Top 10 Assessment and Recruitment Research of 2013

So I'm gonna try something a little different this year.  I'm going to present the research from 2013 that I think has the best chance of fundamentally changing research directions, has the biggest implication for practice, or is just plain interesting.

So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are my choices for the Best Assessment and Recruitment Research of 2013:

1) Murphy, et al. call into question one of the fundamental assumptions of test development: that judgments of subject matter experts have a direct relationship to test utility.

2) Kim, et al. demonstrate a real value of age diversity in work groups: better emotional regulation.

3) Ghumman and Barnes with a simple but elegant study that demonstrated how important sleep is in preventing a persistent thorn: prejudicial assessments by raters.

4) Konradt, et al. showed that perceptions of fairness matter in web-based assessments too.

5) Personality research continued to dominate in 2013, and one of the best studies was by Shaffer and Postlewaite.  In it, they demonstrate that conscientiousness is best used as a predictor of performance in highly routinized jobs.

6) Mrazek et al. focused on a topic near and dear to my heart: mindfulness.  They showed that training in mindfulness increased GRE scores.  The implication for employment testing is clear, we just need more research in that direction.

7) Early in the year, Bobko and Roth gave us one of those "I better print this out" articles, showing that assessment methods historically assumed to result in lower levels of adverse impact, like biodata and work samples, may be more prone to d than we thought.  Side note: this article is still free in its entirety!

8) Kuhn, et al. presented the results of an elegantly simple experiment illustrating that the impact of a minor resume embellishment depended on the pre-existing perception of the applicant.

9) Discrimination, sadly, knows no demographic boundaries.  In this study, Conley found that non-Whites described White women as attractive, blonde, ditsy, shallow, privileged, sexually available, and appearance focused.

10) In a study of M.B.A. program admission judgments that has implications for employment selection, Simonsohn and Gino found that as the day progressed, fewer applicants were rated as highly recommended if several were recommended earlier in the day.

There were, of course, many other well-done and interesting studies in 2013, but these were some of my favorites.  Here's to a productive, stimulating, and successful 2014!