Human Resource Management Company Changes - Essay Example

The unstructured interview is the most used interview for selecting employees although this is most likely to change, as there is increasing evidence that the other two kinds of interview are a lot better at identifying applicants who are likely to do well on the job. The 'reliability and validity', which Wysocki (2000) refers to, are two standards that are used in the selection process. When an organization is trying to separate the best candidate out of a group of candidates, some sort of rating scale is needed, the people selecting the new employee need to be able rate each candidate numerically, the best way would be to give them a score for each selection method used.

When all the candidates have been scored, their scores can be compared and decisions made about who is the best person for the job. "Five generic standards that should be met by any selection method are, (1) reliability, (2) validity, (3) generalisability, (4) utility and (5) legality." (De Cieri H, Kramar R, et al, 2003, p 196) The scores that are given to each candidate need to be reliable, that is free from random error. Reliability is defined by De Cieri and Kramar (2003) as 'the degree to which a measure is free from random error' . . De Cieri and Kramar (2003), define validity 'as the extent to which performance on the measure is related to performance on the job.

' This basically means that the scores of candidates need to be linked to how well they will perform on the job. The closer the link, the more valid the score. Generalisability is defined as "the degree to which the validity of a selection method established in one context extends to other contexts. Utility is the degree to which the information provided by selection methods enhances the bottom-line effectiveness of the organization." (De Cieri H, Kramar R, et al, 2003, p 205). "The final standard that any selection method should adhere to is legality.

All selection methods should conform to existing laws and existing legal precedents."(De Cieri H, Kramar R, et al, 2003, p 207).Structured interviews usually have the highest reliability and validity scores when compared with unstructured or semi-structured interviews, making the structured interview the better choice of interview for the organization to use as a selection method. Schmidt and Hunter (1998) created a table rating the validity of different selection methods; the structured interview had a validity of 0.

51 whilst the unstructured interview had a validity of 0.38. These numbers are correlation coefficients; a correlation coefficient is "a statistic that measures the degree to which two sets of numbers are related to each other."(De Cieri, H. & Kramar, R., 2003, p 197). This means that the structured interview is better than an unstructured interview at predicting how well a candidate will perform on the job.Other selection methods, which have also improved over the years, are used along with the selection interview, they include; "References, physical ability