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SELECTING TALENT

Talent selection decisions are an increasingly important determinant of success. For many organizations they are the most important decisions they make, often committing the organizations to high costs and major investments in time and analysis. It is not new that selection decisions are important. What is new is their growing importance as a result of human capital becoming a more critical determinant of organizational effectiveness. Also new is the technology that can be used to make them, and the need to shape the selection process to fit the new workplace and workforce.

EFFECTIVE SELECTION

The selection process needs to be carefully integrated with the attraction process. In many respects, selection is a continuation of the attraction process as it often plays a critical role in the decisions individuals make about whether or not to accept a job offer. The selection process says a great deal about what an organization stands for and how it operates; thus, it very much determines what kind of individuals will work for an organization and shapes its culture.

As an important part of the employer brand of an organization, the selection process must build on what is said about the potential employer in the attraction process and give individuals accurate information about what it will be like to work for the organization if they are selected. If it does not, the organization runs the risk that individuals will have false expectations and will become turnover candidates before the organization gets a significant return on the investment it has made in selecting, hiring, and training them. There is also the risk that it will be a negative experience that will drive away good talent.

In addition to being carefully integrated with the attraction process, the selection process needs to be an effective step in the onboarding process. It should introduce talent to the organization in ways that emphasize the organization’s key features with respect to performance, learning, change, culture, management style, and interpersonal relationships.

The selection process needs to reflect the realities and challenges of staffing in today’s environment. It needs to focus on the skills individuals have, make a valid assessment of what they can learn to do, and determine if they are a “good fit” for the organization’s management approach and leadership style. In particular, it needs to focus on those skills that are critical for an organization’s effectiveness. In many cases the process needs to go beyond assessing what is needed to do an existing set of tasks or a given job; it also needs to reflect what an individual can learn to do that is relevant to the business strategy of the organization and the rapid changes that are occurring in the world of work.

Given the complexity of most organizations, multiple selection processes may be needed. The most obvious basis for segmenting the selection process is whether or not the individuals being hired are development candidates. It may be that certain employees are being hired for an assignment that requires immediate performance, and the key issue is whether or not they can perform a set of existing tasks. On the other hand, they may be entering an area where a significant amount of learning is required and the expectation is that they will continue with the organization through multiple changes in work processes, technology, and organization design that require continual learning. As a result of this, employment candidates will need to be able to adapt to situations where development over a period of time is critical.

It is fair to say that a lot is expected of the selection processes that organizations use. It is also fair to say that many of them have not met those expectations. They have attracted the wrong individuals, they have resulted in wrong selection decisions, and they have given talent unrealistic expectations about what work life is like. While the selection practices of many organizations have continued to fare poorly, the importance of selection has increased.

There has been an enormous amount of research done on what makes for good selection decisions. It has produced some useful guidelines concerning what a good selection process should look like when dealing with the many complexities and challenges of hiring. There are multiple practices that are appropriate for producing good selection decisions and for helping talent make informed decisions about whether to join an organization. These guidelines can be used to develop selection processes that fit the new world of work and workers.

The major point that should be front and center when it comes to organizations making decisions about who to hire and what type of position to hire them for is that “past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.” This is particularly true when the environments and work are similar. Thus, it is very important to gather information about how applicants have behaved in the past and to base hiring decisions on that information. This is particularly important when individuals are being hired into positions where they are expected to begin performing well immediately after they are hired.

THE WORK RECORD

Since past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, there is no better predictor of how an individual will perform in the future than how they have performed in the past. This means that when individuals are being hired, organizations should do everything they can to find out how the individual has performed in similar situations. Not surprisingly, the more similar the past situation is to the one where an individual will be working, the greater the predictive power of past performance data. Increasingly, data on individuals’ past performance exists; in many professions it is widely available.

Sports is a very visible example of the great availability of performance data. Just about every statistic you can imagine is now available about the performance of athletes, starting from their junior high school years. Sophisticated and complicated measures are computed and used to make decisions about the effectiveness of football, basketball, and baseball players. In this respect, sports may be a bit of an anomaly with respect to measuring the effectiveness of employee performance, but it does not have to be many. Organizations already have extensive data about the effectiveness of salespeople, technical people, and the like. With the growth of big data and the increased monitoring of employee behavior through apps and wearable location and activity monitors, more and more information is available about individuals’ performance. The challenge is to get good data and to use it in a way that produces good selection decisions.

