One way to reduce interviewer leniency/severity

A persistent challenge in interviews is that certain interviewers tend to be lenient (i.e., score candidates highly) while others are consistently more severe (i.e., score candidates lower).  This of course is not ideal as it introduces measurement bias as well as reduces the defensibly of the process.

One way to reduce these tendencies discussed by Hartwell and Campion in the June 2016 issue of Journal of Applied Psychology is to provide interviewers with what they call "normative feedback interventions."  Basically what this means is giving interviewers data on how they rate candidates over time compared to how other interviewers rated.  It can reveal to interviewers that they tend to rate candidates more harshly, or more easily, than others.

What Hartwell and Campion found in their study (of over 20,000 interviews using more than 100 interviewers) is that by providing this feedback to interviewers, it minimized interviewer differences and increased interview reliability--both obviously good things in terms of quality of the process.  Interestingly, it did not seem to impact the validity of the interviews, but it did impact which particular candidates were hired.

Up until now, one of the most often recommended practices for reducing rating errors has been pre-interview instructions and guidance regarding these errors.  What this study suggests is we can do even better by providing interviewers with objective data about their ratings over time.  Listening to someone talking about rating bias probably feels a lot different than actually seeing how you do compared to your peers!

Some easy tests to improve your hiring success

The interview is such a commonly used hiring assessment that it's hardly worth mentioning (although there is always room for improvement).

But what if you're already doing interviews and you want some easy to implement add-ons?  No problem.  Here are some ways to improve quality of hire for knowledge worker positions that don't take a long time, an automated solution, or a PhD to develop:

1. Pre-screening questionnaire.  Whether you use something quick and cheap like SurveyMonkey or your own proprietary assessment system, it's easy to create open- and closed-ended items that serve to screen out the uninterested, allow you to get some more detail from candidates, and even help you solve problems you've been struggling with!  Keep it relatively short so you don't dissuade the most in-demand candidates.


2. Targeted cover letter.  Don't just ask for a generic cover letter, ask applicants to describe in their letter how their background syncs with the core competencies you're looking for.  Remember: limit the length; two pages is generally sufficient.



3. Research project.  As part of the application process, as candidates to look into an issue that's relevant for the job.  How do they think the new overtime regulations will impact the industry?  What new technologies are on the horizon that will change the way this job is done?  Have them briefly write up their results, and/or ask about it during your interview.

4. Writing exercise.  There's no substitute for live demonstrations of writing ability.  Have them correct a document you've messed up, ask them to write a quick memo to a customer--just something related to the core duties of the job that you would expect them to be able to do day one.

5. Rule/procedure application.  Knowledge worker jobs are characterized by frequent application of laws, rules, and procedures to specific situations.  Either provide them with the rules ahead of time or give them the short version, then give them a specific fact pattern and have them come up with a solution or options.



6. Oral presentation.  Have you ever been on a hiring panel where there's an oral presentation?  If not, you're missing out.  Presentations are a great way to mix things up and see those different skillsets that a candidate brings.  Of course realize that you're adding a presentation to an interview, which I'm pretty sure are both in the top five of most stressful events.


Notice that you can mix and match theses approaches: have them do a rule/procedure application and then write a memo.  Have them do an oral presentation on a topic they researched ahead of time.  Of course, the tests you use should be based on the requirements of the job; start with entry level KSAs needed and let the assessments flow from that.  Beyond that, be creative!

First, get the people basics right

Competencies, talent, gamification... there's no doubt about it, we like us some buzzwords.  Like bright shiny objects, these ideas entice--and largely detract.

Sometimes new ideas and ways of thinking can lead to significant improvements in the way organizations manage their people. But here's the truth that no one seems to want to talk about: many organizations fail to get the basics right.  So while leaders may be leaping headlong into the nanofied virtual talent management sunset, the foundation of HR is lacking.

What are these basics of which I speak?

1. Adequately defining jobs--based on subject matter expert data.   Every single job should be defined and documented in terms of key tasks, requirements, and expectations.  The form this takes is less important than the quality of the data. This is the bedrock that helps you recruit, select, reward, and manage effectively.

2. Recruiting like you're selling, not like you're being forced to.   Writing attractive job ads is so easy, why aren't we swimming in them?  The same reason many organizations fail to accurately describe the job: laziness and lack of discipline.

3. Using valid hiring measures.  Speed of hire is important, but not even remotely as important as quality.   I can make you a sandwich really quickly if it's just bread.   Do you think Google gets millions of resumes each year because candidates are hoping for a quick hire?  Importantly, the higher in the organization, the more time should be spent on valid assessment.

4. Holding leaders accountable for being leaders. This really should be #1 except I was trying to go chronologically (and will fail miserably).  All too often, it's the line staff who are quickly called to the carpet when they make mistakes.   But holding leaders accountable for their behavior (hint: ask their subordinates) is exponentially more powerful.

5.  Listening to each other.  Many if not most good ideas for improving your organization are in the heads of your line staff.   Do you ask them regularly and implement their ideas?  Is listening skill considered critical for all employees?

6.  Saying thank you.  It's easy, it's cheap.   Do it more, and mean it.  

7.  Dealing firmly with poor performance.  This is top to bottom, from not being helpful on the phone to running productive meetings.  Again, the higher in the organization, the more important this is.

8.  Growing your people--forever.  Sure,  they may leave, but they'll leave sooner if you don't invest in them.  And like everything else on this list, it grows your reputation. 

9. Treating people with respect and fundamental human decency.   If you have this as a backbone, many other things simply follow.  There's a reason why one of the most popular business books recently is The No Asshole Rule.

None of this is incredibly difficult, it just takes the most precious resource of any organization: time.   And it takes commitment and discipline.  But these aren't initiatives.   They're part of an organization's DNA--or not.  They're how people respond when asked what it's like to work there.   And who is responsible for ensuring they happen ?  The people at the top. 

So before your organization jumps on to the latest buzzword bandwagon, make sure it's getting these basics right (by, I dunno, measuring them). Just promise me this, if you pick just one thing on this list:

Select.  Good.  Leaders.

Research update

A few new journal issues have come out lately:

Summer 2016 Personnel Psychology, including:

Transparency of Assessment Centers: Low Criterion-related Validity but Greater Opportunity to Perform?

May 2016 Journal of Applied Psychology, including:

Initial impressions: What they are, what they are not, and how they influence structured interview outcomes.

Racioethnicity, community makeup, and potential employees’ reactions to organizational diversity management approaches.

