hello and welcome to edia world today we will be moving into the third part of our session on Recruitment and placement which is employee testing and selection now in the previous session we had focused on the methods managers use to build an applicant pool and in this session what we would be discussing is how to use these various tools to select the best candidates for the job and the main to topics that we'll be covering uh includes the selection process uh basic testing techniques uh background reference checks types of tests and so on so moving on to the uh class why is careful selection so important right um once you review your applicant resume the next step is selecting the best candidates for the job right that's what we had discussed in our previous session and um nothing you do at work is more important than hiring the right employees and it is important for three main reasons uh which I have mentioned here uh one is the organizational performance the cost and the legal obligations now coming to the first point which is the organizational performance first of all your own performance right as a manager as an HR Manager or even as a department head or any sort of manager your performance always depends on your subordinance and employees with the right skills will always do a better job for you and the company so the time to screen out undesirable employees is before they are in the door and not after right you do not want to realize your mistake once they have joined your company and they become employees therefore selection is very important that is something you can take care of before uh an applicant becomes an employee uh second is the cost the cost to hire and recruit uh this is important because it's costly to recruit in higher employees you know you might uh think uh okay it's it's just Recruitment and you just need to uh select somebody but uh it's it's more than that and that's what we've been discussing in all these sessions right uh you need to hire train advertise there so many costs that go into just getting the right person and you know even just for one employee so even if you have to hire uh for a position of a clerk right that can cost uh about 30,000 rupees more or more in uh fees and supervisory time and uh so so you can imagine the cost of hiring a manager that would be easily 10 times as high as uh you know hiring a clerk so there are a lot of expenses your interviewing time the search fees reference checking travel moving expenses there's a lot of cost to it and you would want to you know spend that wisely um the third is legal obligations right so third so legal aspects are important because um mismanaging the process may lead to Legal implications and you do not want to find yourself or your company in such a situation so as an organization you should be aware that you all have or we have the company has a legal responsibility to ensure that no unlawful discrimination occurs in the Recruitment and selection process uh basically on the grounds of uh sex race disability Age religion pregnancy and so on so another another another mistake which uh companies do is a term called negligent hiring right and that means hiring employees with criminal records so you don't want such problems either right you as a company you need and you are uh responsible to ensure that you do not and you avoid negligent hiring because you don't want to hire somebody who has access to your customers's homes and that who has a criminal record and then you know um that's going to be a big issue um especially I'm sure you would have read a lot about these uh cab companies right um hiring the wrong sort of drivers and who have criminal backgrounds and uh as a company it is your responsibility to ensure that your customers are safe so these are the three reason why careful selection is important moving on basic testing Concepts right so before we you know have a look at the various type of tests that we can perform to select the right candidate let's understand the difference between these two terms which is reliability and uh validity so reliability is a test first requirement and that refers to consistency consistency of a test and um how do you know a test is reliable right it the test that you're using as an organization need you need to ensure that it has consistent scores when a person takes it more than once so which means if a person scores 90 on an intelligence test on a Monday and then 130 when he's retested or she's retested on another day then you probably wouldn't have much faith in that test would you so there are several ways to estimate the consistency or reliability you could administer the same test to the same people at two different points in time and then compare their test scores um at time uh at time two with their scores at time one and this would be a retest estimate right and um uh validity coming to the point of validity um reliability on one hand tells you that the test is measuring something consistently but it does not prove that you are measuring what you intend to measure so validity actually um ensures that you are measuring what you intend to measure so or at least what you think it's supposed to be measuring right so moving on the types of tests that are available now we can conveniently classify tests according to according to whether they measure the cognitive ability which is the mental ability uh motor and physical abilities personality and interests and achievement as well so let's have a look at each of these separately right so cognitive ability the test for cognitive abilities so these tests uh include um test of General reasoning ability which is intelligence and test of specific mental abilities like memory and inductive reasoning so intelligence test um you know also known as IQ you would have heard of IQ tests uh test of General intellectual abilities so they measure not a single trait but rather a range of abilities including memory vocabulary verbal fluency and numerical ability and intelligence is often measured with individually administered tests and one of the most common tests are the Stanford Binet test and the uh westla test so there are also um measures of you know specific mental abilities and um these tests are usually called as aptitude test by psychologists right and uh most of you who would have completed their college uh degrees on the day of your campus interviews most companies would have given you an aptitude test and uh that is also one of the forms of selection now coming to the next point which is the motor and physical abilities you might also as as an organization want to measure the motor abilities like your finger dexterity or the manual dexterity