New SIOP networking groups

The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), bless its heart, is getting into the 21st century.

In their April newsletter they mention that two SIOP members, John Golden and Daniel Russell, have formed a LinkedIn group called I-O Practitioners Network. To join, click here. (If you don't have a LinkedIn account, and shame on you, you'll have a chance to create one)

But wait, that's not all, John Golden has also created a Ning site for I-O practitioners, which comes with joining the LinkedIn group. ("What the heck is Ning?" you say? Think Wikipedia meets MySpace)

So bravo, John! And SIOP, welcome to the party! (now will someone please tell them about RSS feeds?)

IPMAAC Conference Registration Open

Registration is now open for the 31st annual IPMAAC Conference in St. Louis on June 10-13.

Along with the annual SIOP conference, this is THE professional event to attend to learn about innovations, best practices, and the latest research in personnel assessment.

Highlights

Presentations:

- Dr. Wayne Cascio on Do employee behaviors matter? Some economic effects.

- Dr. Robert Hogan on What we know about leadership.

- Dr. Nancy Tippins on Unproctored testing.

Pre-conference workshops:

- Using logic-based testing to develop powerful measures of reasoning ability.
- Oral examinations.
- Examination planning.
- Situational judgment test: Development and applications.
- Adverse impact: Pitfalls, Pollyanna, and practical advice for practitioners.

Unlike some conferences, IPMAAC is very doable--there are a lot of presentations but you can generally hit most that you're really interested in. Another benefit? It's cheap. Registration is only $345 for IPMAAC members, $445 for non-members. Still not convinced? Take a look at some of the presentations from previous annual conferences.

I'll post more about the content when the full program is published. Registration brochure is here. Highly recommended!

2007 SHRM Staffing Management Conference in New Orleans

From April 23-25, SHRM will be having its annual conference devoted to employment and staffing in New Orleans, LA. (Note this used to be the Employment Management Association Conference & Exposition).

So why would I go?

1) You're a SHRM member and you have $875 to spare, OR
2) You're a non-SHRM member and you have $1120 to spare

AND

3) You're really into conferences devoted to recruitment and assessment
4) You like New Orleans

Unfortunately I meet the third and fourth criteria but neither the first nor the second. But, I can give you a flavor of what's in store in addition to some great keynote speakers, including Malcolm Gladwell, whose books are often mentioned on this blog.

What are the topics?

Rather than attempt to summarize the entire conference, I'm going to list the most relevant presentation titles, which are heavy on sourcing techniques and avoiding legal pitfalls. Several of these look really interesting; the full menu can be found here.

- Recruiting the best and the brightest: How to develop a market-and customer-focused mindset
- Interviewing: Identifying the liars, avoiding illegal questions
- Interactive recruitment marketing: Navigating the Internet to attract A-level talent
- Extreme caution advised: Dealing with federal and state laws regulating preemployment screening and safe hiring
- Recruiting an agile workforce that adds value to customers and shareholders
- Superstar selling techniques for non-sellers
- Impacting recruitment, retention and employee engagement with culture
- Daniel Boone and the tracking of applicants [new OFCCP regs]
- Extreme makeover: Renovating recruiting at Great-West
- Personality assessment in employee selection and promotion
- Avoid negligent hiring--best practices and legal compliance
- America's new regional demography
- "DOT" jobs: What have we learned about Internet recruiting in the past five years?
- Talent hunting: Sales skill development for the corporate recruiter
- Recent changes in immigration law that affect HR decision-making
- Rebuilding a world-class staffing function--from administration to profit center
- I'm not just a recruiter...I'm an expert consultant! Key consulting skills for recruitment professionals
- Effectively interviewing global talent
- Best practice techniques for finding and selling professional-level candidates
- Winning the talent war--meeting the recruitment challenges of the next decade
- Your candidate's experience: Black hole or North star?
- Background checks and the law
- The circle of recruitment success
- Get GenderSmart! Communicating with and managing women for recruiting and retention results

Employer branding made easy

There's been a lot of discussion over at ERE these days about employer branding, so it was nice to see IPMA-HR get into the swing of things in its most recent edition of IPMA-HR News (unfortunately not available to non-members but keep reading).

