Deck 7: Staffing

Question 1

The goal of any performance review is to identify applicants who score high on measures that purport to assess knowledge,skills,abilities,or other characteristics that are critical for job performance.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

There is much consistency between state laws,cities,and counties for the use of criminal records in hiring.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Companies should ask if candidates are subject to any post-termination agreements with prior employers to reduce legal liability.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Absenteeism and voluntary turnover are the outcomes that drug testing forecasts most accurately.

Question 5

Drug screening is legal because an employer has a legal right to ensure that employees perform their jobs competently and that no employee endangers the safety of other workers.

Question 6

Organizations in the high-growth stage are concerned with fighting for market share and building excellence in their management teams.

Question 7

There should be a fit between the intended strategy of an enterprise and the characteristics of the people who are expected to implement it.

Question 8

The most admired companies live their cultures every day,and they go out of their ways to communicate it to both current employees as well as to prospective new hires.

Question 9

An employer has the legal duty or obligation to provide information to prospective employers.

Question 10

Evidence has shown that written recommendations and referrals can be very valuable in the selection process.

Question 11

There is much consistency among state laws,cities,and countries for the use of criminal records in hiring.

Question 12

Culture is the pattern of basic assumptions a given group has invented,discovered,or developed in learning to adapt both to its external and internal environments.

Question 13

Most employers (98-percent)will verify dates of employment for current or former employees,but most (68-percent)will not discuss work performance.

Question 14

Organizations in the high-growth stage are concerned with market share and cost reduction.

Question 15

Handwriting analysis is an excellent predictor of job performance.

Question 16

A traditional belief of testing experts is that validity is situation specific,and decades of research have supported this assumption.

Question 17

By linking staffing decisions to pay rates,companies try to ensure that their employees have internalized the strategic intent and core values of the enterprise.

Question 18

Unless a measure is reliable,it cannot be valid.

Question 19

Job specifications,which standardize and formalize behavior,should be broadened into task descriptions that reflect the broader and more changeable strategic requirements of an organization.

Question 20

As jobs become more complex,individual differences in output variability also increase.

Question 21

Organizations in the ______ stage are concerned with fighting for market share and building excellence.

A)autocratic
B)democratic
C)high-growth
D)laissez-faire

Question 22

Just as organizations choose people,people choose _______________ that fit their personalities and career objectives.

A)strategy
B)process
C)jobs and organizations
D)regression lines

Question 23

Which of the following is NOT a mechanism through which organizational culture is embedded and transmitted?

A)Promotion criteria
B)Stories,legends,and myths about key people and events
C)Formal statements of organizational philosophy
D)Interoffice memos

Question 24

Decades of research on the peer assessment test indicate that it validly forecasts subsequent job behavior and promotion.

Question 25

Employers are likely to achieve nonbiased hiring decisions if they concentrate on shaping interviewer behavior.

Question 26

Other things being equal,use predictors with the highest estimated validities;they will tend to minimize the number of erroneous acceptances and rejections,and they will tend to maximize workforce productivity.

Question 27

Among employers the most prevalent reasons for using personality tests is their contribution to improving employee fit and to reducing turnover.

Question 28

Which of the following statements about an aging organization is true?

A)It demands extreme cost control through consistency and centralized procedures.
B)It emphasizes the generation of cash to develop new product lines.
C)It is concerned with building excellence in the management teams.
D)It is characterized by a heavy emphasis on product engineering.

Question 29

Even though work samples are miniature replicas of actual job requirements,they are easy to fake,and may to lead to charges of discrimination or invasion of privacy.

Question 30

Mature organizations emphasize:

A)fighting for market share.
B)building excellence in their management teams.
C)holding market share in a declining market.
D)more rigid management controls over workers' actions.

Question 31

According to the text,which of the following is the key priority of the most admired companies,as compared to average companies?

A)Customer focus
B)Minimizing risk
C)Respecting the chain of command
D)Making budget

Question 32

Because thousands of studies have been conducted,validity generalization allows use of this database to establish definite values for the average validity of most predictors.

Question 33

To control for the risks of faking,one strategy is to warn job applicants in advance that distortions can and will be detected.