Many organizations begin the data gathering process by asking job applicants to complete an application that focuses on their educational and work history. This is a good first step as long as the application is not so difficult to complete that it drives good applicants away. Increasingly, organizations are using apps as a way to make the application process more user-friendly. Such companies as Deutsche Bank, Ernst and Young, and Microsoft are using smartphone apps that help people fasttrack the recruitment and selection process by playing games. This can encourage more applicants and send positive information about the organization and its culture, thus contributing to the attraction process. It can also provide organizations with behavioral data that can be scanned for relevant experience and skills.

Organizations often ask for references, and they can provide useful information, but there are always issues of credibility and truth when data are gathered in this way. Thus, it is very important that organizations do everything they can to determine the validity of data about the past performance of any individuals they hire. This may involve hiring vetting companies to look at the records of individuals and get data about their work and education history. There is also the option of asking individuals for their work records and accomplishments and then testing that against other sources; this is not only a good way of determining whether individuals are a good hire from a performance point of view but also a way to test their credibility and honesty. Frequently individuals do not provide valid information when filling out job applications.

INTERNSHIPS, GIGS, AND SIMULATIONS

Without question, the best way to give individuals information about what it is like to work in an organization and to give that organization information about whether an individual can do the job is to have them actually work at the job or a simulation of it. This is always better than doing interviews or using tests that give information about people’s personalities, skills, and abilities but may not predict job performance. Having job candidates actually do the job tells an organization if individuals can accomplish specific tasks; it can also make it clear to those individuals what it is like to do the work the organization wants them to.

One interesting process that can be used to test individuals is the blind audition. In symphony orchestras, this involves auditioning for jobs behind a screen so that the hiring managers are forced to pay attention to what matters most: how well those auditioning play their instruments; the managers are not distracted or influenced by appearance, race, gender, and the like. These blind audition practices fit well as an initial screening process for collecting work samples from writers, coders, customer service representatives, researchers, and others who are being considered to do technical and administrative work.

There are multiple ways to have individuals do the work that the organization has to offer without hiring them on a regular employment basis. The most obvious is the use of temporary work programs, such as internships, contract hires, and temporary assignments. Internships have long been used as an effective selection device. Many companies use them as a way to attract, test, and ultimately select college and high school students as well as others who are interested in developing themselves. They combine a realistic job preview with a work sample, and thus can improve both the attraction and selection processes of an organization. They are an effective way to select and manage talent in the new world of work and workers.

Temporary work assignments and internships can last a matter of hours or many months—even years. In many respects, the longer the time period, the better. This gives the organization time to observe individuals actually doing the work that they would be doing as employees and gives individuals a chance to see what the organization and the work is like. Admittedly, it is one thing to be a regular employee and another to be a temporary employee or intern. Even so, the temporary work assignment is a much better way to give potential employees a sense of what the organization and the work is like versus having them observe it or having somebody explain it to them. And, needless to say, it is also the best way to test whether they can do the work.

The information technology revolution provides many new opportunities to have individuals do work for organizations before they become regular employees. Gig sites provide the opportunity for organizations to get work samples that can be very valuable in determining what an individual can do and whether the organization wants to employ somebody for a gig or on a regular basis. Technology also provides the opportunity to simulate work situations in ways that have not been possible before. Simulations can be interactive and can test the responses of applicants to evolving situations and technical problems; they can make testing much more realistic and therefore more valid. Video games may also be a good choice, as they have the potential to create simulations that test the judgment and analytic capabilities of potential hires. They have the advantage of putting individuals in work situations and being able to see how they analyze and respond to them.

Overall, the best way to judge if potential employees can do something is to have them do it, not to ask them or others (past employers, coworkers, etc.) whether they can do it. Of course, it may not always be possible to observe somebody performing work, so it may be necessary to get data about their performance history. This can be extremely valuable when the source of the data is credible and the work that the applicant has done previously is similar. If the job entails producing a manuscript, film, advertisement, or other identifiable product, a good substitute is an assessment of the work product itself. Unfortunately, job candidates themselves are frequently not a valid source of performance data and it is often impossible to find someone who is.