June 2016 International Journal of Selection and Assessment, including:

Applicant Reactions to Selection Events: Four studies into the role of attributional style and fairness perceptions

Behavioral Cues as Indicators of Deception in Structured Employment Interviews

The Role of Self-focused Attention and Negative Self-thought in Interview Anxiety: A test of two interventions

The Influence of Candidate Social Effectiveness on Assessment Center Performance Ratings: A field study

Discrimination due to Ethnicity and Gender: How susceptible are video-based job interviews?

A Comparison of General and Work-specific Personality Measures as Predictors of Organizational Citizenship Behavior

The Perceived Nature and Incidence of Dysfunctional Assessment Center Features and Processes

Who is Being Judged Promotable: Good actors, high performers, highly committed or birds of a feather?

New journal issues

Two new journal issues to make you aware of:

International Journal of Selection and Assessment - March 2016

Unintended Consequences of Transparency During Personnel Selection: Benefitting some  candidates, but harming others?

Ethnic Differences in Perceptions of Cognitive Ability Tests: The explanatory role of self-serving attributions

Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression: Further evidence about incremental validity

For Love or for Money: Intrinsic and extrinsic value congruence in recruitment

Social Influences in Recruitment: When is word-of-mouth most effective?

Highlighting Tensions in Recruitment and Selection Research and Practice

Tests of Integrity, HEXACO Personality, and General Mental Ability, as Predictors of Integrity Ratings in the Royal Dutch Military Police

Training Affects Variability in Training Performance Both Within and Across Jobs

Examining Applicant Reactions to Different Media Types in Character-based Simulations for Employee Selection

When Will Interviewers Be Willing to Use High-structured Job Interviews? The role of personality


Journal of Applied Psychology - March 2016


How and why do interviewers try to make impressions on applicants? A qualitative study.

The long road to employment: Incivility experienced by job seekers.

The role of self-determined motivation in job search: A dynamic approach.

How a mobile game made me re-think the nature of jobs

I have a lot of games on my iPad.  They go on for several pages as you swipe left.

Some are quite good, but most are just good enough that I can't bring myself to delete them, but not good enough that I play them regularly.

Every once in a while though, one comes along where I find myself playing it whenever I get downtime, usually due to some clever reward scheme that borrows heavily from the concept of variable interval reinforcement.  (come to think of it, most of them do)  You Candy Crush players out there know what I'm talking about.

Quite unexpectedly, I came across one recently that's not only fun, but made me re-think my approach to jobs.  Frankly it was rather eye-opening.  I know this sounds odd, but stay with me.



It's a game called Pixel People. It's a "city building" game, drawn from the rich history of games like SimCity and Civilization.  There are many games, like Clash of Clans, that have an element of city building, but unlike most of them, Pixel People doesn't focus on fighting, but instead on building your city.

The graphics aren't anything to write home about, you can see an example below.  The word "pixel" isn't in the title by accident.



Fortunately, the game doesn't need high-resolution graphics to pull off addicting gameplay.  And part of what makes it addictive--actually, the biggest part--is how you create people to populate your city.

Every citizen starts off as a clone, tabula raza.  You individualize them by giving them professions.  And the way you give them professions is by combining other professions from different categories.

For example, you start off with a Mayor and a Mechanic.  The Mayor belongs to the "Administration" occupational category, the Mechanic to the "Technical" category.  It was right about this point that something tickled at the back of my mind and I was reminded of a typical job classification system (O*NET being a prime example).

The best part of the game is that in order to move forward and create new professions and buildings, you combine two different professions.  For example, if you combine the professions of Mayor with the profession of Mechanic, you get an Engineer.  By doing so you create not only an Engineer, but access to the Garage and Mine structures.  You continue combining professions to create new ones, create new buildings which offer new abilities, etc.

Here are some other profession creation combinations, of which there are currently 400:

Mechanic + Engineer = Mechanical Engineer (duh)
Director + Model = Actor
Doctor + Park Ranger = Vet
Farmer + Farmer = Botanist
Mechanic + Police Officer = Firefighter
Architect + Dreamer = Artist

As you can see, the game designers put some thought into how different professions relate to one another.  They're not perfect, but close enough to make you smile when you create a new profession.

So what does this have to do with assessment?  Thanks for hanging in there.  Well, the game mechanic got me thinking about how overly logical and rational most of our classification systems are, and how little we acknowledge the overlap and relationships between occupations.

Most of us in HR structure our worlds around the idea that jobs can be categorized and differentiated.  And in some cases, this makes perfect sense.  A doctor is not the same as a computer programmer.  Different educational requirements.  Many core competencies required for the position are different.

But I submit to you that in many cases, occupations have more overlap than we pretend.  They are related to one another in ways that we don't typically acknowledge.  And this has implications for recruiting, assessment, compensation, promotional paths--i.e., the core work involved in talent management.  For example:

Recruiting:  currently, the ideal model of recruiting is to identify through job analysis the core KSAs or competencies required, and craft your recruitment campaign to attract those that possess them.  KSAs can get very specific, resulting in recruiting efforts often focused on a pretty narrow desired profile.  If we acknowledge that many jobs in our organizations have more overlap than we normally pretend, it becomes obvious that recruitment campaigns can become broader in two major ways: (1) you start to focus more on recruiting for the organization, not specific jobs, and (2) you start recruiting for broader skillsets or competencies, like analytical skill and conscientiousness.  I don't think it's a coincidence that the last 40+ years of assessment research has repeatedly underlined the predictive power of these qualities.

Assessment:  like recruiting, assessment strategies typically target very specific KSAs--knowledge of a particular programming language, knowledge of a particular area of HR law, etc.  If we acknowledge the overlap and relationship between jobs, it changes our assessment strategy.  Like our recruitment strategy, we focus on broader targets such as communication ability and ability to work as part of a team.  I'm not suggesting we shouldn't focus on those things that are critical to job performance and necessary upon entry to the position, but rather that we not prioritize those above more general qualities of the individual.

Compensation:  most often, particularly in civil service systems, compensation is based on the job category someone belongs to and their tenure.  If we instead acknowledge the somewhat artificial nature of our classification structures, it shifts the focus to compensation being based on contribution to the organization.  I recognize pay-for-performance has had inconsistent success, but I suspect that has as much to do with what's being compensated as it does with the concept.

Thinking about recruitment, assessment, and compensation in this way broadens our horizons when it comes to other aspects of talent management, such as career mobility.  It becomes easier to see how transferable skills benefit the organization, increasing its ability to adjust to new conditions, including unexpected turnover.  Instead of staffing focused on narrow KSAs, we fill our organization with people whose strengths allow them to move relatively fluidly between jobs, which helps the individuals as well in their career development.

