Human Resource Management 15th Edition by Robert Mathis,John Jackson,Sean Valentine ,Patricia Meglich

Exercise 1

Behavioral Assessments
Companies attempt to assess job candidates on a wide range of attributes to improve P/E fit. Testing knowledge or hard skills can often be done in a relatively straightforward and easy way by asking candidates questions about the job content area or having them perform a sample of the job duties. Such ability tests help ensure that those hired will be capable of successfully performing the tasks involved in the job.
But there is much more to P/E fit than a good match between the applicant and the job requirements. Employers also need to determine whether applicants will work well with their designated teams or work units and if they will be a good long-term fit for the organization as a whole. Assessing the applicant's fit with the organization's culture, their work style, and their potential are much more difficult.
That's where behavioral assessments come into play. A company usually works with experts in Industrial/Organization Psychology to identify the competencies that have proven to lead to successful job performance. This often involves studying top performers to see what differentiates them from average or poor performers. Those qualities are then built into an assessment tool, which is often administered online early in the screening process. Each company can customize its assessment to measure employee performance elements that are most critical to success. Two companies in the same industry may value different aspects of employee performance.
AMC Theaters found that using a behavioral assessment to determine applicants' friendliness, service orientation, and dependability reduced turnover to well below industry averages and improved employee engagement by 40%. This led to increased customer satisfaction scores, which in turn resulted in higher revenue at its theaters. Seaport Hotel World Trade Center, Inc. in Boston instituted a 20-minute behavioral assessment in its online screening process and reduced turnover to single-digit levels. The assessment focused on determining each job candidate's cultural fit for a particular job in the hotel.
These powerful results have led to an uptick in the use of behavioral assessments. While skill and knowledge tests are used by over half of U.S. companies, over a third are now using behavioral assessments to refine their selection process and generate better organization results.
Considering the popularity of behavioral assessments, discuss the following questions:
What ethical and legal concerns does the use of behavioral assessments raise? Do you believe that these assessments might be more subject to bias than skill and knowledge tests might be?