Oxford Handbook of Personnel Assessment and Selection (Schmitt, Neal
Eds.
A comprehensive scholarly handbook synthesizing a century of science and practice in how organizations identify, measure, and choose the people most likely to perform effectively in their jobs.
This handbook is the definitive reference for anyone who wants to understand the full landscape of personnel assessment and selection. Edited by Neal Schmitt and written by leading industrial-organizational psychologists, it traces the field from its origins around 1900 through modern web-based, global, and team-based selection challenges. It systematically covers the individual-difference constructs that predict performance (cognitive ability, personality, interests, physical ability, self-evaluations), the methods used to measure them (interviews, biodata, simulations, self-reports, individual assessment), the multidimensional criteria that define job performance (task, contextual, counterproductive, turnover, adaptability, safety), and the societal and organizational constraints (legal, cultural, strategic, diversity, applicant reactions) that shape what selection systems can and should do. Combining rigorous validation theory (validity generalization, meta-analysis, job analysis) with practical guidance on implementing and sustaining selection programs, it equips researchers and practitioners to build defensible, valid, and context-sensitive selection systems.
The model it argues
A causal path model in which contextual conditions and selection-design levers (job analysis, measurement methods) shape the measurement and expression of individual-difference KSAOs, which predict multidimensional job performance and organizational outcomes, with validity as the central inferential link.
Key ideas
- Job Analysis
- A systematic procedure for identifying the critical tasks of a job and the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics required to perform them effectively.
- Predictor Measurement Method
- The technique or mode used to collect applicant data about KSAOs, distinct from the construct being measured.
- Cognitive Ability
- Hierarchically organized capacity for information processing, problem solving, and learning, dominated by a general factor g.
- Personality Traits
- Relatively stable, consistent patterns of behavior across situations, organized by the Big-Five factor model.
- Interests and Work Values
- Learned affective responses of liking toward activities and environments, and enduring work-related value preferences.
- Person-Environment Fit
- The degree of congruence between an individual's needs, values, and skills and the demands and rewards of the job or organization.
- Contextual Conditions
- Higher-level social and organizational factors (culture, law, strategy, HR systems, leadership, climate, groups) that shape KSAOs and performance.
- Criterion-Related Validity
- The empirical correlation between predictor scores and job performance criteria used to support the inference of predictive utility.