ABILITY AND PERSONALITY TESTING

For a variety of reasons, organizations cannot always obtain a work sample: applicants may require specific training for the work to be done, or the work may simply be too complex or involve too long a time span to do for those who are not actual employees. It may not even exist in “doable” form because the first work of applicants is to develop the project or work that they will be doing. In these cases, an intelligence or targeted ability test may be the best choice.

Standardized psychological tests can be useful when they measure an ability like intelligence, which is critical to most or all work that might be performed by job applicants. Skill and ability tests are particularly useful when the work entails learning to perform tasks that applicants may not have any prior experience with.

Organizations have used many different personality and interest tests for decades. The most popular and most frequently used of these is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; among other questions, it asks a job applicant to say whether he or she would rather be considered a “practical person” or an “ingenious person” and whether he or she is a “good talker” or instead “quiet and reserved.” One estimate is that over fifty million people around the world have taken the test.

The research evidence shows that, in most cases, personality tests are not valid predictors of job performance. There is reason to believe that they can be predictive for some kinds of work (e.g., customer contact roles), but that as a general rule they are not good predictors of performance and thus should not be used for selection unless they have been shown to be valid by studies that are specific to the work that will be done by the talent being tested.

INTERVIEWS

The most frequently used selection tool is the one-on-one interview. Most interviews are unstructured (the interviewer asks whatever he or she wants) and often turn out to be rambling conversations between the interviewer and the job candidate. Not surprisingly, most interviews have little or no validity when it comes to predicting the performance of job candidates or the length of their employment. Despite this, the interview continues to be the most frequently used selection device.

Many managers feel that they can make good selection decisions about job candidates based on their ability to do interviews. Research on selection decisions does not support this conclusion; it does show that most managers believe they can make good decisions, but it does not support the notion that they actually do so. Interviews are also flawed with respect to giving job candidates an accurate view of what work will be like once they join an organization.

The validity record of interviews suggests that it may be best to never have interviews as part of the selection process in the new world of work and workers. The problem with this is that most applicants want to have interviews so that they can meet the individuals they will potentially be working with and for, and managers also want to know and have a say in who is hired. Having them approve a new hire after an interview also helps commit them to a successful onboarding of that hire. Thus, rather than eliminating interviews, the best solution is often to direct interviewers toward the realistic preview and attraction side of what an effective selection process needs to accomplish and have them play little or no role in actual hiring decisions.

As far as contributing to valid selection decisions and attraction, it is critical that interviews be structured and guided by a predetermined list of key questions and points. There is a large amount of evidence that shows that when there is little structure to interviews, interviewers tend to ask questions that are inappropriate, invalid, and in some cases discriminatory, unethical, and even in violation of labor laws. For example, they sometimes ask about childhood experiences, what job applicants’ parents are like, what their hobbies are, and a whole list of things that are not valid predictors of the future performance of the prospective employees.

Adam Bryant interviews chief executive officers and publishes the results every Sunday in the New York Times. He always asks, “How do you hire?” The CEOs all report on what they ask in interviews and almost without exception they ask about something that is not likely to be a predictor of performance. For example, “If you had all the money in the world, and you had one year to live, what would you be doing?” or “What do you do on weekends?”

Questions should be directly targeted at evaluating how well individuals have previously performed work that is similar to the work that they are applying to do. The same structured questions should be asked of all interviewees so that comparisons can be made. The questions need to focus on the kind of skills needed for someone to do or learn how to do the work they are being hired to do. There is evidence that this type of interview can be valid in selecting some employees. When structured interviews are done, there is also much less chance that the interviewer will ask questions that are inappropriate, invalid, or inaccurately communicate what it is like to work for the organization.

It often makes sense to have structured interviews that are guided by information technology. To assure that the right questions are asked across multiple interviews, a key list of questions can be developed and sent to all interviewers. As the interview process unfolds, the interviewers can connect with each other about what has been answered, which issues to pursue, and which question should be focused on. This is a good way to improve the practice of interviewing and to ensure that interviews are valid, ask reasonable questions, and are not repetitive.