Question 34

During the _____ stage,it is important to select the kinds of managers who can develop stable management systems to preserve the gains achieved during the embryonic stage.

A)mature
B)high-growth
C)aging
D)entrepreneurial

Question 35

Because each candidate must be tested individually,work-sample tests are probably not cost effective when large numbers of people must be evaluated.

Question 36

Studies have shown that assessment centers are not cost effective because the per-candidate cost may vary from as little as $100 to more than $4,000.

Question 37

Organizations that are in the embryonic stage are characterized by all of the following EXCEPT:

A)high growth rates.
B)basic product lines.
C)significant customer loyalty.
D)heavy emphasis on product engineering.

Question 38

_____ is the pattern of basic assumptions a given group has invented,discovered,or developed in learning to adapt both to its external and internal environments.

A)Culture
B)Strategy
C)Process
D)Entrepreneurship

Question 39

Organizations in the high-growth stage focus on:

A)extreme cost control.
B)refining and extending product lines.
C)cost reductions through economies of scale.
D)the maintenance of market share.

Question 40

Situational judgment tests consist of a series of job-related situations presented in written,verbal,or visual form.

Question 41

Employers should do which of the following when it comes to checking social networking sites for employment decisions?

A)prohibit managers from conducting these checks on their own.
B)Conduct checks only after you have interviewed the candidate and consider them viable.
C)Ensure all candidates are subject to the same checks.
D)All of the above.

Question 42

Which of the following statements about polygraph examinations is true?

A)The physiological indicators measured by the polygraph can be altered by conscious efforts through cognitive or physical means.
B)Advocates claim that polygraph examinations are accurate in more than 90 percent of criminal and employment cases if interpreted by a competent examiner.
C)Critics claim that the tests are accurate only two-thirds of the time and are far more likely to be unreliable for a subject who is not telling the truth.
D)Polygraph accuracy for screening purposes is almost certainly higher than what can be achieved by specific-incident polygraph tests.

Question 43

Although early research showed projective measures not to be accurate predictors of management success,they can provide useful results when the examinee's responses are related to _____ to manage.

A)ability
B)common sense
C)motivation
D)emotional capability

Question 44

_____ is an outcome that drug testing forecasts most accurately.

A)Absenteeism
B)Tardiness
C)Low morale
D)Voluntary turnover

Question 45

_____ is an industry term for losses due to employee theft,shoplifting,vendor fraud,and administrative errors.

A)Negligence
B)Arbitrage
C)Obsolescence
D)Shrinkage

Question 46

Which act requires third-party investigators to secure the applicant's written consent prior to doing a background check?

A)Fair Labor Standards Act
B)Equal Credit Opportunity Act
C)Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
D)Fair Credit Reporting Act

Question 47

The information least likely to be obtained in reference checks and recommendations is:

A)description of the applicant's physical attractiveness.
B)character and interpersonal competence.
C)willingness of a previous employer to rehire the applicant.
D)education and employment history.

Question 48

If employers fail to check closely enough on a prospective employee who then commits a crime in the course of performing his/her job duties,they can be held liable for:

A)quid pro quo.
B)negligent hiring.
C)loss of consortium.
D)hostile environment.

Question 49

_____ is the set of characteristics of a person that account for the consistent way he/she responds to situations.

A)Attitude
B)Personality
C)Reliability
D)Validity

Question 50

Which of the following selection methods is based on the assumption that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior?

A)Leaderless-group discussion
B)Projective test
C)Business game
D)Personal-history data

Question 51

_____ describe a tendency among interviewers to evaluate a current candidate's interview performance relative to those that immediately preceded it.

A)Projective measures
B)Contrast effects
C)Validity generalizations
D)Shrinkages

Question 52

Overt integrity tests are also known as:

A)personality-oriented tests.
B)disguised-purpose tests.
C)clear-purpose tests.
D)veiled-purpose tests.

Question 53

The relationship between state,city,and county laws regarding criminal records and hiring can best be described as:

A)consistent
B)nonexistent
C)familiar
D)inconsistent

Question 54

Because practical considerations make job tryouts for all candidates infeasible,it is necessary to _____ the relative level of job performance of each candidate on the basis of available information.