There were several good articles in this edition, including:

"Can HR Have a Brand Image, and If So, How Can One Determine HR's Current Reputation?"

"Attracting Talent to Government: Marketing the Mission"

Another article that really stood out was Mark Hornung's, titled "The Benefits of Employer Branding for Government Agencies: What Reglators May View as a Luxury Is a Necessity in Today's Tight Labor Market."

Mark did a great job summarizing the challenges organizations face when thinking about branding, how to assess your current brand, how to communicate it, and playing to your strengths. Targeted at the public sector, but applicable to any organization.

Although this publication isn't available to non-members (although if you join you get access to the newsletter back to November '04), Mark's employer, the Bernard Hodes Group, has some great information on their website, including a branding game (!) and an interview with Mark.

----

...By the way, feel free to let me know what you're interested in by responding to the survey posted on my main page. I had been running a similar survey using Sparklit but switched to PollDaddy after seeing how easily Joel Cheesman integrated it into his blog postings.

ATP Conference in Palm Springs

Tired of cold weather?

Feel like being spontaneous?

Then maybe you should consider the 2007 Association of Test Publishers Conference in Palm Springs, CA.

The conference takes place February 5-7 and has some tantalizing presentations, such as:

Converting from Paper-Based Tests to Computer-Based Tests: The Practical Issues

Head to Head: Online Technology Vendors Sound Off

Creating Computerized Performance Assessments

Video, Audio, and Simulations Over the Web

Cross-Cultural Testing: Issues and Practice

That's just a very small sample of the all the conference goodness. Another highlight is Dr. Frank Schmidt receiving the Career Achievement award. Full conference program is available here.

Cost? A mere $695 for ATP members, $750 for non-members.

I don't know about you, but sunny and mid-70s sounds heavenly right now!

Survey reveals hiring ramp-up for public sector agencies

According to the IPMA-HR HR Bulletin, their 2007 Hiring Outlook Survey revealed that public sector agencies plan on doing a substantial amount of hiring this year.

The survey of 656 IPMA-HR members was conducted from 1/10-1/17/07.

Highlights:

• 75% of respondents plan on hiring this year, up from 68% in 2006
• Employers are planning on hiring in larger numbers
• As with previous years, most new positions will be in public safety
• Need will also be strong in public works and finance & management
• Only 12% of respondents plan on conducting layoffs this year, down from 16% in 2006 and 18% in 2005
• 89% of respondents indicated they currently have vacancies
• Fewer organizations are purposely leaving positions unfilled for budgetary reasons

I'll put up a link to survey results once (if) they're posted.

SIOP Conference Registration open

Registration is now open for the 2007 SIOP Conference, to be held in New York City on April 26-29.

The conference program won't be available until mid-late February, but we do know what the half-day workshops (held on the 26th) will be. Here are some you might be interested in:

- Building Legal Defensibility Into Your HR Processes

- Are We Ready? Strategic Human Resource Management and the Maturing Workforce (including how to recruit and retain older workers)

- Leading a Thriving Consulting Practice: Building the Foundation, Operating Practicalities, Clients, and Their Needs

- The State of the Art in Personality Assessment (focusing on alternatives to multiple-choice self-report surveys)

- An Update on the Science and Practice of I/O Psychology (worth going just to see/hear Frank Landy)

- Early Identification and Development of Senior Leadership Talent: The Secret Insider's Guide

- The Role of E-HR in Human Resource Transformation: Build, Buy, or Outsource, and at Least Twenty More Questions Answered

- Fits about Fit: Can You Have Too Much of a Good Thing and Is There Anything You Can Do About it? (includes a focus on the possible downsides of having too many of the same type of person in an organization)

- Talent Management: The Promise and Paradox of Potential

Cost? Two sessions cost $400 for SIOP members and affiliates, $650 for non-members.

Register here.

