Job Analysis: Outline

1. Job Analysis: Outline • Overview and Uses of Job Analysis • General Methods of Collecting Job Analysis Data • Specific Methods of Job Analysis • Job Evaluation

2. Job Analysis Defined  The systematic study of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of a job and the qualities needed to perform it.  A collection of methods for understanding What a job consists of and what is required in order to perform the job.

3. Overview and Uses of Job Analysis • Job Description - a detailed description of job tasks, procedures, and responsibilities, the tools and equipment used, and the end product or service. • Job Specification - a statement of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other human attributes (e.g., personality, competencies).

4. General Methods of Collecting Job Analysis Data • Interviewing and Conducting Focus Groups • Observation and Participation • Surveys • Job Diaries.

5. Job Analysis: Interviewing Individuals and Groups • Subject Matter Experts (SMEs): incumbents, supervisors, subordinates, customers • Open-ended or structured • Individual or Group Interviews • Advantages: detailed information, allows for flexibility in data collection • Disadvantages: incumbents may misrepresent their job, can be time consuming and expensive.

6. Tips for Job Analysis Interviewing • Be prepared for the interview. Design questions ahead of time and do some homework on the job. • Always explain to the interviewee who you are and why you are there. • Show a sincere interest in the interviewee and his or her job. • Do not try to tell the interviewee how to do the job. • Try to talk to interviewees in their own language. • Encourage interviewees to speak but keep the interview on-track.

7. Job Analysis: Observation and Participation • Ideally, one should observe a different incumbents on select (representative) occasions. • Observation works best with jobs involving manual operations, repetitive tasks, or other easily seen activities. • Advantages: good information about job context, experiencing what it takes to do the job. • Disadvantages: Hawthorne effect, time consuming and expensive, sometimes impractical.

8. Job Analysis: Existing Data • Training manuals (or videos), existing job analyses, job descriptions, performance appraisal instruments • Advantages: you don’t have to hunt down information, good preliminary information to plan further data collection efforts • Disadvantages: information may not pertain to the particular job you are analyzing

9. Job Analysis: Survey Methods • Develop a questionnaire pertaining to relevant KSAO’s and/or tasks and administer to a large number of job incumbents • Ratings may be gathered with regard to task difficulty, relative amount of time spent on task, criticality of error, importance for job success • Advantages: time is saved, relatively inexpensive, assesses many perspectives • Disadvantage: incumbents may misrepresent job, fatigue (from too many items) may limit the validity of responses

10. Specific Job Analysis Techniques • Critical Incidents Technique (CIT) • Functional Job Analysis (FJA) • Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ)

11. Critical Incidents Technique • A worker-oriented method developed by Flanagan (1954) • Worker oriented method of job analysis • Focuses on examples of particularly successful/unsuccessful on-the-job behaviors • Basic Procedure: • SME’s are gathered to provide as many examples as possible. • Incidents are sorted into categories that make sense

12. Critical Incidents Technique • Advantages: well suited for performance appraisal • Disadvantages: focuses on extreme behaviors rather than typical behaviors, not applied very systematically

13. Functional Job Analysis • A job-oriented method developed by Department of Labor in the 1930’s and later refined by Sydney Fine • Uses a variety of general methods of job analysis (e.g., interview, survey, observation) • The Dictionary of Occupational Titles was created with FJA • All jobs considered in 3 main dimensions: • Data: information, knowledge, concepts • People: amount and type of contact with people • Things: inanimate objects used on the job (MTEWA)

14. Functional Job Analysis • Basic Procedure: • Break job down into tasks • Rate each task in terms of Data, People, and Things • Sum Scores to get a total composite on each dimension • Advantages: comprehensive and effective, suitable for a wide variety of purposes • Disadvantage: can be time-consuming and expensive

15. Position Analysis Questionnaire • A worker-oriented method developed by McCormick and associates at Purdue U. • Standardized questioning containing 194 “job elements” referring to a specific aspect of work behavior (e.g., use of measuring devices) • SME’s rate the relevance of the job elements that are organized into six categories (see textbook, p. 68)

16. Position Analysis Questionnaire • Advantages: can be used for any job, good method for comparing jobs or classifying jobs, relatively inexpensive and easy to use • Disadvantages: people may misrepresent their job, can take a lot of time to administer, must be interpreted at Purdue U., requires a high reading level

