Perceived employability of business graduates: The effect of academic performance and extracurricular activities

Since the beginning of time, individuals have had to make ‘people decisions’: who to marry, to employ, to fight. In recent decades, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have suggested that many of these apparently (quasilogical) decisions are based on powerful people markers that we respond to, but are unaware that we are doing so. We assess people on a daily basis. There is, however, in every culture, a rich and interesting history of the techniques groups have favoured in making people decisions. Many of these techniques have quietly passed into history but others remain in use despite being rigorously tested and found wanting. It appears that there have always been schools of thought with their ingenious methods that assess and reveal the ‘true nature’ of individuals, specifically their qualities, abilities, traits and motives. It is patently obvious that people are complex, capricious and quixotic. They are difficult to actually read, to understand and therefore to predict. Neither their virtues or values nor their potential for disaster are easily apparent. People are deceptive, both in the impression management and self-delusional sense. Some are self-aware: they know their strengths, limitations, even what really motivates them; they may even be able to report their condition. Many others are not. 

Charlatans, snake-oil salesmen and their ilk find easy pickings among those who feel they need to evaluate or assess others for work purposes. The odd thing is that many of these disproved, pre-scientific, worthless and misleading systems still exist. They have advocates who still ply their trade despite lack of evidence that their systems actually work in the sense of providing reliable and valid assessments (see Section 2.6 and Figure 2.7 for an explanation of the technical meaning of ‘reliability’ and ‘validity’, which are the two main psychometric requirements that accurate instruments ought to fulfil). We shall consider some of these. These are essentially pre-scientific methods that pre-date the beginning of the twentieth century. Most have been thoroughly investigated and shown to be both unreliable and invalid. That is, there is ample evidence to suggest it is very unwise to use these methods in selection. However, they continue to be used. One reason for this is that scientific methods are often based on more common sense than these pre-scientific, counterintuitive approaches are. Ironically, counterintuitive methods and approaches have wider appeal than simple, logical methods. In that sense employers and companies are fooled by non-qualified consultants because, like Oscar Wilde, they ‘believe anything as long as it is incredible’. Some of these discredited but still used methods are reviewed in this chapter.

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/87874/frontmatter/9780521687874_frontmatter.pdf

The Psychology of Personnel Selection

The resume is the most commonly used selection tool for organisations. Past studies have demonstrated that recruiter hiring recommendations can be predicted based on the content of applicant resumes. However, the mechanisms underlying the links between resume contents and hiring recommendations remain unclear. The present study extends previous research by examining the mediating roles of recruiters' multi-faceted fit perceptions in a field setting. Data were collected from 216 organisational recruiters who participated in campus recruitment at seven universities in Taiwan. The results showed that applicant work experience and educational background increased recruiter hiring recommendations through recruiter perceived person―job (P-J) fit. In addition, applicant work experience predicted recruiter perceived person―organisation (P-0) fit, which in turn enhanced recruiter hiring recommendations.

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The Effects of Applicant Résumé Contents on Recruiters' Hiring Recommendations: The Mediating Roles of Recruiter Fit Perceptions

Approved: ____________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________ Title and Department ____________________________________ Date 1 FLUID ABILITY, CRYSTALLIZED ABILITY, AND PERFORMANCE ACROSS MULTIPLE DOMAINS: A META-ANALYSIS by Bennett Eugene Postlethwaite A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Business Administration in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa

Fluid ability, crystallized ability, and performance across multiple domains: a meta-analysis

The effects of applicant resume contents on recruiters' hiring recommendations: The mediating roles of recruiter fit perceptions

The relationship between college grade point average (GPA) and recruiters' initial screening decisions was examined using data from 548 job postings in a college recruitment program. Results indicate that in-major grade point average (GPA) is more strongly associated with screening decisions (p= 0.18, SDP= 0.200) than is overall GPA (p= 0.06, SDP= 0.187), but the magnitudes of the relationships varied across decision sets including a larger number of negative values than would be expected from sampling error alone. Subsequent examination of the bivariate data identified 6 different plot types suggesting that recruiters use a variety of GPA decision rules to initially screen applicants in college recruiting. The most common data plots found in 42% of the decision sets suggests that recruiters do not use GPA in screening decisions. But a surprising 81 of 548 decision sets indicated recruiters selected against applicants with high GPAs. Evidence that organizations recruiting for the same job produced different plot types suggests that the use of GPA data in initial screening decisions may be idiosyncratic to individual recruiters.

Nicholas C. D'angelo

Papers

RECRUITERS' USE OF GPA IN INITIAL SCREENING DECISIONS: HIGHER GPAs DON'T ALWAYS MAKE THE CUT