Methods Used to Test and Select the Best Applicants

In the chapter review, I learned that employment tests must be valid and fair to pass legal scrutiny. The reading provided information about methods used to test and select the best applicants such as: (1) minimum test score of an applicant to be considered for hire (passing scores); (2) another variation would provide the names of top three to five applicants to hiring authority, who can select from that group (rule of three – top-down); and (3) a statistical technique based on standard error of measurement that allows similar test scores to be grouped (banding). Furthermore, they can provide flexibility in who is hired and flexibility that is often used to reduce adverse impact when necessary.

To begin with, most of the topics in this chapter review had potential ethical issues associated with it. From an ethical perspective, an employer should care about issues such as adverse impact because it is an employment practice that results in bias, where members of a protected class are negatively affected at a higher rate than members of the majority class. (Aamodt, 2013, p. 223).

Secondly, it is important that the efforts of an organization to increase diversity become a higher priority and even mission and goal values. This will allow the company diversity, creativity, innovation, and ability to select the best candidates that will ultimately provide sustainability for their employer. Some of the problems in today’s organizations with employee selection is that they aren’t doing enough to ensure fairness in its testing process or was going so far to the extreme that minorities and women were being favored. (Aamodt, 2013, p. 231). By utilizing appropriate testing methods with applicants, it will allow companies or hirin...

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...the employer that I/O psychologists “regard test fairness to mean that one must consider potential race, gender, disability, and other cultural differences in both the content of the test (measurement bias) and the way in which scores from the test predict job performance (predictive bias).” (Aarmodt, 2013, p. 223). If the employer requested further dishonesty in the scoring with regard to certain classes of people, this would be unethical and would defeat the entire purpose, expertise, and value that an O/I psychologist brings to the organization. If the employer were to disregard that request, it would make sense that an I/O psychologist would leave that position and report the employer for purposely practicing discriminating employee selection.

Works Cited

Aamodt, M. (2013). Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Belmont, CA.