to
learn a given job if given adequate training. These are more useful for clerical and trade positions.
B. Personality Tests: At times, personality affects job performance. These determine
personality traits of the candidate such as cooperativeness, emotional balance etc. These seek to
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assess an individual’s motivation, adjustment to the stresses of everyday life, capacity for
interpersonal relations and self-image.
C. Interest Tests: These determine the applicant’s interests. The applicant is asked whether
he likes, dislikes, or is indifferent to many examples of school subjects, occupations, amusements,
peculiarities of people, and particular activities.
D. Performance Tests: In this test the applicant is asked to demonstrate his ability to do the
job. For example, prospective typists are asked to type several pages with speed and accuracy.
E. Intelligence Tests: This aims at testing the mental capacity of a person with respect to
reasoning, word fluency, numbers, memory, comprehension, picture arrangement, etc. It measures
the ability to grasp, understand and to make judgement.
F. Knowledge Tests: These are devised to measure the depth of the knowledge and
proficiency in certain skills already achieved by the applicants such as engineering, accounting etc.
G. Achievement Tests: Whereas aptitude is a capacity to learn in the future, achievement is
concerned with what one has accomplished. When applicants claim to know something, an
achievement test is given to measure how well they know it.
H. Projective Tests: In these tests the applicant projects his personality into free responses
about pictures shown to him which are ambiguous.
• Norms should be developed for each test. Their validity and reliability for a given purpose
should be established before they are used.
• Adequate time and resources must be provided to design, validate, and check tests.
• Tests should be designed and administered only by trained and competent persons.
• The user of tests must be extremely sensitive to the feelings of people about tests.
• Tests are to be uses as a screening device.
• Reliance should not be placed solely upon tests in reaching decisions.
• Tests should minimize the probabilities of getting distorted results. They must be ‘race-free’.
• Tests scores are not precise measures. They must be assigned a proper weightage.
The sequential interview involves a series of interviews; each interviewer meeting the
candidate separately. The panel interview consists of two or more interviews meeting the candidate
together.
Structured and non-structured interviews have their pros and cons. In structured interviews all
applicants are generally asked all required questions by all interviewers. Structured interviews are
generally more valid. However structured interviews do not allow the flexibility to pursue points of
interests as they develop.
(C) Content of Interview: The content of interview can be of a type in which individual’s ability to
project a situation is tested. This is a situation type interview. In job-related interview, interviewer
attempts to assess the applicant’s past behaviors for job related information, but most questions are
not considered situational.
In a behavior interview a situation in described and candidates are asked how they behaved
in the past in such a situation. While in situational interviews candidates are asked to describe
how they would react to situation today or tomorrow. In the behavioral interview they are asked to
describe how they did react to the situation in the past.
Principles of Interviewing
To make it effective, an interview should be properly planned and conducted on certain
principles; Edwin B. Flippo has described certain rules and principles of good interviewing to this
end:
• Provide proper surroundings. The physical setting for the interview should be both private
and comfortable.
• The mental setting should be one of rapport. The interviewer must be aware of non-verbal
behavior.
• Plan for the interview by thoroughly reviewing job specifications and job descriptions.
• Determine the specific objectives and the method of the interviewing.
• Inform yourself as much as possible concerning the known information about the
interviewee.
• The interviewer should possess and demonstrate a basic liking and respect for people.
• Questions should be asked in a manner that encourages the interviewee to talk. Put the
applicant at ease.
• Make a decision only when all the data and information are available. Avoid decisions that
are based on first impressions.
• Conclude the interview tactfully, making sure that the candidate leaves feeling neither too
elated nor frustrated.
• Maintain some written record of the interview during or immediately after it.
• Listen attentively and, if possible, protectively.
• Questions must be stated clearly to avoid confusion and ambiguity. Maintain a balance
between open and overtly structured questions.
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Interviewing is largely an art, the application of which can be improved through practice.
7. Physical Examination: After the selection decision and before the job offer is made, the
candidate is required to undergo physical fitness test. Candidates are sent for physical examination
either to the company’s physician or to a medical officer approved for the purpose. Such physical
examination provides the following information.
• Whether the candidate’s physical measurements are in accordance with job requirements or
not?
• Whether the candidate suffers from bad health which should be corrected?
• Whether the candidate has health problems or psychological attitudes likely to interfere with
work efficiency or future attendance?
• Whether the candidate is physically fit for the specific job or not?
Policy on these physical exams has changed today. Dale Yoder writes, “Modem policy used the
physical examination not to eliminate applicants, but to discover what jobs they are qualified to fill.
The examination should disclose the physical characteristics of the individual that are significant from
the standpoint of his efficient performance of the job he may enter or of those jobs to which he may
reasonably expect to be transferred or promoted. It should note deficiencies, not as a basis for
rejection, but as indicating restrictions on his transfer to various positions also.”
9. Final Employment Decision: After a candidate is finally selected, the human resource
department recommends his name for employment. The management or board of the company offers
employment in the form of an appointment letter mentioning the post, the rank, the salary grade, the
date by which the candidate should join and other terms and conditions of employment. Some firms
make a contract of service on judicial paper. Usually, an appointment is made on probation in the
beginning. The probation period may range from three months to two years. When the work and
conduct of the employee is found satisfactory, he may be confirmed. The personnel department
prepare a waiting list and informs the candidates. In case a person does not join after being selected,
the company calls next person on the waiting list.
