Recruitment, ANGIELSKI

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Recruitment
Points to consider
Which statements do you agree or disagree with?
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Married men with children and financial responsibilities make the best candidates.
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Women are less reliable than men and cause problems for any department.
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Candidates who have frequently changed jobs are always valuable because of their experience.
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A good salary is the best way to get people interested in their jobs.
Fit For Hiring? It's Mind Over Matter
By Judith H. Dobrzynski
NEW YORK - Members of America's professional and
managerial classes have always left college confident of
at least one thing: they had taken their last test. From here
on, they could rely on charm, cunning and/or a record of
accomplishment to propel them up the corporate ladder.
But that's not necessarily true any longer. A growing
number of companies, from General Motors Corp to
American Express Co., are no longer satisfied with
traditional job interviews. Instead, they are requiring
applicants for many white-collar jobs - from top
executives down - to submit to a series of paper-and-
pencil tests, role-playing exercises, simulated decision-
making exercises and brainteasers. Others put candidates
through a long series of interviews by psychologists or
trained interviewers.
The tests are not about mathematics or grammar, nor
about any of the basic technical skills for which many
production, sales and clerical workers have long been
tested. Rather, employers want to evaluate candidates on
intangible qualities: Is she creative and entrepreneurial?
Can he lead and coach? Is he flexible and capable of
learning? Does she have passion and a sense of urgency?
How will he function under pressure? Most important,
will the potential recruit fit the corporate culture?
These tests, which can take from an hour to two days, are
all part of a broader trend. 'Companies are getting much
more careful about hiring,' said Paul R. Ray Jr., chairman
of the Association of Executive Search Consultants.
Ten years ago, candidates could win a top job with the
right look and the right answers to questions such as
'Why do you want this job?'. Now, many are having to
face questions and exercises intended to learn how they
get things done.
They may, for example, have to describe in great detail
not one career accomplishment but many - so that
patterns of behavior emerge. They may face questions
such as 'Who is the best manager you ever worked for
and why?' or 'What is your best friend like?'. The
answers, psychologists say, reveal much about a
candidate's management style and about himself or
herself.
The reason for the interrogations is clear: many hires
work out badly. About 35 percent of recently hired senior
executives are judged failures, according to the Center for
Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina,
which surveyed nearly 500 chief executives.
The cost of bringing the wrong person on board is
sometimes huge. Searching and training can cost from
$5000 for a lower-level manager to $250,000 for a top
executive. Years of corporate downsizing, a trend that has
slashed layers of management, has also increased the
potential damage that one bad executive can do. With the
pace of change accelerating in markets and technology,
companies want to know how an executive will perform,
not just how he or she has performed.
'Years ago, employers looked for experience - has a
candidate done this before?' said Harold P. Weinstein,
executive vice-president of Caliper, a personnel testing
and consulting firm in Princeton, New Jersey. 'But having
experience in a job does not guarantee that you can do it
in a different environment.'
At this point, most companies have not shifted to this
practice. Some do not see the need or remain
unconvinced that such testing is worth the cost. But
human-resource specialists say anecdotal evidence
suggests that white-collar testing is growing in
popularity. What has brought so many employers around
to testing is a sense of the limitations in the usual job
interview. With so little information on which to base a
decision, 'most people hire people they like, rather than
the most competent person,' said Orv Owens, a
psychologist in Snohomish, Washington, who sizes up
executive candidates. Research has shown, he said, that
'most decision makers make their hiring decisions in the
first five minutes of an interview and spend the rest of the
time rationalizing their choice.'
Besides, with advice on how to land a better job about as
common as a ten-dollar bill, many people are learning to
play the interview game.
Even companies that have not started extensive testing
have toughened their hiring practices. Many now do
background checks, for example, looking for signs of
drug use, violence or sexual harassment. But the more
comprehensive testing aims to measure skills in
communications, analysis and organization, attention to
detail and management style; personality traits and
motivations that behavioral scientists say predict
performance.
New York Times
Discussion
1.
Do you think a certain type of appearance is necessary for some jobs? Explain why.
2.
Is morphopsychology a useful recruitment technique?
3.
Are good-looking people more successful than others?
4.
Why do you think attractive women have problems reaching managerial positions?
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