Am I suggesting that we ignore specific skillsets when recruiting?  Definitely not.  Obviously sometimes you need people with a very particular ability or knowledge.  What I am suggesting is we shift the balance toward a much more inclusive perspective when it comes to the qualities we seek.

What do you think?  Has your organization already acknowledged the overlap between jobs?  Do you already recruit and select based on a broader mindset than simply those KSAs required for a particular position?  Have the long hours spent in front of a tablet warped my perspective?



Footnote: long-time readers will have noticed that I'm not posting nearly as much as I used to, and for that I apologize.  I took a new job last summer and since then my blogging has suffered.  If you want to follow me, I recommend my Facebook page, which I update more often.  Thanks for hanging in there! This year marks the 10-year anniversary of HR Tests and I hope to do something special in celebration.

Where there's a will, there's a way: OPM shows how to do UIT the right way

On August 10 and 12, PTC-NC was privileged to have Dr. Patrick Sharpe from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) deliver a presentation about USA Hire, part of a suite of online platforms that has allowed OPM to revolutionize the way they deliver assessment services to their diverse customers.

The idea to ask Dr. Sharpe to present occurred to me when I read an article in the Washington Post on April 2 about USA Hire titled, "For federal-worker hopefuls, the civil service exam is making a comeback".   It provides an overview of what OPM has managed to accomplish with its partner, PDRI, in the area of unproctored internet testing (UIT).  Start there if you want to learn more because it includes some examples of the items--although significantly absent is an example of the excellent video avatar-based assessment used for things like situational judgment.

Dr. Sharpe did an excellent job painting the picture for the audience of how much work was involved in the project, and how important things like stakeholder communication and contract management were to ensuring the project was a success.  He then showed us a demo version of USA Hire, where he lead us through what it looks like from the applicant's perspective as they proceed through a series of competency-based assessments.  The item formats range from the traditional (e.g., reading comprehension multiple-choice) to the modern (avatar-based SJT) to the groundbreaking--at least for the public sector (forced-choice non-cognitive assessment).

Here are some of the key points I took away:

- The technology is just a part of successfully putting an UIT program together, you have to step back and look first at what you're trying to accomplish.  For example, are you interested in whole person assessment (as OPM is) or simply focusing on certain KSAs?

- USA Hire is the culmination of years of research and analysis, and traces its history back 20-30 years within the federal government.   Translation : don't jump into UIT without careful planning.

- Start with the basics when delivering UIT: make sure the customer has a solid job analysis foundation before jumping to the assessment platform

- Getting a larger, more influential, customer successfully implemented can cause others to jump on board

- Realize that, particularly in a decentralized testing environment, you may still end up with a hybrid of different testing approaches following the roll-out of UIT, and this includes T&Es.  But the best way to move the practice is to show what success looks like.

- Consider carefully whether you want to build, buy, or lease the technology.  There are benefits and drawbacks to each.

- Starting with a pilot can be a great way to test the system (no pun intended), and also demonstrate the potential to stakeholders.

- Collaboration between assessment professionals, HR specialists, and vendors is critical.

- Don't underestimate the importance of change management.  Fears (e.g., about losing control) come easily and have to be addressed head-on.

- Organizational and system readiness is very important.  Part of the reason this effort was successful is because hiring organizations were fed up with the extremely low utility (and perception) of point-based T&Es.

For someone passionate about assessment and technology, the presentation was educational and motivational.  I walked away, as did others, with a new-found optimism for what sufficient will, resources, and tenacity can accomplish.  It's seductive to focus on what can't be done in the public sector, so to hear and see what can be done reemphasizes the importance of leadership--both in HR and at the top of the organization.

Unproctored internet testing has been talked about for so long, but to see it in action, in a research-based way in the public sector, is truly inspirational.  Truly where there is a will, there is a way.

The secret to successful organizations: Let HR drive hiring

Why do organizations make bad hires?  Because they rely too much on supervisors to do the hiring.

Imagine this scenario.  You take your car into the shop because it's making a strange sound.  The mechanic fixes it, you pay, and you're about to leave.  But on your way out, the mechanic stops you.  She* notices that you're frustrated with your iPad because it's being sluggish.  She offers to fix it for you, reasoning that cars and iPads can't be all that different.

Would you take the mechanic up on her offer?

Of course not.  But handing over important decisions--arguably the most important decisions--to the wrong people is something organizations do every day.

Auto mechanics are trained to deal with a specific situation, and to do it successfully: fix cars.  Their education and experience prepares them to do so.

Similarly, supervisors are trained to do primarily one thing: supervise the day-to-day work.  They're usually promoted because they excelled at the line level (i.e., they understand the work) and they show aptitude for leadership (hopefully).  They are not, generally speaking, schooled or experienced with the professional side of personnel selection.

Am I suggesting supervisors NOT be involved?  Absolutely not.  Am I suggesting that all HR shops are staffed with experts in personnel assessment and measurement?  Nope.

What I am suggesting is organizations get serious about this issue and stop treating supervisors as if they are people measurement professionals.

In the modern workplace with information overload and time at a premium, it's tough enough to ensure that hiring and promotion decisions get made in a thoughtful fashion.  The problem is exacerbated by the fact that most supervisors overestimate their hiring ability.  After all, how hard can it be to interview someone?

Not hard, if you don't care about getting it right.  But getting it right requires careful thought and planning; hiring right is not something done at the last minute without regard to competencies that drive success in the specific position.  It's not something that looks exactly the same time.  It's tailored to the position, the culture, and the particular needs at the time.

Great hires happen systematically for one reason: a tight partnership between line supervisors and talented HR consultants.  The supervisor knows the job. They often know best what competencies are needed to perform the job successfully (although a good internal HR consultant will have a pretty good idea).  HR professionals are trained in the professional side of selection, recognizing the pitfalls and identifying those measures most likely to predict success.

"But our HR shop doesn't know what it's doing.  They don't have the expertise!" some might say.

Perhaps.  If so, you've just identified your second strategic problem.  And it should be fixed.  That's like having people in your budget office that are bad at math.

But consider this: you may be surprised to learn that many hiring supervisors welcome being removed as the primary driver of hiring.  Good supervisors recognize that this isn't their greatest strength, and they will be happy to have HR assist them in identifying the most qualified applicants.  Particularly in this age of online questionnaires and massive candidate lists for many jobs.

So who is responsible for ensuring this supervisor-HR partnership happens systematically and is built into the organizational culture?  The leaders at the top.  Director.  CEOs.  They're the ones minding the store, and they're ultimately responsible for organizational success.  They should be instituting policies, procedures, and cultural norms that emphasize how important and critical hiring is--so critical that it requires a team approach to get it right.

