Selection practices

Training and development programs

• Four general skill categories

  • Basic literacy

  • Technical skills

  • Inter-personal skills

  • Problem-solving skills

• Training methods

  • Formal training

  • Informal training

  • On-the-job training: job rotation, apprenticeships, understudy assignments and formal mentoring programs.

  • Off-the-job training: activities such as live classroom lectures, public seminars, self-study programs, Internet courses, webinars, podcasts and group activities that use role-plays and case studies.

Performance evaluation

• Three types of behavior that constitute performance at work

  • Task performance: combination of effectiveness and efficiency at doing your core job tasks.

  • Citizenship: actions that contribute to the psychological environment of the organization, such as helping others when not required.

  • Counter-productivity: actions that actively damage the organization, including stealing, behaving aggressively towards co-workers, or being late or absent.

• Methods of performance evaluation

  • Written essays

  • Critical incidents: way of evaluating the behaviors that are key in making the difference between executing a job effectively and executing it ineffectively.

  • Graphic rating scales: evaluation method in which the evaluator rates performance factors on an incremental scale.

  • Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS): scales that combine major elements from the critical incident and graphic rating scale approaches: the appraiser rates the employees based on items along a continuum, but the points are examples of actual behavior on the given job rather than general descriptions or traits.

  • Forced comparison: method of performance evaluation where an employee’s performance is made in explicit comparison to others (e.g., an employee may rank third out of ten employees in her work unit).

    • Group order ranking: evaluation method that places employees into a particular classification, such as quartiles.

    • Individual ranking: evaluation method that rank-orders employees from best to worst.