I'll try to do a similar summary for the actual conference sessions, but chances are I'll get about 20 sessions in and pass out (there are an unbelievable number of session choices at every SIOP conference. Check out 2006's program).

Unproctored online testing

There's a very interesting thread going on over at IPMAAC's listserv about the appropriate and potential use of unproctored internet testing that started with this post from Eric Palmer from the City of Forth Worth.

Some of the back-and-forth has been about how common unproctored internet testing is (which says something about the profession's knowledge of its own practices), but the more interesting aspects have to do with candidate perception, logistics, reliability, and validity.

IMHO internet testing, along with modular testing, is the future of professional assessment for many hiring scenarios, particularly as we move more and more towards an employment society based on knowledge work and providing services. You simply cannot beat the utility of administering quality on-line exams--regardless of how you verify the scores (seems to me the best way is to re-administer similar items to the final candidate pool).

That said, decisions regarding how to assess should always be based on the KSAs/competencies required by the job and operational needs. But the ability to gather and track data, the ability to quickly link test results with job performance and other candidate information, and the flexibility of a "one stop shop" for testing simply cannot be ignored.

Updated: Las Vegas Metro PD taps applicant family members

The most recent IPMA-HR News reports that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) was awarded the "HR Innovations in the Public Sector" grant from IPMA-HR and CPS.

The $25,000 grant is for a LVMPD program called Household Inclusion Recruitment and Employment, or HIRE, and it's quite interesting and potentially controversial.

The idea is LVMPD will ask job applicants to complete a short supplemental questionnaire to describe the "composition, names, ages, interests and employment needs" of immediate family members. An HR staff member will then contact and speak directly with family members looking for a job to see if there's an opportunity within LVMPD.

The recruitment assistant would also "determine the family's hobbies, interests, religious or civic affiliations, long term goals, and other factors that could become an obstacle or an aid to employment within the department."

The idea seems to be to remove barriers that might prevent a qualified applicant from joining the agency, and to increase the pool of talent.

Here are my thoughts:

1) It is indeed innovative. Although attempts have been made to take advantage of professional networks to identify talent, I know of little effort being made to take advantage of family or personal relationships. It occurs to me that creating and sourcing networks in this way has huge potential. In fact I'm surprised no one has tried to create a more formalized network among employed individuals (e.g., you're not interested in the job but your buddy who works down the hall might be).

2) I see some potential privacy and discrimination complaints emerging from this. I'm sure the questionnaire is voluntary, but any time you ask people to identify things like religion or civic affiliations yer just askin' for trouble, IMHO.

3) This could be the best thing for nepotism since changing one's last name. Nepotism's already a huge problem in many public sector organizations--from both merit and morale standpoints. I don't see this program helping.

It will be very interesting to see where this goes, and I truly wish them luck with it as I happen to know some of the LVMPD HR folks and I'm sure their hearts are in the right place. Just be careful what you ask for.

Update: Check out LVMPD's advertising campaign.

SIOP Awards Nominations

It's award nomination time.

SIOP has announced that its 2007 awards are now available for nominations. You can nominate someone online and details of the awards can be found here .

Restrictions: you must be a SIOP member, an APA member, an APS member, or sponsored by one of these professional organizations to nominate someone. All nominees must be SIOP members except for the Katzell Media Award .

'nother example of our profession giving some props to individuals but I'd sure like to see some employer awards .

Employer Certification

Talk to me long enough about personnel assessment and selection and one of the things I'm bound to say is that we, as a profession, don't do a very good job recognizing good selection practices.

Yes, organizations like IPMA-HR do a good job of recognizing organizations that do particularly innovative things, but in general we don't recognize ongoing excellent practices such as rigorous and frequent job analysis, carefully crafted exams, and ensuring ROI for our customers. Centralized HR shops (in my experience) do an even worse job of recognizing line or agency practices that meet the grade. We fail miserably in using one of the most powerful behavior modification tools available to us: positive reinforcement .

One place to look for inspiration is job boards. Retirementjobs.com has established a program to certify employers as "Age Friendly" . All employers advertising positions with Retirementjobs.com will be asked to participate.