Interviews should be structured in a way that informs job candidates about what will be expected of them and what it will be like to work in the organization. Giving the job candidate a good preview of what work will be like is a much more achievable goal than having the interviewer make a valid hiring decision based on information that is provided by the job applicant in response to interviewer-created questions.

Making an interview effective requires training the interviewer to deliver the right kind of information and to ask appropriate questions. It is not an easy task, but it is one that can be accomplished and will lead to much better results than unstructured, rambling interviews that focus on what an untrained interviewer thinks will predict whether or not the interviewee will be a good employee.

The point made earlier about past behavior being the best predictor of future behavior suggests that structured interviews should focus on asking individuals what they have done and how they behaved in previous job situations. Interviews should be constructed to carefully look at the responsibilities individuals had in previous jobs and to get them to talk about particular incidents in the workplace that they encountered and how they responded to them. Job applicants should also be asked what kind of tasks they performed, what knowledge was required to perform them, and how they dealt with new challenges and learning opportunities. It may also be effective to ask what they learned from their past work and how they will approach work in the future.

It is worth repeating that the interviews should be considered part of the attraction process. Clearly, job applicants develop feelings of like or dislike for interviewers during the interview process. This can make a big difference in whether they end up completing the selection process and accepting a job if it is offered. It is thus important that the interviewer conduct the interview in a way that produces a positive dialogue with the job applicant.

Finally, there is the possibility of having interviews that have no influence on selection decisions. I have seen this approach work well in situations where there is a clear record of candidate performance available; it is assessed, the hiring decision is made, and then the individual is invited to an interview. Done well, these interviews can provide a chance for the interviewers and interviewees to exchange information about the culture and climate of the organization and to start the onboarding process of those individuals who will ultimately be hired.

SOCIAL MEDIA

The increasing use of social media can provide organizations with new means to find out about an individual’s past behavior. They can simply go to prospective employees’ Facebook accounts or other postings and see what kind of interests they have, how they behave, how they respond to friendships and networks, and so on. The challenge with information gleaned from social media is determining its relevance to the work to be performed.

In many cases, social media information may be irrelevant because the issues in it are very different from those of the work situation. There may, however, be instances in which individuals on social media forums state things or behave in ways that are simply unacceptable and do not represent what a company would like its employees to be known for. Looking at behaviors that are extreme also can provide meaningful warnings about how individuals might represent the company and how they might behave in the workplace.

Perhaps the best way to think about the relevance of social media is that it is a new and potentially useful source of information. Social media forums should be treated as just one source of information about how an individual behaves, but they are a valid source of information about behavior. What candidates post on social media is an example of how they represent themselves and therefore a possible indicator of how they will behave in the workplace.

VALIDATION

Validation is a must for all selection processes. For a number of reasons, it is very important that organizations determine whether the methods and processes they are using to select employees produce valid decisions. The results of the selection process need to be tested on a continuing basis against turnover, absenteeism, productivity levels, and other performance measures. Given the rate of change in the world of work, old results are not good enough. A few years ago, continuous validation may not have been necessary; today, as work and workers change at an accelerating rate and new sources of data multiply (e.g., social media, gaming, etc.), validation should not be looked at as a one-off but as a continuing process. Validation should look at all the elements in the selection process that influence final decisions. It should also always involve looking for new practices that will improve the selection process.

In jobs where there is a high variance in performance, a small increase in the validity of the selection process can result in an enormous gain in the performance of individuals and ultimately in the performance of organizations. In the cases where the top performers are ten to twenty times more productive than average performers (which is often true for technical work such as software engineering), even a small increase in predictive validity can result in a big performance gain. In such work situations, having a valid selection process is particularly important.

Validation is important not just because it can lead to improved selection decisions, and better cost and productivity numbers in an organization; it also provides a defense against lawsuits, charges of discrimination, and unfair employment actions. This is where information technology and the era of big data come into play. It is much easier today to get performance data about individuals, and to use data analytics to determine how predictive the various parts of a selection process are.

DECISION MAKING

In traditional organizations, job applicants are interviewed and selected in a highly hierarchical process; they are interviewed by managers and the hiring decision is made by their boss-to-be and maybe his or her boss. Future peers, subordinates, and other employees have little or no participation in the interview and selection process. This traditional hierarchical management approach does not fit the new world of work and workers because it fails to build a commitment to the outcome of the process and ignores helpful information that future peers and subordinates may have about whether a job candidate should be hired.