Anything else is simply not taking the success of the enterprise seriously.


* Did I throw you with a female mechanic?  Now might be a good time to take the implicit association test for gender and careers.

Mega research update

I hope you like research, because there's a lot of it coming your way...and many are free as of this posting!

Without further ado...


Let's start with the Journal of Applied Psychology, January 2015 issue:

- We see a lot of research involving large candidate groups, but much less for individuals.  In this meta-analysis of individual assessments, the authors found support for their usefulness, but it varied significantly across studies.  Highest validity was found for managerial jobs and assessments that included a cognitive ability test.

- Being in the wrong job can be frustrating for both the employee and the employers.  In this study, the authors show a relationship between poor vocational fit and counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs).

- Speaking of CWB, there may be more of them going on than you would think based on the assessment literature...

- And even more on CWB!  These authors found support for both self- and acquaintance-reported personality ratings, specifically conscientiousness and agreeableness, in predicting "workplace deviance".

- Unfortunately, gender bias still exists in selection.  In this meta-analysis, the authors found this to be particularly the case in male-dominated jobs.  On a positive note, they do suggest ways of mitigating this: provide clear evidence of the competence of applicants, encourage careful decision making, and use experienced raters.

- The over-/under-prediction of cognitive ability tests debate for different ethnic groups continues.  In this study, the authors find support of overprediction for African Americans, suggesting the tests are not predictively biased.



Next, the March issue of J.A.P.:

- More support for the predictive validity of emotional intelligence, but more importantly, how the concept overlaps with other constructs such as the Big 5 and self-efficacy.

- All situational judgment tests (SJTs) are not equal, and according to these authors in a large number of instances the context that is presumably important?  Not so much.

- Speaking of SJTs, these researchers suggest that putting the "situational" back in SJTs--i.e., assessing how the situation is analyzed rather than the response options--is a useful method.

- A fascinating update of effect size benchmarks that can be used for a variety of purposes.

- Trying to predict safety-related behavior?  This research suggests that personality traits, particularly agreeableness, can usefully predict this behavior.


Moving on to the March issue of IJSA (free right now!):

- Some guidelines on preparing norms for personality inventories.

- Evidence that different cultures have different procedural justice perceptions of different selection mechanisms

- Some important findings on the equivalence and stability of job performance ratings over time

- Development of a new measure of subjective career success

- More evidence that both technical knowledge and prosocial knowledge are important factors in predicting medical student clinical performance

- This study found that CWBs are under-reported and organizational commitment increases the likelihood that peers will report them

- Evidence that forced-choice and Likert-type scales used in personality inventories have similar measurement properties


On to the Spring issue of Personnel Psych (also free right now!):

- This meta-analysis on narcissism showed that it is related to leadership emergence (through extraversion) and leadership effectiveness in a curvilinear fashion.

- More evidence of the importance of political skill--particularly the aspects of networking ability, interpersonal influence, and apparent sincerity--in predicting a range of important outcomes, including task performance beyond GMA and the Big 5.  It would be interesting to see how this is related to emotional intelligence (yes this is a foreshadowing).


Turning to the March issue of Psych Bulletin:

- More on narcissism: this time, researchers found that men consistently report higher levels of narcissism compared to women, which is interesting when taken in combination with the study above.


In the December issue of Industrial and Organizational Psychology:

- The first focal article calls out researchers for using incorrect assumptions about criterion reliabilities, thus impacting criterion validity values.  They make suggestions for how to improve meta-analyses moving forward.

- The second makes the important argument that utility analyses should consider measures of well-being when determining the effectiveness of interventions (such as an employment test).


Finally, in the January issue of JOB (also free right now):

- a proposal for improving the calculation and reporting of Cronbach's alpha

- a fascinating study showing that high conscientiousness may hinder performance during stressful situations

- in support of EI, this study found a link between emotion recognition ability and income (interestingly through political skill and interpersonal facilitation...remember the earlier study on political skill?).


That's all for now!

"Power posing" impacts interview performance

Many people have watched Amy Cuddy's riveting TED talk on how body language impacts thought processes.  Specifically, over 23.5 million people as of today have watched that particular video, millions more through YouTube and other outlets.

In the presentation she specifically talks about how "power posing"--standing in a way that denotes confidence (hands on hips)--impacts testosterone and cortisol levels and ultimately behavior.

In an upcoming issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, Cuddy and her colleagues describe the results of an experiment where university students were told to adopt either a high-power (shown on left) or low-power (shown on right) posture:

They were instructed to stand in this pose for 5-6 minutes while preparing for a job interview speech.  They then delivered said speech, which was videotaped, to two evaluators/interviewers.  These evaluators subsequently rated the participants on (a) performance, and (b) hirability.  They also judged the participants on their verbal and nonverbal behavior.

Results (N=61)?  Those who prepared for their speech while in a high-power pose were rated significantly higher (p<.01) on both factors than those who prepared in a low-power pose.  And the results could not be explained by nonverbal behavior in the interview itself.  Per the authors, "Compared to low-power posers, high-power posers appeared to better maintain their composure, project more confidence, and present more captivating and enthusiastic speeches, which led to higher overall performance evaluations."

This suggest, in the words of the authors, "By nonverbally manipulating their own sense of power, the high-power posers were effectively imbued with the psychological and physiological advantages typically associated with high power, despite their low-power position relative to the evaluators."

So what does this mean?  I believe it has several important implications.  First, it indicates a potential source of "error", akin to test anxiety, that may impact assessment performance.  Second, it suggests a potential avenue that those plagued by test anxiety may pursue to increase their chances of success.  This includes those who experience stereotype threat.  Third, it may help explain why even a "perfect" measurement of job-related KSAs does not yield a perfect correlation with performance (I'm thinking of similar confounding effects like mood or physical appearance).

You can read what appears to be the submitted version here.  I recommend reading it as well as the excellent TED talk if this subject interests you.

Federal civil service reform is HR reform

Texas.  Georgia.  Washington.  Florida.  California.

What do these states have in common?  They are some of the states that have undertaken civil service reform in an attempt to modernize and streamline all those laws and rules associated with human resources.

The U.S. federal government is no stranger to reform efforts either.  In the latest issue of Government Executive magazine, there is an interesting article about the challenges associated with the current state of affairs in the U.S. federal civil service--the largest employer in the world.  Things like excessively long time-to-hire, outdated hiring rules, and onerous discipline systems.  There are efforts afoot (again) to fix this.

They could very easily have been talking about state or local civil service systems.  Or--in many places--HR in general.

Here are some selected quotes.  See if any of them sound familiar...

