Screening and Interviewing external candidates

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TESTING: SOME BASIC CONCEPTS

ONE WAY TO “PICK” THE BEST APPLICANT

Richard J. Wagner, PhD

Part-time Faculty

Capella University

Uupdated: January 28, 2016

Intelligence

Cognitive ability

Skills

Integrity

Drug testing

Aptitude

Medical tests

Personality

Language skills

Computer

Driving

Typing

TYPES OF TESTS USED FOR SELECTING CANDIDATES

ISSUES IN TESTING

Legal issues: job-related, reliable, valid

Test must be all three of the above to be used as a selection device

Errors:

False positives (pass the test but can’t do the job)

False negatives (fails the test but can do the job)

CUT-OFF SCORES

Importance during selection:

This is the score above which we “hire” and below which we “do not hire”

TESTING OPTIONS TO CONSIDER

Using a test score by educational level

Cognitive ability:

For the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT) (0-50 score range)
High school graduate mean score: 21
College graduate mean score: 29

Using a test score by “potential”

For the WPT:
28 and over (17% of the population): potential for upper-level management
Can draw conclusions from job situations
16-22 (27% of the population): routine office worker potential
Must allow enough time and experience while training

MORE TESTING OPTIONS TO CONSIDER

Hiring in the upper 25% of a group

For the WPT:

Mean score of 27 and above
Upper 50%: WPT mean score of 22 and above
Upper 75%: WPT mean score of 17 and above

By job category

Using the WPT to hire for the following jobs:

Engineer: 28.6 average
Claims adjuster: 26.9 average
Meter reader: 20.9 average

TESTING ERRORS

A “test” that is 95% accurate is good, isn’t it?

What that means is 5% of the people tested (for example, in a test for illegal drugs), are inaccurately scored, so 5 people out of every 100 are scored incorrectly.

We don’t know:

Who is inaccurately scored

Who passed who should not have passed

Who failed but should not have failed

MORE ABOUT TESTING ERRORS

There are four quadrants in this diagram

TESTING ERRORS EXPLAINED

True positives

People who “pass” the test and would perform as the test predicts

Example: Test indicates they do NOT use illegal drugs, and they really do NOT.

True negatives

People who “fail” the test and would not perform acceptably as the test predicts

Example: Test indicates they DO use illegal drugs, and they really DO.

False negatives

People who “fail” the test but would perform acceptably, the opposite of what the test predicts

Example: Test indicates they DO use illegal drugs, but they really do NOT.

False positives

People who “fail” the test but would not perform as the test predicts

Example: Test indicates they do NOT use illegal drugs, but they really DO.

The End