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|Science Plays a Key Role in High-Risk Job Hiring |
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|by Clif Boutelle, SIOP Public Relations |
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|When it comes to hiring personnel in high-risk jobs like public safety, agencies, often under heavy scrutiny, have to be accountable in |
|employing people who can perform up to high expectations. |
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|When a police officer arrives at an accident scene, a lot of decisions must be quickly made. The situation has to be rapidly assessed, the |
|victim or victims have to be evaluated, medical help may have to be called, other officers called in, traffic has to be cleared so as not |
|to impair an investigation, traffic may have to be rerouted and those involved have to be interviewed for a report of the incident. |
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|The officer must act quickly and decisively and the margin of error is often small. |
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|These are all decisions that are common to high-risk occupations that demand workers who have the ability to function efficiently and |
|handle the stress associated with these kinds of jobs. |
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|“Not everyone is well-suited to work in a high risk job,” says Kelley Krokos of the American Institutes for Research in Washington, D.C. |
|and an authority on personnel selection, especially for jobs considered high risk. |
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|She and Lycia Carter of Aon Consulting, will be taking part in a presentation assessing the state of personnel selection for high-risk |
|occupations at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology April 10-12 in San Francisco. |
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|“We consider high-risk occupations to include any job for which the possibility of error is significant and for which the consequence of |
|error is likely to result in harm, physical injury or death to not only the individual performing the job but for others as well,” said |
|Krokos. |
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|She lists law enforcement, fire, military and aviation jobs as among the most visible high-risk occupations. Also, certain jobs at nuclear |
|facilities and in the medical profession, such as trauma center work, can potentially result in harm to others. |
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|Considering that public safety is often at the heart of these occupations, hiring people who have the right mix of physical and mental |
|abilities to perform these jobs is extremely important, says Carter, who previously played a key role in hiring police officers for the |
|Metropolitan Police Department in Washington D.C. |
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|But how can the right hiring decisions be made for these occupations? |
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|In fact, selecting, evaluating and predicting the best performers among job candidates involves a great deal of science; something that |
|industrial and organizational psychologists are particularly well trained to accomplish. |
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|The first thing that needs to be done, says Krokos, is a comprehensive evaluation to determine the key attributes needed to properly |
|perform a particular job. While high-risk occupations can be diverse, there are some common traits that workers in these jobs possess. |
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|Sound decision making and stress tolerance are important attributes, according to Carter. “Sometimes a person doesn’t have a lot of time to|
|think about what must be done and he or she must be able to tolerate high amounts of stress,” she said. |
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|It is important to select someone who can deal with situations demanding urgency. “That’s the value of a thorough job analysis: to identify|
|the attributes that will allow the employee to manage the technical aspects as well as the environmental or situational demands of the job.|
|Then testing can determine the candidates best suited to handle those factors,” said Krokos. |
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|I-O psychologists have a lot of tools to help managers make good hiring decisions, including developing and implementing recruiting plans, |
|pre-employment tests, situational judgment exercises, post-employment testing and developing training and performance management processes.|
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|Law enforcement and fire departments, for example, often use internal or external I-O consultants to help them with the critical task of |
|hiring employees who can handle the high-risk requirements of those professions. |
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|There are two kinds of tests that have proven validity and reliability that I-O psychologists may employ: cognitive and personality. |
|Cognitive tests measure a candidate’s ability to learn all aspects of the job and its procedures, whereas personality tests can predict a |
|person’s fit for the position. |
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|“Personality includes a wide range of characteristics that people possess; many of them have an impact upon the ways people behave in the |
|workplace,” according to Deniz Ones of the University of Minnesota, who has been involved in numerous studies on personality tests. |
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|Job-related characteristics can be isolated and measured with the results providing data that are useful in selecting people to hire, she |
|points out. |
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|What about the employee whose actions bring discredit to their organizations? These are the people who often get media attention, not those|
|who are performing their positions at a high level. |
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|No process can eliminate every poor hiring decision, Krokos and Carter concede. But, they point out, the rate of hiring suitable employees |
|who will perform at expected levels is far higher by using these procedures than not using them. |
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|“People change over time and what may have been a good hire could turn into a bad one,” admits Carter. |
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|“That’s why it is important to monitor employees and develop a tracking system that can lead to an early warning that something is |
|happening to an employee. When an individual’s behavior seems troublesome, then management will have the opportunity to implement some kind|
|of intervention, be it remedial training, a referral to an employee assistance program or closer supervision. |
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|“Selection doesn’t occur in a vacuum. If there is a performance problem you have to look at all the potential causes, not just the |
|selection process. There are training and performance management considerations as well,“ Carter said. |
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|All organizations, especially those in the public sector, employing people in high-risk positions have a large investment in personnel and |
|it is important to hire the right people and use every tool available to ensure success. |
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