Forgive my rambling. I don’t have much to contribute here, but I generally want to say A)I am glad to see other people thinking about this, and B) I sympathize with the difficulty
The “reducing false positives often means raising false negatives” is one of the core challenges in hiring. Even the researchers who investigate the validity of various methods and criteria in hiring don’t have a great way to deal with it this problem. Theoretically we could randomly hire 50% of the applicants and reject 50% of them, and then look at how the new hires perform compared to the rejects one year later. But this is (of course) infeasible. And of course, so much of what we care about is situationally specific: If John Doe thrives in Organizational Culture A performing Role X, that doesn’t necessarily mean he will thrive in Organizational Culture B performing Role Y.
I do have one suggestion, although it isn’t as good of a suggestion as I would like. Ways to “try out” new staff (such as 6-month contacts, 12-month contracts, internships, part-time engagements, and so on) can let you assess with greater confidence how the person will perform in your organization in that particular role much better than a structured interview, a 2-hour work trial test, or a carefully filled out application form. But if you want to have a conversation with some people that are more expert in this stuff I could probably put you in touch with some Industrial Organizational Psychologists who specialize in selection methods. Maybe a 1-hour consultation session would provide some good directions to explore?
I’ve shared this image[1] with many people, as I think it is a fairly good description of the issue. I generally think of one of the goals of hiring to be “squeezing” this shape to get as much off the area as possible in the upper right and lower left, and to have as little as possible in the upper left and lower right. We can’t squeeze it infinitely thin, and there is a cost to any squeezing, but that is the general idea.
Forgive my rambling. I don’t have much to contribute here, but I generally want to say A)I am glad to see other people thinking about this, and B) I sympathize with the difficulty
The “reducing false positives often means raising false negatives” is one of the core challenges in hiring. Even the researchers who investigate the validity of various methods and criteria in hiring don’t have a great way to deal with it this problem. Theoretically we could randomly hire 50% of the applicants and reject 50% of them, and then look at how the new hires perform compared to the rejects one year later. But this is (of course) infeasible. And of course, so much of what we care about is situationally specific: If John Doe thrives in Organizational Culture A performing Role X, that doesn’t necessarily mean he will thrive in Organizational Culture B performing Role Y.
I do have one suggestion, although it isn’t as good of a suggestion as I would like. Ways to “try out” new staff (such as 6-month contacts, 12-month contracts, internships, part-time engagements, and so on) can let you assess with greater confidence how the person will perform in your organization in that particular role much better than a structured interview, a 2-hour work trial test, or a carefully filled out application form. But if you want to have a conversation with some people that are more expert in this stuff I could probably put you in touch with some Industrial Organizational Psychologists who specialize in selection methods. Maybe a 1-hour consultation session would provide some good directions to explore?
I’ve shared this image[1] with many people, as I think it is a fairly good description of the issue. I generally think of one of the goals of hiring to be “squeezing” this shape to get as much off the area as possible in the upper right and lower left, and to have as little as possible in the upper left and lower right. We can’t squeeze it infinitely thin, and there is a cost to any squeezing, but that is the general idea.
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it is from a textbook: Industrial/Organizational Psychology: Understanding the Workplace, Paul E. Levy