Thursday, 8 March 2018
Human Resource Management Assignment
To what extent can the process of employee selection be described as rational and
objective? Support your arguments with evidence from the academic literature on
selection.
A Table of Contents
This is the brief instruction for the essay. The question is shown above.
Please take a look at the Powerpoint Slide which you can find as “Human Resource
Management Lecture Slide “Recruitment and Selection”” in the folder I uploaded.
WITH THIS IN MIND, I would like you to answer the question statement above but please
do not copy any sentences from slides as they are just summaries of textbooks and online
sources.
Here is the conditions for the essay:
THERE ARE A LOT OF CONDITIONS BUT PLEASE PLEASE MENTION THOSE
BELOW IN THE ESSAY
– 2000 words at maximum, excluding reference lists
– At least 7 physical books related to Human resource Management about Employee
Selection
– Minimum 10 online sources related to Human resource Management about Employee
Selection; if you scroll down the pages, you will see the number section where you can
find more links. Please use Harvard Business Review and https://
www.peoplemanagement.co.uk which you can find a lot below. And use other online
sources that are relevant as the official essay (not like wikipedia or some articles that do
not include authors or that are not known as a business websites)
– Be specific about the topic: rational and objective using Academic Literature to support
arguments
– With those slides mind, please use PLENTY of theories (that are relevant and known as
professional) to support the essay
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– Please divide employee selection into some levels; the example is shown below
• A standard hiring regimen: Recruiters
i) Start by reviewing résumés
ii) Move on to phone or face-to-face interviews with the most promising candidates
iii) Draw on various tests, often including psychometric tests, to determine which
applicants are the best fit
‣ You can see more details about above in ‘the number 14 section’ which you can find below
in this PDF. By dividing employee selection into some parts, I would like you to analyse
each stage in terms of conducting selection process rationally and objectively with
appropriate theories.
‣ I left some articles below about how to tackle the selection process at the digital era. Some
of their articles show the cost reduction which can be mentioned in this essay but please
focus on the rational and objective perspective and how these concepts are applied at the
digital era using new methods for employee selection and what disadvantages lie in terms
of rational and objective view (perhaps what can be subjective and biased and how they
can be improved) PLEASE MENTION HOW SELECTION PROCESS IS CHANGING
IN THIS MODERN AGE AND HOW THEY ARE RELATED TO RATIONAL AND
OBJECTIVE CONCEPTS IN SELECTION
‣ In the introduction, please mention the thesis statement that focuses on the study of rational
and objective in employee selection and what kind of areas of literature review the report
examines in order to tackle this question statement, by rephrasing words
‣ There are lots of statistics that support this essay, some of which I found and left in the
number section. Please use those. I left the link as well so you may find more.
‣ I left some notes for each number section but they are NOT ALL mentioned. Please go to
each link for further analytics.
‣ USE OF CASE STUDIES ARE CRUCIAL POINTS; THERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES
IN THE NUMBER SELECTION AND PLEASE USE MORE OF EXAMPLES – BOTH
SIDES OF SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN EMPLOYEE SELECTION AND ANALYSE
THEM WITH ‘THEORIES’
‣ USE OF THEORIES are the MOST important aspects; it would be very very much
appreciated if you could use the relevant ones… and please stick to the question statements
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Thursday, 8 March 2018
These are the books you may find it useful. You do not have to use all but please take a look
at their Human resource Management Section.
Books:
– “Management Theory and Practice” by G. A. Cole
– “NEW ERA OF Management” by Richard L. Daft
– “The Effective Manager: Perspectives and Illustrations” by Jon Billsberry
– “A framework for Management” by Gary Dessler
Books (that can be found online):
– “The Hiring Process: Recruiting, Interviewing, and Selecting the Best Employees”
‣ https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/PPP/PPP-69.pdf
– “Recruitment and Selection: Hiring the Right Person”
‣ https://www.shrm.org/academicinitiatives/universities/TeachingResources/Documents/
Recruitment%20and%20Selection%20IM.pdf
THE NUMBER SELECTIONS
THESE ARE NUMBER SECTIONS THAT I WOULD LIKE YOU TO MENTION. NOT
ALL HAS TO BE MENTIONED BUT PLEASE USE THESE MATERIALS. SOURCES
COME FROM HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW AND HTTPS://
WWW.PEOPLEMANAGEMENT.COM . PLEASE COMBINE SOME OTHER BOOKS/
ARTICLES/LITERATURE REVIEWS THAT YOU FOUND AND ANALYSE THEM.
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Thursday, 8 March 2018
1. Two things to avoid: adverse impact and bias
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/voices/comment/unconscious-bias-recruitersmindsets
• Conformity bias
• Halo/horns effect
• Affinity and similarity bias
• Contrast effect
• Beauty bias
• Conformity bias #2
2. High-quality talent is hard to come by; HR directors need to make a fast decision
when there are two equally qualified candidates competing for the same role.
