Coming soon · Book Profile
Personnel Selection and Assessment
An edited international volume arguing that personnel selection and assessment must be understood and designed from the individual applicant's perspective as well as the traditional organizational one.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
For decades personnel selection research optimized only the organization's cost-benefit calculus, treating job candidates as objects to be measured rather than as people whose perceptions, reactions, and welfare matter. This volume, assembled from an international conference of distinguished applied psychologists, systematically restores the individual side of the selection ledger. It introduces the organizing concept of 'social validity'—the degree to which selection situations offer information, participation, transparency, and feedback—and marshals empirical and theoretical chapters spanning recruitment, interviews, assessment centers, job analysis, motivational distortion, performance appraisal, feedback, fairness, team-based criteria, computer-assisted assessment, and complex problem solving. Read it to understand why technically valid procedures still fail, how applicant reactions shape utility, and how organizations can build human resource systems that are simultaneously competitive and humane.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- An applied psychologist, HR practitioner, or selection researcher who wants selection systems that are both valid and humane.
- The problem
- Selection and assessment procedures are optimized for the organization but frequently repel, distort, or alienate the very candidates they are meant to evaluate. The practitioner feels professionally uneasy that a core psychological tenet—the welfare of the individual—is being ignored in employment settings.
- The plan
- Adopt the individual-plus-organizational framework and the attraction-selection model.
- Apply the social validity concept: build in information, participation, transparency, and feedback.
- Study and design for applicant perceptions and reactions at each phase of selection.
- Reconsider criteria (team performance) and the goals of appraisal and prediction.
- Use contemporary tools thoughtfully to serve both parties, and evaluate systems for fairness as a whole.
- The payoff
- Selection systems that attract and retain qualified candidates while remaining valid and legally defensible. · Applicants who feel informed, respected, in control, and fairly treated. · Human resource systems that are simultaneously competitive and humane.
See our guide
Related profiles we’ve built
Additional reading
- Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Assessment and Development Centres; Best practice guidelines · British Psychological Society (BPS)
Cited by the author as an authoritative source for best practice, covering key issues like fairness, design, and evaluation that are central to the book's guidance.
- Assessment Centres (3rd edn) · C Woodruffe
Recommended for readers seeking a broader overview and history of the assessment centre method.
- The big five personality dimensions and job-performance; a meta-analysis · Barrick, M R and Mount, K M
Provides the empirical support for the book's caution against over-relying on personality tests in selection, a key topic in Chapter 5.
- A theory of the validity of predictors in selection · M Smith
Offers a theoretical framework for understanding why different selection tools have varying levels of effectiveness, underpinning the book's core argument.
- Competence at Work · Spencer, L M and Spencer, S M
A foundational text on the concept of competence, relevant to Chapter 2 on developing a competence framework.
- Development and Assessment Centres · Charles Woodruffe
Cited as a key text for readers wanting a more recent and in-depth exposition of assessment centre work, a core topic of the book.
- Performance Management: The new realities · Michael Armstrong and Angela Baron
The book uses Armstrong and Baron's definition of performance management as its foundation, making their work a primary source for understanding this core concept.
- The Competent Manager: A model for effective performance · R. F. Boyatzis
The author attributes the current usage and definition of 'competency' to Boyatzis, making this a foundational text for a central theme of the book.
- Appraisal and Feedback: Making performance review work · Clive Fletcher
Fletcher is cited as an authority on appraisals, a key one-to-one interaction within performance management, providing deeper insight into this specific practice.
- The Easy Guide to Repertory Grids · D. Jankowicz
The book presents the repertory grid as a powerful technique for developing interview models; this book is recommended as a highly accessible introduction to the method.