So what is it? According to the website, it's "an initiative to identify employers that maintain policies, practices and programs consistent with employment of people age 50 and older based solely on their proficiency, qualifications and contribution, and on terms and conditions comparable to younger individuals. Further, Certification indicates an employer’s recognition of the unique value of age 50+ workers as well as their commitment to take affirmative action in providing meaningful employment, development opportunities and competitive pay and benefits."

What might this look like for personnel selection? Some ideas:

- Recognition of applicant tracking systems that have been implemented that do a particularly good job of communicating with applicants, tracking diversity information, and gathering relevant metrics.

- Sustained quality job analysis efforts that produce documents that would pass muster with federal agencies.

- Employers with high applicant satisfaction ratings as determined by a standardized survey applied across the board.

- HR shops that consistently allow their employees to make presentations at conferences, publish papers, etc.

These could all be linked together into some type of "best practices" web ring. It would help candidates (both HR and non-HR) identify shops that know their stuff and would be an example for other employers.

We've seen some disjointed efforts in certifying individuals . Why not employers?

Presentations available from 2006 IPMA training conference

Many presentations from the 2006 IPMA training conference are now available .

Some of the highlights:

- Recruitment: Filling hard-to-fill positions by the always-entertaining Harry Brull from PDI

- Demographic and market cycles: The economic effects of an aging baby boom generation by Doug Robinson. You have to read this one just to see what the average age of a motorcycle purchaser is (hint: it's not 18).

- Legal update by Richard Whitmore of the omnipresent Liebert, Cassidy and Whitmore. If you haven't been following legal developments in HR, this is a GREAT summary.

- Building bridges across generations by Rosie Rodriguez of the University of Connecticut Health Center.

New TIP issue

Okay, so it's taken me so long to post about the new issue of TIP that you could legitimately claim that it isn't "new" anymore. And to you, I say: feh.

I will say this is one of the best issues I've seen in a while. Highlights include:

1. Great article by Wayne Cascio titled "The new human capital equation" where he weaves statistics about recruiting into a conversation about work life balance and becoming an employer of choice.

2. The always-interesting Frank Schmidt writes about--wait for it--meta-analysis and cognitive ability. He makes some great points, though, including the fear about discussing group differences, the danger in looking to courts to provide us with answers, and the inability to put research findings into practice.

3. A too brief piece by Robert Hogan on the relationship between character and personality.

4. A perspective on the Burlington Northern v. White case by legal guru Art Gutman.

5. The always interesting Good Science--Good Practice column by Marcus Dickson and Jamie Madigan with a great note from Ken Lahti about his study where they found that in high-volume selection situations (5,000 hires/year) the efficiency ROI gains from unproctored internet testing outweigh the ROI lost from omitting a proctored cognitive ability test. A thought provoking finding with direct application to large employers. Savings plus reduced adverse impact on the front end? Sounds good to me!

6. On a lighter note, retrospectives from two pioneers in the field--Bob Guion and Paul Sackett. Two gems from Guion: "Career choices are often more the result of circumstances than of careful planning" and "There are more ways, Horatio, to solve organizational problems than are dreamt of in your philosophies and theories." Makes me think of LA Story.

7. Last but not least, some results from the 2006 SIOP member survey. Things that stood out for me: SIOP needs to do a better job at being THE trusted authority in the area and being a strong advocate to policy makers. Just a couple thoughts out of the gate: e-newsletters, certification courses, test reviews, and more press releases.

Enjoy!

New IPMAAC conference reimbursement policy

For anyone that's wanted to go to IPMAAC conference but doesn't have the dough, they just implemented a new policy (see section C-6) whereby presenters are given a break on fees. Should help a little for those of us that aren't independently wealthy.

Practice guidelines for personnel selection?

I was listening to a piece on NPR this afternoon that got me thinking about best practices in personnel selection and assessment.

The news story was about the apparent undue influence that drug manufacturer Eli Lilly had on the creation of what are called "practice guidelines" that are essentially best practices for the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions.