"...'if you don’t view your HR specialist as a consultant prior to posting the vacancy announcements, then you are going to get people who are not qualified for your job.'"

"USAJobs, the government’s online warehouse of job vacancies, is still difficult to navigate and lacks sophisticated search capabilities to help applicants find positions that meet their interests and qualifications."

“'What we’ve seen across managers,...they are almost sourcing a unicorn...They could be looking at too technical or specialized of a skill set, or they are looking for too many competencies or experiences creating this kind of applicant that we can’t actually find.'”

"When HR and program supervisors work closely throughout the hiring process, communicating at every stage, it increases the likelihood that the system works the way it should: fairly, as expeditiously as possible, and yielding the most qualified candidates for the job."

It's worth a read, and I bet many of you will find much that resonates.  None of the principles behind reform are particularly revolutionary, but for various reasons many organizations have difficulty getting it right.  There are no shortcuts to outstanding HR systems, and only those organizations that recognize the strategic and competitive value inherent in a talented, engaged workforce will put the required resources into ensuring that it's done right.

Next time: research update

2014 Research of the Year (+ research update)

Happy New Year!  As I've done in previous years, I present below the research articles I ran across in this area that I think were the most impactful and/or important of 2014.  But first, let's catch up on two issues:

First, the Winter issue of Personnel Psychology:

- Situational judgment tests have been shown to be useful for measuring interpersonal skills, but beware: levels of "angry hostility" moderate that relationship.  (Is there a happy hostility?)

- When hiring leaders, should you look for those that have a busy home life, or be wary of them?  In this fascinating study, the authors found that leader family-to-work conflict negatively impacts followers in that it can increase their burnout. However, family-to-work enrichment increased follower engagement through leader engagement.  So the answer is, as usual, not simple: home/family life can be a good thing for followers if it makes the leader more engaged; but if the home/family life is increasing burnout, the leader may pass that along to others.  So it would seem it all depends on how the individual is handling their life outside of work!

Let's look at the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology:

- Are men or women perceived as better leaders?  According to this meta-analysis, it depends on how you ask the question.  If you limit the question to other-ratings, women are rated significantly higher.  But if you look at self-ratings, men rate themselves significantly higher.  Which leads to the next question: is it a biological perception or a gender perception, and if the latter, what traits are the most important?

- An intriguing study of how applicant confidence interacts with and can be altered by the recruitment experience, in this case among recruits for the U.S. military.

- Next, a study of employment and job search efficacy.  Not surprisingly, within-person frequency of job search behavior correlated with job offers; interestingly, the relationship between perceived job search progress and efficacy beliefs were moderated by beliefs of internal attribution.

- Last but not least, more evidence of the importance of defining the criteria when predicting job performance.  In this meta-analysis, the researchers found more support for personality traits out-predicting cognitive ability in predicting counterproductive work behavior, that the two predictors are approximately equal in predicting organizational citizenship behaviors, and that cognitive ability outperforms personality when predicting task and overall performance.  So do you want high task performance, OCBs, or do you want to avoid CWB?  :)  (of course the situation is even more complicated depending on whether you're looking at individual, team, leader performance, over what period of time, etc.)


Okay, on to the awards!  Without further ado, here are my nominations for Research of the Year for 2014:

1) Important advancements in our understanding of weight-based discrimination at work: Vanhove & Gordon.

2) A study of applicants posting faux pas on their social networking sites: Roulin.

3) Two important looks at assessments delivered remotely via mobile devices: Arthur, Doverspike, Munoz, Taylor, & Carr, and Morelli, Mahan, & Illingworth.

4) Two fascinating looks at personality at work: Judge, Simon, Hurst, & Kelley; and Wille & De Fruyt

5) An excellent study of how effective staffing and training practices impact firm-level flexibility and adaptability: Kim & Ployhart.

6) An important study of the movement of impactful I/O researchers to business schools: Aguinis, Bradley, & Brodersen.

7) The relationship between conscientiousness and job performance is more accurately described as curvilinear: Carter, Dalal, Boyce, O'Connell, Kung & Delgado

Finally, honorable mention to two great developments in 2014:  the change of some publishers to making access to articles more affordable, and the announcement of an additional journal, the Journal of Personnel Assessment and Decisions.


I'm continually amazed at the quality of thought and research in our area and the passion and practicality you exhibit.  Here's to an amazing 2014 and more in 2015!

Why leadership in the public sector is harder to find--but more important

Occasionally I post about things that are related to recruitment and assessment, but not focused exclusively on them.  This is one of those times.

I have the following quote from Valve Software's New Employee Handbook (a fascinating document) posted on my office door:

"Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe.
Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breathing.
So when you’re working on hiring—participating in
an interview loop or innovating in the general area of
recruiting—everything else you could be doing is stupid
and should be ignored!"

The older I get, the more I wonder whether I should cross out "hiring" and write in "leadership".  I just can't bring myself to do it because they're both so darn important.

But this post will be about leadership.  Specifically, leadership in the public (i.e., government) sector.  More specifically, lack of leadership and what to do about it.  I don't pretend that leaders in the private sector are uniformly outstanding, but public sector is what I'm most familiar with.

First things first: in some important ways, leadership in the public sector (PS) is different from the private sector.  Not night-and-day I grant you, but there are some relatively unique boundary conditions that apply, namely:

- Not only are PS leaders bound by normal organizational policies and procedures, they labor under an additional layer of laws and rules, whether federal, state, or local.  Unlike policies and procedures, they cannot be easily changed--in fact in many cases this requires moving heaven and earth.  As one (very important) example, typically there are laws/rules about how you can hire someone.  Many of these laws and rules were created 50+ years ago in reaction to spoils systems and haven't been seriously evaluated since.

- Many PS employees have civil service protections.  This isn't a bad thing, but it means moving employee that are bad fits (either over or out) is difficult.  This greatly inhibits your talent mobility strategy.

- In the PS, leadership is often treated as an afterthought, rather than the linchpin upon which organizational success relies.  The assumption seems to be that the organizational systems and processes are so strong that it almost doesn't matter who's in charge.  This means things like leadership development and training are half-hearted.

These conditions combine with several other factors to result in true leadership being relatively rare in the PS:

- Failure is invisible.  There is very little measurement of leadership success and very little transparency and accountability, absent a media storm.

- There are fewer people in management positions that have the important leadership competencies.  Things like listening ability, strategic planning ability, and emotional intelligence.  Instead they are usually chosen based on technical ability and without the benefit of rigorous assessment results.

- There is a lack of understanding of leadership.  This stems from the lack of attention paid to it as a serious discipline; without operational definitions of leadership, there is no measurement and no accountability.

