Essentials of Personnel Assessment and Selection

This book discusses the essentials that managers and other well-educated people should know about the assessment processes so widely used in contemporary society and so widely not understood. It emphasizes that good prediction requires well-formed hypotheses about personal characteristics that may be related to valued behavior at work and the need for developing a theory of the attribute one hypothesizes as a predictor, a thought process too often missing from work on selection procedures. In addition, it explores such topics as team-member selection, situational judgment tests, non-traditional tests, individual assessment, and testing for diversity. The goal is to produce an accessible guide to assessment that covers basic and advanced concepts in a straight-forward, readable style. It provides a review of the most relevant statistical concepts and modern selection practices that will equip the reader with the tools needed to be competent consumers of assessment procedures and practices, and to be well-informed about the kinds of questions to be answered in evaluating them. This book will appeal to instructors of advanced undergraduate and master’s level courses on personnel selection and assessment. If supplemented by other readings on selected topics, it would be useful in doctoral seminars. Also, students interested in becoming users of research-based assessment and selection information and techniques will find it useful.