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/experts/advice/choose-between-candidates
• Research from Robert Half shows that 92% of HR directors are finding challenging
to source skilled professionals
• Robert Half research into happiness at work found that employees who feel they
have good relationships with teammates are 2.7 times more likely to be happy on the
job
‣ Robert Half research 2018 Salary Guide: https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/sites/
roberthalf.co.uk/files/documents/roberthalf-united-kingdom-salary-guide-2018.pdf?
elqTrackId=91ef1b88037a4be3b836848ceb070de1&elq=dcc52243c83b4b9092b68c888
68abde3&elqaid=39987&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=
‣ Extra about US: https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/evaluating-job-candidates/how-tochoose-between-two-strong-job-candidates
3. Rethink the CV for the digital age
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/voices/comment/time-rethink-cv-digital-age
4. Case Study: Is it acceptable to hire your sister?
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‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/experts/advice/fixer-acceptable-to-hire-sister
5. Recruitment by AI
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/long-reads/articles/recruiting-algorithms
‣ Advantages
• Within those categories there lie multiple possibilities.
• Algorithms can write job descriptions that eliminate any form of biased language and
remove all trace of protected characteristics from applications.
• Services such as HireVue can minutely track facial expressions in video interviews to
make judgements on suitability based on body language and tone of voice.
• Chatbots can take over frontline conversations with candidates.
• ‘Data mining algorithms’ can search social media postings for context that might
support an application (often without an individual’s permission, which has led to
legal action in the US).
• There are reasons to suspect the market will accelerate – principally, that technology’s
biggest beasts are now showing an interest. Google’s Hire is a new cloud-based
applicant tracking system that complements the Google for Jobs search engine.
LinkedIn is integrating with the Outlook email platform and Microsoft has introduced
a Resume Assistant to try to standardise CV data and job descriptions
• The opportunity for Silicon Valley is not just that recruitment is big business – £35bn
per year in the UK alone, says the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC)
– but that not even the most generous scientist would attempt to defend the hugely
subjective way most of us hire.
• “Most interviews are a waste of time because 99.4 per cent of the time is spent trying
to confirm whatever impression the interviewer formed in the first 10 seconds,”
Laszlo Bock, former Google HR chief, has said. That’s probably an underestimate.
We construct narratives to justify and support our snap decisions, we value anecdotal
recommendations above hard data and we consistently fail to scrutinise candidates’
claims.
• “In the last five or 10 years, we have been rebranding HR as people analytics in an
attempt to make it more evidence-based. But if you look at what most firms do around
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talent acquisition, they hold an interview and make a decision off the back of that. It’s
not objective.”
• AI cannot force us to admit our fallibility, but it can introduce some objectivity into
proceedings. It does this more easily in some settings – particularly graduate and
volume recruitment, and knowledge or tech work – than others. But to its adherents, it
is a powerful tool. Unilever has been the Trojan Horse of AI recruitment, putting
around 250,000 candidates globally through a system involving gamified
psychometric testing followed by an analysed video interview and an algorithmdriven
selection process. The company’s HR team is “overjoyed” with the results.
‣ Disadvantages
• But there are, undoubtedly, issues to be ironed out. Most pressingly, there is no
irrefutable proof that AI delivers better hires in the long term. As David D’Souza, the
CIPD’s head of London, says: “It’s increasingly easy to measure speed of hire. But
genuinely understanding that, of all the candidates out there, you’ve got the best
person for the job in terms of fit and potential, is an impossible task.”
• Unilever has impressive metrics – £1m in ROI in the first few months of its new
recruitment systems; 80 per cent of AI-suggested candidates judged ‘good hires’; the
‘most diverse’ group of recruits it has ever seen – but others have found that some AIdriven
systems are left wanting in terms of candidate experience or understanding of
more niche roles.
• See more in the following the link above
6. Overlooking people’s natural talents
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/voices/comment/employers-overlook-naturaltalents
• The strengths-based approach
• Be clear about what you mean by high performance. An effective appraisal process
should help managers evaluate employee performance based on objective measures –
not a subjective evaluation of behaviours that may or may not have an impact on
performance
7. Putting data at the heart of the recruitment process
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Thursday, 8 March 2018
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/voices/comment/data-heart-recruitment-process
• Ditch CVs and take a more scientific approach in order to help employees avoid
costly bad hires
• HR and talent acquisition – and the business as a whole – are most likely to be
unsuccessful, as almost 50 per cent of new hires are likely to fail within 18 months.
‣ http://www.businessinsider.com/hiring-tips-geoff-smart-2011-12?IR=T
• when a recruitment exercise starts with screening CVs, false assumptions, hunches
and bias will inevitably shape results for the worse.
• A CarrerBuilder study shows that 46% of candidates exaggerated their ability or the
extent of their experience
‣ https://www.careerbuilder.co.uk/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?
sd=8%2F7%2F2014&id=pr837&ed=12%2F31%2F2014
• Survey by First Advantage shows that 37% of CVs submitted to technology
companies had inaccuracies – a full 10% higher than the national average. Worse still,
almost 27% of those inaccuracies were considered to so serious that they were a major
cause for concern.