- An unwillingness to treat leadership seriously.  For whatever reasons--politics, lack of motivation, entrenched cultures--leadership is relegated to second-class status when it comes to analyzing department/agency success.  Focus tends to rest on line-level employees, technology, and unions--and only on top-level leaders when there is a phenomenally bad outcome.

So why is leadership more important in the PS than the private sector?

- Governments regulate many aspects of our lives.  They're not making consumer products.  Leaders in PS organizations have purview over things like public safety, the environment, education, housing, and taxes.  Things you literally touch every day.

- There is less accountability, less transparency.  PS leaders often do not report to a board.  They don't have to produce annual reports that detail their successes and failures.  What they do is often mysterious, poorly defined, and rarely sees the light of day.

- PS leaders work for you.  Elected or not, their salary typically comes from taxpayers.  They ultimately report to the citizens.  This means you should care about what they're doing, and whether they are worthy stewards of your investment.

So what can be done?  Much like the answer to "how do we hire well?", the answers are known.  They're just not practiced very well:

1.  Publicly acknowledge the scope of the problem.  Like frogs in a pot, somehow we find ourselves in a situation where slowly over time the current situation is accepted as normal.  It's time to stop pretending that all PS Managers are leaders.  They're not.  And we must look in the mirror ourselves and acknowledge that we are likely part of the problem.

2.  Acknowledge the urgency to improve.  Stop pretending that leadership is a secondary concern.  Sub-par leadership has a negative impact on our lives every day.  Improving the quality of that leadership is one of the most critical things we can do as a society.

3.  Publicly commit to change, and actually follow through.  Specifically describe what you will change, and when, and provide regular status updates.

4.  Define leadership in measurable terms and behaviors.  Here's just a sample list of what real leaders  do (and not a particularly good one);

= continuously improve operations
= champion and reward innovation
= hold their people accountable for meeting SMART goals
= continually seek feedback and signs of their own success and failure
= create and sustain a culture that attracts high performers and dissuades poor fits
= make hiring and promoting the most qualified people THE most important part of their job

5.  Hire and promote those with leadership competencies, not the best technicians.  While knowledge of the work being performed is important, it is far from the most important competency.

6.  Make the topic of leadership a core activity for every management team.  Eliminate "information sharing" meetings and replace them with discussions on how to be better leaders.

7.  Set clear goals of leaders up front, and hold them accountable.  What does this mean?

= consequences for hiring poor fits
= consequences for poor morale on their team
= consequences for not setting and meeting SMART goals
= recognition for doing all of the above well

8.  Measure leadership success and make the results transparent.  Develop plans to address gaps and follow through.

9.  Instill a culture of boldness and innovation.  Banish fear, often borne of laboring under layers of red tape.  Encourage risk-taking, and learn from mistakes rather than punishing them.

10.  Relentlessly seek out and banish inefficiencies, especially related to the use of time.  Critically evaluate how email and meetings are used; establish rules regarding their use.

11.  Stop pretending that all of this applies only to first-line supervisors.  If anything, they're more important the higher you go in the organizational chart.

12.  When it comes to recruiting, stop focusing on low relative salaries, and capitalize on the enormous benefit of the PS an employer--namely the mission of public service.

13.  View leadership as a competency, not a position.  Leadership behaviors can be found everywhere in an organization--they should be recognized and promoted.


My intent here is not to be a downer, but to emphasize how much more focus needs to be placed on leadership in the public sector.  The current state of affairs is unacceptable.  And for those of us familiar with research and best practices in organizational behavior, it's painful.

So I apologize for the decidedly un-Thanksgivingy nature of this post.  But I am thankful for free speech and open minds.  Thanks for reading.

Just kidding...more research update!

Seriously?  Just yesterday I did my research update, ending with a note that the December 2014 issue of the International Journal of Selection and Assessment should be out soon.

Guess what?  It came out today.

So that means--you guessed it--another research update!  :)

- First, a test of Spearman's hypothesis, which states that the magnitude of White-Black mean differences on tests of cognitive ability vary with the test's g loading.  Using a large sample of GATB test-takers, these authors found support for Spearman's hypothesis, and that reducing g saturation lowered validity and increased prediction errors.

So does that mean practitioners have to choose between high-validity tests of ability or increasing the diversity of their candidate pool?  Not so fast.  Remember...there are other options.

- Next, international (Croatian) support for the Conditional Reasoning Test of Aggression, which can be used to predict counterproductive work behaviors.  I can see this increasingly being something employers are interested in.

- Applicants that do well on tests have favorable impressions of them, while those that do poorly don't like them.  Right?  Not necessarily.  These researchers found that above and beyond how people actually did on a test, certain individual differences predict applicant reactions, and suggest these be taken into account when designing assessments.

- Although personality testing continues to be one of the most popular topics, concerns remain about applicants "faking" their responses (i.e., trying to game the test by responding inaccurately but hopefully increase the chances of obtaining the job).  This study investigates the use of blatant extreme responding, consistently selecting the highest or lowest response option, to detect faking, and looked at how this behavior correlated with cognitive ability, other measures of faking, and demographic factors (level of job, race, and gender).

- Next, a study of assessment center practices in Indonesia.

- Do individuals high in neuroticism have higher or lower job performance?  Many would guess lower performance, but according to this research, the impact of neuroticism on job performance is moderated by job characteristics.  This supports the more nuanced view that the relationship between personality traits and performance is in many cases non-linear and depends on how performance is conceptualized.

- ...which leads oh so nicely into the next article!  In it, the authors studied air traffic controllers and found results consistent with previous studies--ability primarily predicted task performance while personality better predicted citizenship behavior.  Which raises an interesting question: which version of "performance" are you interested in?  My guess is for many employers the answer is both--which suggests of course using multiple methods when assessing candidates.

- Last but not least, an important study of using cognitive ability and personality to predict job performance in a three studies of Chilean organizations.  Results were consistent with studies conducted elsewhere, namely ability and personality significantly predicted performance.

Okay, I think that's it for now!

Research update

Okay, so it been a couple months, huh?  Well, what say we do a research update then.

But before I dive in, I discovered something interesting and important.  Longtime readers know that one of my biggest pet peeves is how difficult research articles are to get a hold of.  And by difficult I mean expensive.  Historically, unless you were affiliated with a research institution or were a subscriber, you had to pay exorbitant (IMHO) fees to see research articles.  So imagine my pleasure when I discovered that at least one publisher--Wiley, who publishes several of the research journals in this area--now allows you to read-access for an article for as low as $6.  Now that's only for 48 hours and you can't print it, but hey--that's a heck of a lot better than something like $30-40, which historically has been the case!  So kudos.