This started the wheels turning...why aren't there any guidelines for personnel selection?

Yes, I know about the Uniform Guidelines . But (1) they're very much out of date, (2) they're not concise, and (3) they're not written for the lay HR person. This may be somewhat unfair criticism, as they were not meant to be "personnel selection for dummies", but them's the facts.

Yes, I also know about SIOP Principles . But many of the criticisms leveled about the Uniform Guidelines can also be made in reference to this document: It's not easy to read and it doesn't serve as pracical guidance for your average HR person. Not was it meant to.

So where does that leave us? With a lot of books in the business section on how to hire, hiring the best, etc. etc. Most of these books are quite lengthy and cover way too much.

What I want is something people can (1) easily understand, and (2) point to as THE current, professionally agreed upon set of standards for planning, developing, and administering good assessment instruments. And there are two documents that come close to my vision.

The first is the Department of Labor's guide on testing and assessment . It's easy to read, very well organized, and relatively brief. And it accurately summarizes best practices and even manages to weave in a little research. Very nice.

The second is SIOP's FYI on testing . Also well organized, easy to read, but perhaps a bit lengthy.

Now neither of these documents is required reading. No one is going to check to see if you're testing in accordance with them. But we should be. We should be holding selection processes to a standard, and one that pretty much the entire profession agrees upon. We should put something out there that says: don't use a three point un-anchored rating scale when rating an interview response. Do a job analysis--don't argue, just do it--and here's how it needs to be done. And here's how you write a good multiple choice test.

Where is this document? Where is this help for the lone HR person trying to figure out if they're doing things the right way? And why haven't we put something together by now?

IPMAAC accepting conference proposals

IPMAAC has posted its Call for Proposals for next year's conference in St. Louis. The title of the conference is "The Gateway to Excellence in Assessment" and is being held June 10-13. The IPMAAC conference is, for my money, the best value for scientists-practioners. Next year's conference will feature talks by some of the best minds in the field, including Wayne Cascio, Nancy Tippins, and Bob Hogan.

SIOP Leading Edge Consortium

Feel like going to Charlotte, North Carolina? In, say, 3 weeks? I've got just the thing.

SIOP's Fall Consortium is titled "Talent attraction, development, and retention" and has some very interesting speakers and topics lined up, including:

- Innovative practices among some of the "best companies to work for", including presentations by folks from Genentech, Nike, Microsoft, and Starbucks

- Strategic talent management, including presentations from PepsiCo and Johnson & Johnson

- Emerging practices from Bank of America and leading research institutions

- A keynote from the VP and Chief Learning Officer of Home Depot

aaaaannnnddd....

- Two presentations on recruitment and assessment over the Internet

Looks pretty great! If you go, I'd be happy to post your observations.

IPMA-HR Recruitment and Selection Benchmarking Survey

IPMA-HR has released the results of its 2006 Recruitment and Selection Benchmarking Survey. Results are available here for a small fee. The report includes an analysis of responses from 236 individuals representing all levels of government.

Highlights:
- 58.4% of respondents report accepting applications via the Internet, which seems low, but I'm guessing it's been more difficult for smaller organizations, and there's probably folks in the process of developing this capability.

- The agency/jurisdiction's website generated the most applicants, followed by newspaper ads and internet job boards. The same pattern held for where the most diverse hires came from.

- Mean number of days to hire for all jobs (from vacancy posting to start date) was 49 days. Shortest was labor/maintenance positions, slowest (not surprisingly) was public safety positions.

- The top three testing methods were (in order): Criminal record checks, pre-employment drug testing, and written job knowledge tests. Use of these tests varied by type of position (e.g., written tests most common for public safety, T&E most common for professional positions).

- Compared to 2000, the use of criminal record checks and drug testing has gone up dramatically.

- Applicants had the easiest time passing MQs for office/clerical jobs and the most difficult time for IT positions.

Lots of good stuff in here. I was alarmed that more organizations aren't doing more to prepare for the upcoming retirement boom and that more aren't using computerized skills testing, but heartened that written tests are still widely used.