Recruitment and Selection Processes

The accuracy of assumptions about the effectiveness of recruitment and selection processes wiU vary with the nature of the processes. Chapter 5 examines a number of recruitment and selection processes, with a particular emphasis on their ability to assess (predict) a new employee s safety behavior. This chapter offers recommendations on the design of recruitment and selection processes and on procedures to ensure employees correcdy perceive their organization s ability to predict new employee s safety behavior. 

The following sections examine two processes associated with recmitment activities (i.e., job analysis, and realistic safety preview), and a range of selection predictors (application blank, applicant interview, cogiutive, physical, psychomotor, sensory/perceptual ability testing, personality testing, and attitude measurement) which an organization can use to help predict job applicant (new employee s) safety behavior, and overall their ability to work safely. Where appropriate, recommendations on how recruitment and selection processes can be used to improve new employee safety are discussed. Finally, this chapter examines how employees perceptions of organizational processes can be made more realistic. 

Burt and Stevenson (2009) and Burt et al. (2009) examined employees perceptions of organizational processes and how these are associated with their reactions to new employees. Perceptions of recruit and selection processes are discussed in Chap. 5, and perceptions of socialization and prestart training processes are discussed in Chap. 6. Both chapters note how a perception that organizational processes helps ensure safety can be associated with a lowering of risk perceptions, a decrease in behaviors which should ensure safety, and thus an overall increase in workplace safety risk. Scales used to measure perceptions of tmst in selection process, trust in induction processes, and employees reactions to new employees (compensatory behaviors) are published in the appendix of Burt et al. (2009). 

Wistow, G., Andersoa A. Piatigorsky, J. (1990). Evidence for neutral and selective processes in the recruitment of enzyme[Pg.263]

Job description and person specification documents that contain safety information can clearly provide the foimdation for the development of a recruitment and selection program which has at least the possibility of a successful outcome. Further, Thompson and Thompson (1982) provide an excellent review of the steps required to help ensure that courts accept job analysis information as the foundation of selection predictor development and or selection decisions. Furthermore, a job description that includes a section on safety can be used in the expectation setting processes as discussed in Chap. 3, Sect. 3.7.2. In contrast, if there has been no systematic attempt to understand what the requirements are to perform a job in a safe manner, it is unlikely that the recruitment and selection system will be delivering the safety benefits that it potentially could. Furthermore, it is likely that employees trust in these processes to deliver a safe new employee may be somewhat misplaced. 

Inflammatory cells infiltrating postischemic tissue are considered to contribute to disability after cerebral ischemia [5,8,17]. Identification of factors involved in the selective recruitment and accumulation of inflammatory cells into ischemic brain tissue and the mechanisms behind the entry of leukocytes through the blood-brain barrier into sites of ischemia are not completely understood [5,8]. Locally produced proinflammatory cytokines such as TNF-a, IL-1 P, and IL-6 initiate the inflammatory process. TNF-a and IL-1 P mRNA elevate in the brain after experimental middle cerebral artery occlusion [5,51,81]. While, IL-1 p and TNF-a play a major role in promoting adhesion between endothelial cells and leukocytes, they are poor attractants for polymorphonuclear leukocytes and monocytes [7]. Astrocytes and endothelial cells can respond in vitro to such proinflammatory cytokines with enhanced expression of chemokines, which results in the influx of leukocytes to areas of inflammation [5,8,103]. 

The Influences of Recruitment Processes and Selection Predictors on New Employee Safety... 

While many organizations still request job applicants to provide a CV, the use of an application blank has many advantages over the traditional CV. Wood and Payne (1998) offer a competency-based approach to application blank design. Using a competency-based format, the application blank only requests information on job-related competencies, as opposed to the CV which may well contain a lot of information which is not relevant to the selection process. Further, an applicant blank can be structured such that the required information is presented by the applicant in specific sections, whereas the unstandardized nature of CVs can require a recruiter to undertake a lot of searching in order to identify the required information. 

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