Moving on.

Let's start with a bang with an article from the Autumn 2014 issue of Personnel Psych.  A few years back several researchers argued that the assumption that performance is distributed normally was incorrect; and it got a bit of press.  Not so fast, say new researchers, who show that when defined properly, performance is in fact more normally distributed.

For those of you wondering, "why do I care?"  Whether we believe performance is normally distributed or not significantly impacts not only the statistical analyses performed on selection mechanisms but theories and practices surrounding HRM.


Moving to the July issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology:

- If you're going to use a cognitively-loaded selection mechanism (which in many cases has some of the highest predictive validity), be prepared to accept high levels of adverse impact.  Right?  Not to fast, say these researchers, who show that by weighting the subtests, you can increase diversity decisions without sacrifice validity.

- Here's another good one.  As you probably know, the personality trait of conscientiousness has shown value in predicting performance in certain occupations.  Many believe that conscientiousness may in fact have a curvilinear relationship with performance (meaning after a certain point, more conscientiousness may not help)--but this theory has not been consistently supported.  According to these researchers, this may have to do with the assumption that higher scores equal more conscientiousness.  In fact, when using an "ideal point" model, results were incredibly consistent in terms of supporting the curvilinear relationship between conscientiousness and performance.

- Range restriction is a common problem in applied selection research, since you only have performance data on a subset of the test-takers, requiring us to draw inferences.   A few years back, Hunter, Schmidt, and Le proposed a new correction for range restriction that requires less information.  But is it in fact superior?  According to this research, the general answer appears to be: yes.


Let's move to the September issue of JAP:

- Within-person variance of performance is an important concept, both conceptually and practically.  Historically short-term and long-term performance variance have been treated separately, but these researchers show the advantage of integrating the two together.

- Next, a fascinating study of the choice of (and persistence in) STEM fields as a career, the importance of both interest and ability, and how gender plays an important role.  In a nutshell, as I understand it, interest and ability seem to play a more important role in predicting STEM career choices for men than for women, whereas ability is more important in the persistence in STEM careers for women.


Let's take a look at a couple from recent issue of Personnel Review:

- From volume 43(5), these researchers found support for ethics-based hiring decisions resulting in improved work attitudes, include organizational commitment.

- From 43(6), an expanded conceptual model of how hiring supervisors perceive "overqualification", which I would love to see more research on.


Last but not least, for you stats folks, what's new from PARE?

- What happens when you have missing data on multiple variables?

- Equivalence testing: samples matter!

- What sample size is needed when using regression models?  Here's one suggestion on how to figure it out.


The December 2014 issue of IJSA should be out relatively soon, so look for a post on that soon!

Research update

I can't believe it's been three months since a research update.  I was waiting until I got critical mass, and with the release of the September issues of IJSA, I think I've hit it.

So let's start there:

- Experimenting with using different rating scales on SJTs (with "best and worst" response format doing the best of the traditional scales)

- Aspects of a semi-structured interview added incremental validity over cognitive ability in predicting training performance

- Studying the use of preselection methods (e.g., work experience) prior to assessment centers in German companies

- The proposed general factor of personality may be useful in selection contexts (this one was a military setting)

- Evidence that effective leaders show creativity and political skill

- Investigating the relationship (using survey data) between personality facets and CWBs (with emotional stability playing a key role)

- Corrections for indirect range restriction boosted the upper end of structured interview validity substantially

- A method of increasing the precision of simulations that analyze group mean differences and adverse impact

- A very useful study that looked at the prediction of voluntary turnover as well as performance using biodata and other applicant information, including recruitment source, among a sample of call center applicants.  Reuslts?  Individuals who had previously applied, chose to submit additional information, were employed, or were referrals had significantly less voluntary turnover.



Moving on...let's check out the May issue of JAP; there are only two articles but both worth looking at:

- First, a fascinating study of the firm-level impact of effective staffing and training, suggesting that the former allow organizations greater flexibility and adaptability (e.g., to changing financial conditions).

- Second, another study of SJT response formats.  The researchers found, using a very large sample, the "rate" format (e.g., "rate each of the following options in terms of effectiveness") to be superior in terms of validity, reliability, and group differences.


Next, the July issue of JOB, which is devoted to leadership:

- You might want to check out this overview/critique of the various leadership theories.

- This study suggests that newer models proposing morality as an important component of leadership success have methodological flaws.

- Last, a study of why Whites oppose affirmative action programs

Let's move to the September issue of Industrial and Organizational Psychology:

- The first focal article discusses the increasing movement of I/O psychology to business schools.  The authors found evidence that this is due in large part to some of the most active and influential I/O researchers moving to business schools.

- The second is about stereotype threat--specifically its importance as a psychological construct and the paucity of applied research about it.


Coming into the home stretch, the Summer issue of Personnel Psych:

- The distribution of individual performance may not be normal if, as these researchers suggest, "star performers" have emerged

- Executives with high levels of conscientiousness and who display transformational leadership behavior may directly contribute to organizational performance

Rounding out my review, check out a few recent articles from PARE:

- I'm not even gonna attempt to summarize this, so here's the title: Multiple-Group confirmatory factor analysis in R – A tutorial in measurement invariance with continuous and ordinal indicators

- Improving exploratory factor analysis for ordinal data

- Improving multidimensional adaptive testing


Last but not least, it's not related to recruitment or assessment, but check out this study that found productivity increases during bad weather :)

That's all folks!

Are job ads a relic?

Lately at my day job we've been working with a few customers on replacing their traditional "one-shot" job ads with continuously posted career opportunities.  Why?

- It helps capture qualified candidates regardless of where they are in the search process (i.e., it helps solve the "I didn't see the ad" problem).

- It gives hiring supervisors a persistent, fresh pool of applicants that they can immediately draw from.

- It saves a ton of time that gets wasted in the traditional model due to requesting to fill a position, tailoring the duty statement, determining the assessment strategy, etc.

- It changes the focus--importantly and appropriately--from filling a single position to career opportunities.

- It presents an opportunity to critically review the way we advertise our jobs, which too often are boring and uninspired.

- With the appropriate technology, it can create another community of minds; for businesses this means customers, for public sector, it means solution generators.

- With the appropriate technology, connections can be potentially tapped to increase reach.

Apparently we're not alone in going down this road.  As this article describes, online retailer Zappos has created Zappos Insider, with the goal being to create more of a talent community than a one-time transactional relationship.  This move toward "candidate relationship management" is not new but seems to be gaining steam, which is also reflected in HR technology as vendors build this approach into their products.


So what are some challenges associated with the model?