A)assign
B)predict
C)abandon
D)accept

Question 55

Quantitative evidence of validity is expressed in terms of a(n)_____,which varies in value from -1 to +1.

A)regression line
B)analysis of variance
C)correlation coefficient
D)coefficient of variation

Question 56

Which of the following has been shown to be the most generalizable predictor across jobs?

A)Conscientiousness
B)Agreeableness
C)Openness to experience
D)Extraversion

Question 57

The degree to which the evidence supports inferences that are drawn from scores or ratings on a selection procedure is:

A)validity.
B)reliability.
C)specificity.
D)sensitivity.

Question 58

Which of the following statements about handwriting analysis (graphology)is correct?

A)It is generally valid as a selection device.
B)It is quite expensive to use in selection.
C)It is not widely used in the U.S.
D)It measures a few key personality traits.

Question 59

Which of the following is the most common test/examination used for selection?

A)Medical exam
B)Job skill testing
C)Personality test
D)Interest inventory

Question 60

Which law gives students the legal right to see all letters of recommendation written about them and also permits release of information about a student only to people approved by the student at the time of the request?

A)Equal Educational Opportunities Act
B)Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment
C)Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
D)Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act

Question 61

Which of the following is NOT a consideration when determining the right predictor to be used in the staffing process?

A)The nature of the job
B)The selection ratio
C)The personality of the applicant
D)The cost of the predictor

Question 62

Employers are likely to achieve nonbiased hiring decisions if they concentrate on:

A)only using female interviewers.
B)using a smaller applicant pool.
C)screening initial applicants over the phone.
D)shaping interviewer behavior.

Question 63

If two predictors are roughly equal in estimated validity,which one should be used?

Question 64

What processes should be used when checking social networking sites for hiring purposes?

Question 65

What is the primary motivation of an aging organization?

Question 66

_____ have forecast managerial performance accurately in virtually all the functional areas of business.

A)LGD ratings
B)In-basket tests
C)Polygraph tests
D)Employment interviews

Question 67

Which of the following is least descriptive of assessment centers?

A)Multiple assessment techniques
B)Emphasis on "ability to know" rather than "ability to do."
C)Standardized methods of making inferences from observations.
D)Pooled judgments from multiple assessors.

Question 68

What is an assessment center and what are its advantages?

Question 69

The _____ is a situational test designed to simulate important aspects of a position that assesses an individual's ability to work independently.

A)situational-judgment test
B)leaderless group discussion
C)in-basket test
D)polygraph test

Question 70

Recommendations for improving the validity of the employment interview include all of the following EXCEPT:

A)rely on interviewer first impressions.
B)use open-ended questions.
C)focus only on the competencies necessary for the job.
D)conduct the interview in a relaxed physical setting.

Question 71

_____ have been shown to make the prediction of job performance more accurate above and beyond job knowledge,cognitive ability,job experience,and conscientiousness,while showing less adverse impact based on ethnicity as compared with general cognitive ability tests.

A)LGDs
B)SJTs
C)Polygraph tests
D)In-basket tests

Question 72

Under what circumstance do advocates claim that polygraph examinations are accurate in more than 90 percent of criminal and employment cases?

Question 73

Who first used the assessment center approach,when,and why?

Question 74

In which of the following methods do assessors ask a series of questions targeted at the subject's level of achievement motivation,potential for being a self-starter,and commitment to the Army?

A)In-basket
B)Cold calls
C)Interviews
D)Structured interview

Question 75

Which of the following is an example of a proper interview question as compared to an improper interview question?

A)Are you a U.S.citizen?
B)With whom do you live?
C)Do you have any disabilities or handicaps?
D)Have you ever been convicted of a violation of a law?

Question 76

What procedures can employers follow to avoid legal challenges in conducting drug screening?

Question 77

Which of the following is the advantage of using the assessment-center method?

A)Flexibility of form and content.
B)Adequate feedback to participants.
C)Total control over the information generated during assessment.
D)Rating general exercise effectiveness and performance relative to individual behavioral dimensions.

Question 78

Validity of measurement.

Question 79

Describe the guidelines for providing reference check information.

Question 80

Why is the context in which work sample tests are administered important?