10. Evaluation: The selection process, if properly performed, will ensure availability of
competent and committed personnel. A period audit, conducted by people who work independently of
the human resource department, will evaluate the effectiveness of the selection process. The auditors
will do a thorough and the intensive analysis and evaluate the employment program.
Consider, for a moment, that any selection decision can result in four possible outcomes. As
shown in Figure 5.2, two of these outcomes would indicate correct decisions, but two would indicate
errors.
Correct decisions are those where the applicant was predicted to be successful and later did
prove to be successful on the job, or where the applicant was predicted to be unsuccessful and would
have performed accordingly if hired. In the former case, we have successfully accepted; in the latter
case, we have successfully rejected. Thus, the purpose of selection activities is to develop outcomes
shown as “correct decisions” in Figure 5.2.
Problems occur when we make errors-by rejecting candidates who would later perform
successfully on the job (reject errors) or accepting those individuals who subsequently perform poorly
on the job (accept errors). These problems are, unfortunately far from insignificant. Reject errors
historically meant that the costs in performing selection activities would be increased. Accept errors,
on the other hand, have very obvious costs to the organization including the cost of training the
employee, the costs generated (or profits forgone) due to the employee’s incompetence, the cost of
severance and the subsequent costs of further recruiting and selection screening. The major thrust of
any selection activity, therefore, is to reduce the probability of making reject or accept errors while
increasing the probability of making reject or accept errors while increasing the probability of making
correct decisions.
Accept Reject
Correct Reject
Successful decision error
Accept Correct
Unsuccessful error decision
In summary, selection have two objectives: (1) to predict which job applicants would be
successful if hired and (2) to inform and sell the candidate on the job and the organization.
Unfortunately, these two objectives are not always compatible Putting a job candidate through hours
of filling out forms, taking tests, and completing interviews rarely endears the organization to the
candidate. These are tiresome and often stressful activities. Yet if the selection activities place too
great an emphasis on public relations, obtaining the information needed to make successful selection
decisions may be subordinated. Hence a manager’s dilemma in selection is how to balance the desire
to attract people with the desire to gather relevant selection data.
After an employee has been recruited, he is provided with basic background information about
the employer, working conditions and the information necessary to perform his job satisfactorily. The
new employee’s initial orientation helps him perform better by providing him information of the
company rules, and practices.
According to Pigors and Myers, “Placement consists in matching what the supervisor has
reason to think the new employee can do with what the job demands (job requirements), imposes (in
strain, working conditions, etc.), and offers (in the form of pay rate, interest, companionship with
other, promotional possibilities, etc.)” They further state that it is not easy to match all these factors
for a new worker who is still in many ways an unknown quantity. For this reason, the first placement
usually carries with it the status of probationer.
• The job should be offered to the man according to his qualifications. The placement should
neither be higher nor lower than the qualifications.
• While introducing the job to the new employee, an effort should be made to develop a sense
of loyalty and cooperation in him so that he may realize his responsibilities better towards the job and
the organization.
• The employee should be made conversant with the working conditions prevailing in the
industry and all things relating to the job. He should also be made aware of the penalties if he
commits a wrong.
• Man should be placed on the job according to the requirements of the job. The job should not
be adjusted according to the qualifications or requirements of the man. Job first; man next, should be
the principle of placement.
• The placement should be ready before the joining date of the newly selected person.
• The placement in the initial period may be temporary as changes are likely after the
completion of training. The employee may be later transferred to the job where he can do better
justice.
In the words of John M. Ivancevich, “Orientation orients, directs, and guides employees
to understand the work, firm, colleagues, and mission. It introduces new employees to the
organization, and to his new tasks, managers, and work groups.”
According to John Bernardin, “Orientation is a term used for the organizationally
sponsored, formalized activities associated with an employee’s socialization into the organization.”
Summary
• Selection is the process of picking up individuals out of the pool of the job applicants with
requisite qualifications and competence to fill jobs in the organization. Proper selection can minimize
the costs of replacement and training, reduce legal challenges, and result in a more productive work
force.
• The discrete selection process would include the following.
a. Application Pool,
• Selection process involves mutual decision making. The organization decides whether or not
to make a job offer and how attractive the job offer should be. The candidate decides whether or not
the organization and the job offer is according to his goals and needs. Selection of proper personnel
helps the management in getting the work done by the people effectively.
• In India the selection process on hiring skilled and managerial personnel is fairly well defined
and systematically practical.
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Self-Assessment Questions
1. What do you understand by selection process? Discuss various steps involved in it.
2. What is application blank? What purpose does it serve? Explain the contents of an
application blank.
3.Discuss the characteristics of a good test. Explain various types of tests used in the selection
process.
4. What is an interview? What purpose does it serve? Discuss various types of interviews.
5. Discuss various guidelines to be followed for an interview.
6. Explain various steps involved in the selection of personnel.
7. What do you understand by placement and orientation?
Well done! You are now ready for your next module…
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