For this unit I am going to discuss the importance of "substantive selection" from chapter 17.
The biggest part of finding new employees is making sure you find an employee that fits well with what the company is trying to accomplish, but also the company is a good fit for the potential new employee. To find this out, companys will use a wide variety of methods. The most common of them is an interview. Here the person being interviewed gets to "sell themself" to the company on why they would be a great fit. On the other hand, an interview allows the company to get a sense of the persons personality and how they present themselves in public. Having this face-to-face interview is the most common because there is no uncertainty left between the company and new employee compared to phone interviews that do not allow for nonverbal q's. Other things used by companys include written tests, which can be anything like a personality test, intergrity test and an intelligence or congitive ability test. Finally, stimulation tests allows companys to actually put the potential employee in a working atmosphere and assign them tasks to see how they perform.
I personally have had to go through several of these methods of hiring. I applied to work at Carrabba's restaurant a couple summers ago and first had to pass a personality test just to get an interview. After I was hired i went through a series of menu, spirits, and company ethics tests before I was allowed to start serving. From the time I got hired to the time I got to serve my first table, it was almost a two weeks. You tend to see this becoming more popular with corporate restaurants these days. They dont want to hire people who can't talk to people and have bad work ethics. To pass all these tests, it took a lot of time and commitment to study the menu and company policy books. People who are not willing to do that are weeded out.
The importance of substantive selection can not be underestimated. Using these methods of hiring can lead to the right people to be hired for the job. It is important to give tests like a personality test in some areas of business because people can put up a front that makes them look like the right fit when they really are not. While interviews are still very useful, it should not be the only method used to base a decision on because the tests do not lie.