Many technology firms and some retail firms (e.g., Whole Foods) recognize the importance of including future coworkers from all organization levels in the selection process. They have future peers and subordinates interview job candidates and in some cases vote on the selection decision. This has the obvious advantage of building their commitment to the success of the new hire and may provide valuable selection information. It also brings the selection process more in line with the world of work as it exists in high-performance organizations. That said, a word of caution is in order here with respect to who votes on the hiring. As already noted, interviews often are not valid selection methods. Thus, it often is best to give peers and subordinates only veto power with respect to preselected top candidates.

SEGMENTATION

It is obvious that the same selection processes and practices cannot be used throughout large, complex organizations; there are simply too many differences in the skills needed, the kind of working conditions individuals face, and the messages that need to be delivered to talent. Multiple selection practices need to be developed that fit the skills that are needed in particular parts of an organization. These practices also need to fit the nature of the work that is to be done. What should be common across the selection processes that are used in different parts of an organization is that they attract the right individuals, provide a realistic preview, and have been found to be valid predictors of performance.

Given the reality that how some work is done is a particularly important determinant of organizational performance, the selection decisions for certain jobs need to get special attention. In traditional organizations, higher-level jobs have always gotten special attention. The difference in the new world of work is that hierarchy should not be the major determinant of which jobs get such attention; it should be given to selecting individuals to do the work that is critical to organizational performance and is subject to wide performance variation. This might be work in research and development or in customer service. In the case of Disney, one critical job is maintenance and cleaning in the company’s theme parks, because individuals in these jobs have important interactions with customers when they are asked for directions and help. In the case of real estate, sales agents are critical; the best produce many times more sales than other agents.

CONCLUSION

Selecting the right talent for an organization is an increasingly challenging and important activity. Because organizations have become more talent dependent, there is less and less room for making bad selection decisions and for using selection practices and processes that do not attract the right talent. Many traditional best practices are obsolete because of the changes that have occurred in the world of work and workers.

As can be seen in Table 4.1, it is particularly important that strategy drive a focus on the selection of employees for key work. This means that a disproportionate percentage of selection time and effort should be spent on a relatively small percentage of jobs. Of course, careful selection is needed for all the work in the organization, but some work warrants considerably more attention.

The selection approaches that organizations use need to vary based on the nature of the skills that are needed to do the work well. As Table 4.1 shows, it is very important to assess the skills that individuals have by looking carefully at test results and using work simulations, structured interviews, and work histories. This point once again emphasizes the reality that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. This leads to the point that selection should be based on past performance; this is particularly true when the work to be done is similar and there is a chance to observe and validate how a person has performed in the past. This can be done when organizations use internships, take work samples, and use simulations and work-related tests.

Table 4.1 Selecting the right talent

Copyright © Edward E. Lawler III and Center for Effective Organizations at USC.

To be sure that an organization develops an agile workforce, talent selection may require some targeted practices. One is to hire short-term gig or contract employees. The other is to look at the history of individuals and determine whether they have been flexible and agile in their work lives. Have they, for example, changed jobs frequently, learned new skills, and gone to training programs? An agility analysis is particularly important if an organization is committed to developing employees either because the skill sets they need simply are not available in the general population or because an organization is experiencing rapid changes in its business environment, technology, and/or product mixes that are best responded to by long-term employees.

With respect to segmentation, much of the selection process needs to be targeted at the specific skill set needed to do the work for which the individual is being hired. This means that selection methods and practices may differ significantly for different parts of the organization and for different hiring situations; they need to be designed for the work individuals are expected to do and the part of the organization they will be in.

Finally, Table 4.1 shows that it is important to validate the selection practices and decisions of organizations on a continuous basis. This is increasingly possible with the big data and analytics capability that is now available, and increasingly important because of the changing nature of work and the work environment. What may be a good predictor of performance at one point in time may quickly become a poor predictor later because the work and/or the environment in which it is performed has changed. Perhaps the best way to summarize is to say that the selection process needs to become data driven, and the data should be collected and analyzed on a continuous basis.