- Without specific application dates, it becomes more critical that applicants can determine their status at any time.

- It may dissuade applicants who are actively seeking for work, who may see this model as too slow.

- It requires significant up-front work to design and determine the administration (but pays dividends on the back-end).

- Hiring supervisors may be skeptical of the change.


Here are some related issues that moving to this model doesn't automatically solve:

- Engaging in a timely manner with candidates so they understand the status of their application/interest.

- Communicating effectively with those not selected.

- Giving applicants a real person to contact if they have questions (Zappos makes these contacts very clear).

- Creating attractive yet realistic descriptions of positions in the organization.

- Focusing on the KSAOs that are most strongly linked to job performance.

- Developing an assessment strategy that most effectively measures those KSAOs.


Until there is a free worldwide talent pool that matches high quality candidate assessment with realistic job profiles (yes, that's my dream of how to replace the current extremely wasteful job matching process), things like this may have the best shot of streamlining and updating a process that is holding us back rather than helping both applicants and organizations achieve their goals.

WRIPAC's 35 Anniversary Meeting: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something to do

Over the last two days I had the pleasure of attending the Western Region Intergovernmental Personnel Assessment Council's (WRIPAC) 35th anniversary meeting in San Francisco.  I thought I would share with you some of my observations, as it's been a while, unfortunately, since I attended one of their events.

For the uninitiated, WRIPAC was founded in 1979 and is one of several regional associations in the United States devoted to personnel assessment and selection in the public sector.  Other examples include PTC-NC, PTC-SC, PTC/MW, and IPAC.  I have been involved with several of these organizations over the years and they provide a tremendous benefit to members and attendees, from networking to best practice to the latest research.

WRIPAC serves public agencies in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Oregon.  They have a somewhat unique membership model in that there is no membership fee and the meetings are free, but in order to become a member you have to attend two consecutive meetings.  They maintain their energy in large part through a commitment to their committees and providing excellent training opportunities.

So, about the 35th anniversary WRIPAC meeting, hosted by the City and County of San Francisco:

Something old:  One of my observations over the day-and-a-half meeting was the remarkable number of issues that seem to be the same, year after year.  For example:

* how to effectively screen large numbers of applicants

* how to handle increased workload with a reduced number of HR staff

* how to convince supervisors and managers to use valid assessment methods

* which assessment vendors provide the best products

* how to design selection systems that treat candidates fairly but don't unduly burden the agency

We also were treated to a retrospective by three previous WRIPAC presidents, which highlighted some really stark ways the workforce and the assessment environment has changed over the years.  This included everything from sexual harassment in the workplace being commonplace to agencies trying to figure out how to comply with the new (at the time) Uniform Guidelines.

Something new:  Dr. Scott Highhouse from Bowling Green State University presented results from several fascinating studies.

The first looked at "puzzle interview questions"--those bizarre questions like "Why are manhole covers round?" made famous by companies like Microsoft and Google.  Using a sample of participants from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (the first time I've heard this done for a psychological study), he was particularly interested in whether individual "dark side" traits such as machiavellianism and narcissism might explain why certain people prefer these types of questions.

Results?  First, men were more likely to endorse these types of items.  Why?  Well it may have to do with the second finding that respondents higher in narcissism and sadism were more likely to endorse these types of questions.  From what I can tell from my massive (ten minute) search of the internet, men are more likely to display both narcissism and sadism.  Maybe more importantly, the common denominator seemed to be callousness, as in being insensitive or cruel toward others.

So what does this mean?  Well I had two thoughts: one, if you like to ask these types of questions you might ask yourself WHY (because there's no evidence I know of to support using them).  Second, if you work with supervisors who show high levels of callousness, they might need additional support/nudging to use appropriate interview questions.  Looking forward to these results getting published.

The second study Dr. Highhouse described looked at worldviews and whether they impact beliefs about the usefulness of testing--in particular cognitive ability and personality tests.  This line of research basically is trying to discover why people refuse to entertain or use techniques that have proven to work (there's a separate line of study about doctors who refuse to use decision aids--it's all rather disturbing).

Anyway, in this study, also using participants from Mechanical Turk, the researchers found that individuals that had strong beliefs in free will (i.e., people have control of their choices and should take personal responsibility) were more open to using conscientiousness tests, and people with strong beliefs in scientific determinism (i.e., behavior stems from genetics and the environment) were more open to using cognitive ability tests.  This adds valuable insight to why certain supervisors may be resistant to using assessment methods that have a proven track record--they're not simply being illogical but it may be based on their fundamental beliefs about human behavior.

The last study he talked about looked at whether presenting people with evidence of test validity would change their related world views.  You wouldn't expect strong effects, but they did find a change.  Implication?  More support for educating test users about the strengths and weaknesses of various assessments--something we do routinely but for good reason!

Last but not least, Dr. Highhouse introduced a journal that will hopefully be coming out next year, titled Journal of Personnel Assessment and Decisions, that will be sponsored by IPAC and Bowling Green State University, that aside from the excellent subject matter, will have two key features: it will be free and open to everyone.  I'm very excited about this, and long-time readers will know I've railed for years about how difficult it is for people to access high-quality research.

Something borrowed:  one of the big benefits of being involved with professional organizations--particularly ones like WRIPAC that are practitioner-focused--is it gives you access to others facing similar challenges that have come up with great solutions.  There was a lot of information shared at the roundtable about a wide variety of topics, including:

- reasonable accommodation during the testing process (e.g., armless chairs for obese individuals)

- how to use automated pre-screening to narrow candidate pools

- how agencies will adjust to the new requirements in California related to criminal background information (i..e, "ban the box" and other similar legislation)

- how to efficiently assess out-of-state applicants (e.g., video interviewing, remote proctors)

- how and when to verify a drivers license if required for the job

- how to effectively use 360-degree evaluations

- how MQs (the subject of June's free PTC-NC meeting) should best be placed in the selection process

- cloud vs. on-premise IT solutions

- centralization vs. decentralization of HR functions

- use of item banks (e.g., WRIB, CODESP)

In addition, there was an excellent entire afternoon session devoted to succession and leadership planning that featured three speakers describing the outstanding programs they've managed to administer at their agencies.  I took a ton of information away from these and it came at exactly the right time as we're looking at implementing these exact same programs.

Something to do:  One of the main things I took away from this conference is how important it is to maintain your participation in professional associations.  It's so easy to get sucked into your daily fires and forgot how valuable it is, both personally and professionally, to meet with others and tackle our shared challenges.  I plan on sharing what I learned back in the office and upping my expectation that as HR professionals we need to be active in our professional community.  I encourage you to do the same!