Assessing Important and Observable Personal Qualities in the General Selection Interview 1This study was funded by Science 3 (Air) of the Ministry of Defence.

Abstract

Typical job analysis methods derive personal qualities (PQs) such as traits, constructs, skills and attributes that are important to the job. Such methods are unsuitable to derive measurement criteria for use in general selection interviews because important PQs are not necessarily easy for the interviewer to observe and thus to assess. In this study, a job analysis method was used to derive important and observable PQs which were used to assess candidates within a structured, life-history, general selection interview. After correcting for range restriction and adjusting for number of variates, the multiple correlation of the PQs against success at the next stage of training was: 0.41 for non-graduates; 0.28 for staff; and 0.18 for graduates. Two possible explanations, both to do with observability of PQs, are proposed to explain these differences in predictive validity. It is argued that the proposed method can have similar validity to the situational interview for some groups of candidates without the problems and limitations of the situational interview.