‣ http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240233172/Inaccuracies-revealed-intechnology-candidates-CVs
• LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends survey shows that 67% of businesses aren’t
doing a good job of understanding quality of hire. Take a more scientific approach to
recruitment process design. Dispense with the CV. Look for areas where data can take
the place of ‘instinct’ or ‘gut’ decisions.
‣ https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/
pdfs/GRT16_GlobalRecruiting_100815.pdf
8. The Case study of CVs fraud and how organisations tackle those issues
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/news/articles/employers-verify-candidates-cv
• Jayne Rowley, chief executive of Higher Education Degree Datacheck (HEDD) – a
secure, government-run online portal which verifies the degree qualifications of UK
graduates – said most employers ask candidates to supply documents, but many do
not take the time to verify them.
• Research by the Risk Advisory Group found that 38 per cent of the CVs it analysed
from 25-32 year-olds had been falsified, while a poll of 400 people carried out by HR
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and administration recruitment specialists OfficeTeam said the most popular areas for
dishonest information or exaggerated claims were work experience (58 per cent),
education or qualifications (41 per cent), technical skills (40 per cent) and duties
performed in previous employment (30 per cent).
• Rowley said the fake degree industry could only survive because employers were
failing to undertake due diligence. Employers can quickly verify whether a certificate
is authentic by using the HEDD website, which works with 100 of the UK’s 167
universities. It is also possible to use a professional screening agency, and some
recruitment consultants will verify applicants before putting them forward for a job,
or once a job offer is made.
9. Organisations should pay attention to tech industry trends
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/voices/comment/organisations-pay-attentiontech-trends

• Seems useless but take a look at it if you have time
10. CognitionX, a community and market intelligence platform specialising in AI
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/experts/advice/become-expert-ai-hr-recruitment
• Unilever reduced its time to hire by 90 per cent and achieved its most diverse
graduate intake ever.
• Vodafone is getting through its hiring processes in hours when it used to take a week.
11. Chatbots and career pages are the future of hiring
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/news/articles/chatbots-career-pages-future-hiring
• Technology and the need for a human touch dominate agenda at The Recruitment
Conference 2017
• Take a look at it later
12. Criminal record should be sealed from employers
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‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/news/articles/criminal-records-sealed-fromemployers-mp-suggests

• The Lammy review – which was led by David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham
and chair of the all party parliamentary group on race and community, and
commissioned by then prime minister David Cameron in January 2016 – examined
how black, asian and minority ethnic individuals are being treated by the criminal
justice system.
• Take a look at it later if you have time
13. The Case Study: Employees criticised for treating recruitment as a ‘tick box’
exercise
‣ https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/news/articles/recruitment-tick-box-exercise
• UK businesses have failed to update their recruitment processes to reflect the modern
jobs market, despite increased investment in services such as screening, a new report
has found.
• The number of standard and enhanced background checks carried out between April
2014 and January 2016 increased by 80 per cent and 27 per cent respectively,
according to new data from Complete Background Screening (CBS). But it warned
that many organisations were simply using screening as a compliance measure, rather
than as part of genuine investment in recruitment.
• The lack of feedback in recruitment: Charlie Taylor, chief executive of graduate
careers app Debut and founder of the Fight for Feedback campaign, said consistent
feedback was “crucial” to motivating jobseekers, improving the recruitment process
and boosting the labour market. Earlier this year, a survey of 1,000 18 to 23-year-olds
by Debut found that 83 per cent of jobseekers who attended a face-to-face interview
did not received feedback from the employer, despite 77 per cent believing it should
be a legal requireme
14. The test-first approach – cost reduction
‣ https://hbr.org/2013/11/when-hiring-first-test-and-then-interview
• A standard hiring regimen: Recruiters
i) Start by reviewing résumés
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ii) Move on to phone or face-to-face interviews with the most promising candidates
iii) Draw on various tests, often including psychometric tests, to determine which
applicants are the best fit
‣ Their research suggests that this approach is backward
• Utilise short, web-based psychometric tests as the first screening step
‣ Effectively weed out the least-suitable applicants, leaving a smaller, better-qualified
pool to undergo the more costly personalised aspects of the process
• There are some statistics to support their arguments – Take a look at them
15. A scorecard for making better hiring decisions
‣ https://hbr.org/2016/02/a-scorecard-for-making-better-hiring-decisions
• People are biased, emotional, and inconsistent when interviewing and as a result,
decades of industrial psychology research has found, the validity or predictive power
of a typical unstructured job interview is around 20%, meaning that only one in five
interviews increases the baseline odds that a hired candidate will be successful.
• Detection Theory – NEED to understand – NO NEED to do it if busy
• Interview Scorecard – refer to the photo in the following link above
16. Automate Hiring
‣ https://hbr.org/2013/12/we-can-now-automate-hiring-is-that-good
• It has been given a push by five years of relentless cost-cutting. Unfortunately, the
emphasis on cost-cutting has shifted managers’ attention away from the value they
should be creating from these new latest hiring practices—and this is where the future
of hiring lies.
17. How to hire
‣ https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-to-hire
• Take a look at it unless busy
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‣
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