17. Limiting Error/Bias in Job Analysis • Use multiple sources of information about the job • Use more than one trained and experienced analyst, if possible • Give analysts enough time to do the job right • Check and recheck information and results

18. Job Evaluation • An assessment of the relative value of jobs to determine appropriate compensation. • A process that allows one to determine the financial worth of a job: • Setting wages • Determining comparable worth (whether jobs that require equivalent KSAOs are compensated equally)

19. A Method of Job Evaluation • The Point System • Determine compensable factors - important and common work factors across jobs used to determine appropriate compensation (e.g., physical demands, responsibility, specialized knowledge, etc.) • Assign each job a score on each compensable factor. • Total scores on compensable factors and convert into dollar amounts.

20. A Method of Job Evaluation • The Point System • Market value of labor also may come into play (supply and demand). • A wage trend line can be created by plotting point totals against current wages. • When wage discrepancy is determined, the underpaid is usually given a raise. • Exceptioning is the practice of ignoring pay discrepancies between particular jobs possessing equivalent duties and responsibilities.

21. Employee Recruitment and Selection • Recruitment • Overview • General Considerations • Realistic Job Preview • Selection • Overview • Deciding Whether a Selection Test is Useful • Specific Selection Tests

22. Employee Recruitment • The process by which organizations attract potential workers to apply to jobs. • Attracting the most suitable and highly qualified applicants as quickly and cheaply as possible so that the applicant pool is large enough to be selective. • The success of recruitment efforts greatly determine whether selection processes will be effective.

23. Employee Recruitment • 4 Main Factors to Consider • Cost • Time-table • Necessity of attracting specific groups • Likelihood that the person hired will perform well and not turnover

24. Employee Recruitment • Recruitment Sources • ads • college recruitment/job fairs • unsolicited write-ins • walk-ins • company transfer and promotion • private employment agencies • executive search firms • employee referrals/word of mouth

25. Employee Recruitment • Affirmative Action Plan - a formal, written plan for reducing the under-representation of minority groups in an organization. • Under-representation - a marked discrepancy between the number of people in the labor force who are available for a job and the number who are actually employed. • Chilling Effect - an organization with a reputation for being uninterested toward certain groups of potential employees.

26. Recruiting Yield Pyramid Hires Offers Interviews Invites Leads Employee Recruitment

27. Employee Recruitment Recruitment Planning Graph Leads Invites Interviews # of People Offers Hires # of Days

28. Employee Recruitment • In an effort to recruit applicants, organizations sometimes misrepresent jobs to make them seem more appealing than they are • Advantage - improves the selection ratio (# of positions to be filled/# of applicants) • Disadvantages • Turnover • Time and money expended to screen applicants. • Public relations problems

29. Employee Recruitment • Parkinson (1957) - Feature the negative aspects of the job and then only those people who are really suited to the job will apply • Advantages • Demands of the screening process are reduced • People who do apply will be well suited • Disadvantages • Few or no people may apply and therefore one cannot be selective • People discouraged may have been well suited for the job

30. Employee Recruitment • The Realistic Job Preview (RJP) • Wanous (1980) • an honest presentation of the prospective job and the organization given to applicants • may take many different forms: a brochure, ad, oral presentation, site visit, videotape of the representative elements of the job

31. Employee Recruitment Origins of RJP: Wanous interviewed new recruits and examined trends in their job satisfaction Job Satisfaction Job Entrance Decision to Take Job Reality Shock Phase Time

32. Employee Recruitment • Wanous suggested that RJPs work because they are a “vaccination of expectations”, that lead to: • self-selection • decreased anticipated job satisfaction • increased commitment to the organization • increased tenure and decreased turnover • performance and job satisfaction increased as a result of role clarity

33. Employee Recruitment • Premack and Wanous (1985) conducted a meta-analysis of 21 studies of RJP (N = 6000) • Six Main Results • RJPs reduce turnover • RJPs increase performance • RJPs lower expectations • RJPs increase self-selection • RJPs increase organizational commitment • RJPs increase job satisfaction

34. Employee Recruitment • Premack and Wanous (1985) meta-analysis • Boundary Conditions of RJP Effectiveness • RJP most likely to work when candidates have unrealistic expectations • Applicants must have a choice of accepting the job or not • Job must have some negative aspects that are likely to impact on the worker. The more negative aspects of the job, the greater the effectiveness of RJP