especially if you're hiring a pilot right you would want to um test his or her reaction time and um it also measures the speed and accuracy of simple judgment as well as speed of your finger your hand your arm movements so there are various tests uh for B dexterity tests out there as well and um other than that you know test of physical abilities Also may be required now say for as an example of if you want to hire a lifeguard right so you would Al obviously need to find out if they can swim right before they hired so that is a physical test um then the third point is measuring the personality and interest now a person's cognitive and physical abilities they alone explain his or her job performance so there are other Factor factors like motivation and interpersonal skills and um and they're more and they're equally important as well so you know a non-performance of an employee is usually most of the cases um you know they are obviously hired based on their qualifications but uh when they're asked to leave or they're fired and that is usually a result of personal characteristics Sugg just the attitude or motivation um you know or maybe the temperament so that is something you would want to avoid when you are selecting somebody right try and avoid these issues that tomorrow you don't have an unpleasant day um now employeers use personality test to measure and predict such intangibles so for example uh with hulet Packard uh HP uh fa selection process for the CEO they put their finalist through a 2hour 900 question personality test and then candidates had to indicate whether statements like okay whether you know when I bump into a piece of furniture uh do I usually get angry is that true or false right so those S of sort of questions on what your reaction would be you know given a particular situation and um a lot of other firms especially in the us they use tests like Mayer Briggs and uh the burkman method personality assessment uh to help new employees you know understand what kind of job they would be best at so I've just put a link at the bottom of this slide uh basically it leads to the Mayers Briggs uh personality assessment it's something you all could uh try out after this session you know just uh for fun uh you all could understand uh what your personality is like and what kind of job would suit you best you know based on the personality and these this test is widely used uh in the US and some of the companies in India also start started using it um so it's uh pretty uh accurate and uh probably would also you know help you understand more about yourself so try it out um next point is uh background investigations and reference checks right um oh sorry I did not complete the previous slide um moving on um so what do personality tests measure right personality test tests measure basic aspects of of an applicant's personality such as introversion stability and motivation and um industrial psychologists have often focused on personality dimensions and uh they they refer to something known as the big five right and these Dimensions usually include you know Dimensions like extraversion and emotional stability agreeableness openness to experience and so on um moving on the next uh type of test is an achievement test now that is something which you are all aware of something that you all have been doing since school and uh they test or measure what someone has learned so most of those test that you take in school are achievement tests and they measure your job knowledge in areas like economics marketing or human resources right so achievement tests uh you know in addition to job knowledge they also measure the applicant's abilities um like a typing test is also an example of an achievement test um moving on to background and background verification and um ref refence checks right um so testing is only a part of an employer selection process other tools also include a background investigation so why perform background investigations right um so one of the easiest ways to avoid hiding mistakes is to check the candidates background thoroughly and uh doing so is not expensive right if and if it's done right it's very useful so there there's usually no reason um why even supervisors and large companies can't check the references of someone they're about to hire it's quite simple right so and today uh you know you of course you don't have to do it yourself there are a lot of third party service providers who do that for you and this is becoming increasingly popular in in Indian organizations too and um you know so a lot of Indian firms are using their services right now so coming back to the point of why perform them right um so lying on one's application isn't very unusual and a survey has found that 23% of 7,000 executive resumes contained exaggerated or false information so um one is to verify the information provided by the applicant and a lot of times what happens is um people exaggerate on their CVS which is a complete no no so those of you who have done that and think that it's okay to do that you may want to rethink about it um and of course uncovered damaging information right because uh even even you know really big companies sophisticated companies can fall pre to criminal employees so it is very important to conduct proper background checks so for example in um Chicago there was a pharmaceutical firm they discovered that it hired gang members in the mail delivery in computer repair Division and what these criminals were doing were they were stealing close to a million dollars a year in computer parts and then using the mail Department to ship them to nearby computer store that they had owned so you you your search depends on the position that you seek to fill as well so you it doesn't mean that um whatever position you hire you you know go ahead and do all of these checks right like their reference checks their employe background employment checks criminal records physical medical exams driving records education check now say if you're hiring an accountant right you don't really need to do all of these checks the main check would be a credit uh record and an education record at least you know you need to see what they have said is true um whereas if you're hiring a security guard it doesn't make sense to go into his or her um you know education background or uh the credit background right you would rather go into things like um a criminal record check a reference check from his or her previous employer and uh so on so so thank you for joining my class and I hope you enjoyed this session uh next session we will be discussing in detail on how to effectively interview candidates thanks for tuning in and stay tuned for more