Welcome!
Staffing 441
Prof. Howard Miller
Staffing Function
• Among several human resource functions
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Benefits
Compensation
Safety
Labor Relations
Training
Staffing . . .
• Involves getting people in, or out, of a
company
• We’ll concentrate on the “getting people in
part”
Staffing has 2 main purposes
• “Get the best talent” for the firm at the
price we can offer
• Conform to national, state and local
regulations concerning staffing practice, or
in short “keep it legal”
How to Staff?
• Derive “demand for labor”
• Update job requirement information
• Identify knowledge, skills and abilities
required for success on job
• Develop measures of job-related KSA’s
• Recruit from relevant labor markets
• Screen using “valid” tests
• Make offer, provide orientation to accepts
Staffing Project Steps
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Choose job to study
Find real setting to perform job analysis
Perform job analysis
Develop job description, job specification
Find/develop tests to measure job specifications
Identify “Relevant” labor markets
Define recruiting methods
Spell out hiring process to client in full detail
What do you mean “valid test”?
* Note importance of Supreme Court case
Watson v. Ft Worth Bank and Trust (1988)
Supreme court states (paraphrasing):
“A test is any hurdle you have to clear to
get a job” - especially important for
interviewing, which was at core of case
* A “valid test” is a hurdle that allows better
talent to get over, while lesser talent is
screened out
How do we establish if a test is
“valid”
• Note importance of “The Uniform
Guidelines for Employee Selection
Procedures” (1978)
• Three methods recognized by courts –
“Content validation”
“Criterion-related validation”
“Construct validation”
The logic of hiring validity illustrated
• Consider classic payoff matrix, which we’ll label
“selection decision matrix” in our setting.
• Good decisions result when applicants who will
succeed are hired (“true positive”), and
applicants who will not succeed are rejected
(“true negative”)
• Bad decisions involve rejecting people who will
work out (“false negative), and accepting those
who don’t work out (“false positive”)
Content validation …
• A logical analysis by subject matter
experts (SME’s) of the overlap between
the content of screening tests and the
content of job requirements
• Note the deceptive simplicity of the
requirements for a typist at the university
Criterion-related validation
• The main way it’s done
• 2 types: Predictive Validation and
Concurrent Validation
• Predictive uses test data from applicants,
and job performance data from those hired
• Concurrent uses both test and
performance data from current employees
Construct Validation . . .
• More complex than the other two
• One has to show that measures of
applicant traits and job performance really
measure those things (Classic construct
validation)
• AND then show trait measures correlate
with job performance measures
the vast majority of the time
we’ll be referring to “concurrent, criterionrelated validity evidence” because of it’s
overwhelming use
Valid tests mean lower error rates
in hiring decisions
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More true positives and negatives
Fewer false positives and negatives
Lower exposure to successful litigation
Higher “utility” of the staffing function
Research on validity tells us what
works!
• Find tests that are shown to be valid
• How is this done?
• Within the “concurrent, criterion-related
validation” approach, it means showing a
significant correlation between test scores and
job performance scores – the essence of a
concurrent validity study.
What would such validation data
look like?
• See “Ma and Pa Consumer Electronics
Store” data set illustration
Valid Hiring Tests
• A hiring test – anything you must get through to
get the job
• A “Valid” hiring test – one where applicants who
score better on the test do a better job if hired
• In criterion-related empirical test validation, it is
one where there is a “significant correlation
between hiring test scores and job performance
scores”
Empirical validation
• Obtain a representative sample of people
• Have them take the hiring test(s), and measure
their job performance
• Compute the statistical correlation of hiring test
scores and job performance scores
• Compute the “statistical significance” of the
sample correlation
• If “significant”, cross-validate in new sample
• If correlation remains significant, put test(s) into
use
Some key statistical concepts
• “Mean” the average score for a group of
people
• “Standard Deviation” the average
variability around the average score for a
group of people
• “Correlation” a number that reveals the
degree of linear association between
hiring test scores and job performance
scores
Correlation properties
• Correlation is notated with lower case “r”
• It can range in value from -1.00 to +1.00
• r=0 means “zero” correlation, no linear
association between the test (x) and job
performance (y) – that’s not happy
• r=+1.00 (or r= -1.00) means there is a perfect
association of hiring test and job performance doesn’t happen in reality, tho’ we’d love it if it
did!
• Correlations from real samples RARELY exceed
values of r=.50
More on correlation
• Correlation can be used to “summarize” the
pattern in a 2-variable scatterplot, like the hiring
test (x axis) versus job performance (y axis)
scatterplot
• In this application, correlation is a special case
of linear regression – using a straight line to
summarize what’s happening in a data set
• Plot interview score against job performance in
the Ma and Pa data set
Statistical analysis of interviews in
relation to monthly sales
• Compute the correlation of hiring test
scores with job performance scores
• Compute the regression of job
performance scores (Y) on hiring test
scores (X)