35. Employee Selection • The process of choosing applicants for employment • The purpose of employee selection processes are to increase productivity and save money by hiring the best people for the job • How do you go about selecting the best applicants? • Background Information • Selection Tests (e.g., paper and pencil tests, interviews, work samples)

36. Deciding whether a selection test is useful • Reliability - the consistency of a measurement instrument or its stability over time • Test-retest reliability - stability over time, correlation between test scores of the same individuals at two different points in time • Internal consistency - stability across items of a selection test, Cronbach’s Alpha, average of all possible split-half correlations

37. Deciding whether a selection test is useful • Reliability • Parallel forms - stability across different versions of a selection test, correlation between test scores of the same individuals using two different versions of the selection test • Validity - concept referring to the accuracy of a measurement instrument • The extent to which a selection test is measuring what it is supposed to measure

38. The Difference Between Reliability and Validity ACME Intelligence Test 1. I am smart. T F 2. I am really smart. T F 3. I was smart yesterday. T F 4. I will be smart tomorrow. T F 5. I am not stupid. T F Deciding whether a selection test is useful

39. Deciding whether a selection test is useful • Validity - Reliability is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for reliability. Reliability sets the upper bound of validity • Content Validity - The extent to which the content of the test is representative of what you are trying to measure (i.e., job performance) • Job analysis is essential for establishing content validity • Typically, determined via expert judgement

40. Deciding whether a selection test is useful • Face Validity - the extent to which a test appears to measure what it should be measuring (from the point of view of a non-expert taking the test) • Applicants may feel they have been treated unfairly when a test lacks face validity which may result in negative public relations and litigation • Although face validity is desirable, it is not sufficient evidence of the usefulness of a test, by itself

41. Deciding whether a selection test is useful • Criterion-related validity - the relationship between test scores and some job-related criterion (e.g., job performance, turnover, etc.) • The correlation between a selection test and a criterion is often referred to as the validity coefficient • Predictive Validity - follow-up method • Concurrent Validity - present-employee method

42. Deciding whether a selection test is useful • Construct Validity - A judgement based on all available data as to whether the test measures what it is supposed to measure • Utility - How much money the test is worth to the organization. Consists of: • Costs associated with administering and using the test • Benefits derived by basing decisions on the test

43. Deciding whether a selection test is useful • Utility is affected by: • Criterion-related validity • Selection ratio • Testing costs • Relative worth or good vs. poor performers (SDY) • Average tenure of workers in the company • Utility Analysis - a mathematical procedure of combining these considerations of utility

44. Deciding whether a selection test is useful • Adverse Impact and Test Bias - whether a test is fair for some group(s)of applicants (majority members) but unfair for members of some other group(s) of applicants (minority members) • Adverse impact occurs when the selection ratio for a minority group is considerably lower than the selection ratio of the majority group • Valid tests can result in adverse impact

45. Specific Selection Tests • Biodata • Cognitive Ability Tests • Personality Tests • Integrity Tests • Physical Agility Tests • Job Knowledge Tests • Work Simulations • Job Interviews • Assessment Centers

46. Biodata • Background information and personal characteristics that can be used in employee selection. • AKA: Biographic Information Blank, Weighted Information Blank • An application blank containing questions that research has shown to measure the difference between successful and unsuccessful performers on a job.

47. Biodata • Advantages: • Predictive of supervisor ratings, absenteeism, employee theft, sales, tenure, and organizational profit • Easy to use, quickly administered, inexpensive • Disadvantages • Dustbowl empiricism/statistical opportunism • Validity may not be stable over time • Bias, invasiveness, faking

48. Cognitive Ability Tests • General Mental Ability (g) - the singular, primary basis of intelligence • Tests typically include questions assessing: • Verbal ability • Quantitative ability • Logic/Reasoning • Many researchers believe it is the single most diagnostic predictor of future job performance.

49. Cognitive Ability Tests • Advantages • Criterion-related validity typically ranges between .4 and .6 • Some tests are very easy to administer • Not fakable • Disadvantages • Adverse impact

50. Personality Tests • Personality: A pattern of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that persist over time and situations and distinguishes one person from another. • Tests of Psychopathology (MMPI-2, Thematic Aptitude Test) • Tests of Normal Personality (NEO, Hogan Personality Inventory, 16 PF) • The Big Five: Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness