Candidate Selection Process Research Articles

Predicting EdD Applicant Potential Using Structured Behavioral Interviews During the Application Process

This essay describes the work of faculty at a public university in the southeast to align their application process with CPED principles through the addition of structured behavioral interviews. Their work was grounded in the premise that redefinition of the Ed. D. program to focus on the effective preparation of scholarly practitioners also requires a redefinition of the type of student who is most likely to benefit and, consequently, how the applicants most likely to achieve success are identified and admitted. A structured interview was added to the application process as a tool to gather data to accurately predict the likelihood of student success in the program and as a leader of change in schools. The development of the interview was guided by selection science literature, and questions were aligned to essential student attributes. Although the interview questions and process are still evolving, data from the initial administration suggests that the interview has promise as a useful element of the candidate selection process.

Minimal Factionalism in Singapore’s People’s Action Party

Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) is one of the longest ruling parties in the world. The PAP’s ability to avoid overt factionalism over the years is exceptional, especially compared to the region’s personalistic or cadre parties. In recent years, the defection of former PAP cadre Dr. Tan Cheng Bock and the formation of the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) and PM Lee Hsien Loong’s family rivalry, which involved PAP elites, have challenged the cohesion of the PAP. This study examines a set of incentives and constraints institutionalised at the party and national levels to foster elite cohesion. It is argued that the critical junctures in the PAP’s early years led to the adoption of a cadre party model and a centralised candidate selection process that co-opts like-minded elites into a core that promotes elite unity. Nationally, party switching and factional alignments based on ethnicity or ideology have been systematically banned. Given the lack of credible alternatives that seriously challenge the incumbent PAP, ambitious party cadres would do better toeing the party line and staying loyal.

Effects of different resistance mechanisms on antimicrobial resistance in Acinetobacter baumannii: a strategic system for screening and activity testing of new antibiotics

A total of 50 engineered strains with various antimicrobial resistance mechanisms were constructed by in-frame deletion, site-directed mutagenesis and plasmid transformation from two fully-susceptible strains (Acinetobacter baumannii KAB1544 and ATCC 17978), including 31 strains with chromosomally-mediated resistance and 19 with plasmid-mediated resistance. Each of the 50 resistance mechanisms showed similar effects on the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of KAB1544 and ATCC 17978. Compared with the parental strains, the engineered strains related to some efflux pumps showed a significant (≥4-fold) difference in the MICs of β-lactams, quinolones, aminoglycosides, tetracyclines, folate pathway inhibitors and/or phenicols, whereas no significant effects on the MICs were found for the engineered strains lacking OmpA, CarO, Omp25, Omp33, OmpW or OprD. Mechanisms due to GyrA/ParC mutations, β-lactamases, aminoglycoside-modifying enzymes, 16S rRNA methylases and tet resistance genes contributed their corresponding resistance, as previously published. In conclusion, strains constructed in this study have clear resistance mechanisms and can be used to screen and assess compounds against specific resistance mechanisms for treating Acinetobacter. In addition to our previously published system for Enterobacteriaceae, the combination of these two systems could increase the coverage of bacterial types for drug assessment and facilitate the selection process of new candidates in drug development against drug-resistant superbugs.

Green candidate selection for organizational environmental management

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a new typological environmentally sustainable human resources management evaluation framework to aid green candidate selection process for environmental management in developing economy local government agencies.Design/methodology/approachPresenting the narrative of developing economies local government context, this paper conducts an extensive review of relevant literature on green human resources management (GHRM) and green recruitment and selection.FindingsDrawing on Siyambalapitiya et al. (2018) and the resource-based theory (RBT), the paper proposes and discusses an evaluation framework for guiding organizations’ green candidate selection process. The framework comprises of seven stages which begins with “training recruiters on green candidate assessment” to “making selection decision and inducting selected candidate” on organization’s environmental management policies and practices, and its green values.Research limitations/implicationsApplication of the proposed framework has implications for enhancing organizations’ efficiency, reducing cost, eliminating environment waste, as well as fostering green culture among employees. This paper also extends the strand of RBT by explaining how organizations could assess and select job applicants with significant intangible capability such as environmental management skills, knowledge and values to foster its competitive urge and sustainability.Originality/valueThis paper makes two main contribution to the GHRM literature. First, the paper proposes a new typological environmentally sustainable human resources management evaluation framework. Secondly, the paper focuses the framework on developing economies and local government organizations context, something that is currently non-existent.

The Merit of Party Institutions: Women’s Descriptive Representation and Conservative Parties in Australia and the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT Generally, right-wing political parties tend to fall behind their left-wing counterparts on women’s representation. Conservative parties emphasize individual merit rather than structural barriers as an explanation for low levels of women succeeding in candidate selection processes. Some right-wing parties have made more progress than others. Comparing parties within the conservative family, we aim to reveal what institutional factors may retard or promote women’s representation. We find that the decentralization of the candidate selection process combined with electoral losses created opportunities for critical actors to act to increase women’s representation to around 20% in Australia, some 15 years earlier than in the United Kingdom.

A Machine Learning approach for automation of Resume Recommendation system

Finding suitable candidates for an open role could be a daunting task, especially when there are many applicants. It can impede team progress for getting the right person on the right time. An automated way of “Resume Classification and Matching” could really ease the tedious process of fair screening and shortlisting, it would certainly expedite the candidate selection and decisionmaking process. This system could work with a large number of resumes for first classifying the right categories using different classifier, once classification has been done then as per the job description, top candidates could be ranked using Content-based Recommendation, using cosine similarity and by using k-NN to identify the CVs that are nearest to the provided job description.

Los que seleccionan (y los seleccionados). Una aproximación a los diputados nacionales peronistas por la provincia de Buenos Aires entre 1946 y 1955

The article studies the candidate selection process for national deputies by Peronism in four successive elections, developed in 1946, 1948, 1951 and 1954, in the scenario constituted by the province of Buenos Aires. In each case, the ruling group that controlled the selective process, the prevailing formal or informal norms, and the criteria or logic that presided over the process are analyzed. The work is part of current research lines related with the first Peronism, either the one that emphasizes the role of second line leaders and the one that privileges the study of provincial politics. It contributes to the empirical knowledge of Peronist political staff and to the discussion about the organizational dimension of the Peronist movement

Kandidatenaufstellung zur Bundestagswahl 2017. Untersuchungen zu personellen und partizipatorischen Grundlagen demokratischer Ordnung

The political parties represented in the Bundestag have about 300 .000 active members, from whom all elected officials, from local councils to the European Parliament, are recruited . Due to the ongoing membership decline in parties the pool of eligible candidates is also reduced . In spite of this worrying development and the outstanding importance of the parties’ recruitment function for the stability and functioning of the political system, for the last five decades the candidate selection processes for the German Bundestag have neither been analyzed extensively nor systematically . Hence, the Institute of Parliamentary Research (IParl) addressed this research gap and studied the candidate selection before the German parliamentary elections of 2017 by asking who selects whom in which way and for what reasons in the constituency or for the party lists as candidate for the German Bundestag . The results underline the worrying situation: Not only the personal but also the participatory basis of democracy has been shrinking over time . Although the parties hold membership conventions more often, in 15 years the participation of the electorate from CDU, CSU and SPD declined by 46 percent . Thus, inclusive participation offers are not a universal remedy . Rather, the parties have to make sure that such offers are really used comprehensively .

A Novel Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm With Levy Flight

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a widely applied meta-heuristic algorithm. Little researches focused on the candidate selection mechanism, which was developed based on the simple uniform distribution. This paper employs the Levy flight mechanism based on Levy distribution to the candidate selection process and takes advantage of Levy flight that not only guarantees the search speed but also extends the searching space to improve the performance of ACO. Levy ACO incorporating with Levy flight developed on the top of Max-min ACO. According to the computational experiments, the performance of Levy ACO is significantly better than the original Max-min ACO and some latest Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) solvers.

Transcanal Transpromontorial Approach to Lateral Skull Base: Maximal Area of Exposure and Surgical Extensions

To determine the possible surgical extensions and maximal area of exposure (AOE) achievable through the transcanal transpromontorial approach (TTA) to the internal auditory canal (IAC) and cerebellopontine angle. We hypothesize a possible extension of indication for this minimally invasive approach to the lateral skull base. In this experimental anatomic study, the expanded TTA was first carried out in 4 temporal bones to define the anatomic boundaries of the maximal exposure, from 2 perspectives, the middle ear and the porus of the IAC. Consecutively, these identified boundaries were translated on segmented 3-dimensional (3D) surface models of 32 temporal bone high-resolution computed tomography scans. The dissections performed were the basis followed during the determination of the AOE on the 3D surface models. The measurements revealed that the AOE at the middle ear was 152.9 ± 33.6 mm2, whereas it was 151.9 ± 24.8 mm2 at the porus of the IAC. The mean superoinferior and anteroposterior extensions at the middle ear were 14.7 ± 2.5 mm and 16.9 ± 2.5 mm, respectively. On the other hand, the mean superoinferior and anteroposterior extensions at the IAC porus were 10.3 ±1.3 mm and 18.5 ± 1.9 mm, respectively. Consistent with the minimally invasive approaches, the AOE is limited; however, if compared with traditional approaches, it appears of considerable size. Our results may assist the surgeon in the selection process of the appropriate candidates for the TTA and to tailor the approach to the disease.

A mass spectrometry guided approach for the identification of novel vaccine candidates in gram-negative pathogens

Vaccination is the most effective method to prevent infectious diseases. However, approaches to identify novel vaccine candidates are commonly laborious and protracted. While surface proteins are suitable vaccine candidates and can elicit antibacterial antibody responses, systematic approaches to define surfomes from gram-negatives have rarely been successful. Here we developed a combined discovery-driven mass spectrometry and computational strategy to identify bacterial vaccine candidates and validate their immunogenicity using a highly prevalent gram-negative pathogen, Helicobacter pylori, as a model organism. We efficiently isolated surface antigens by enzymatic cleavage, with a design of experiment based strategy to experimentally dissect cell surface-exposed from cytosolic proteins. From a total of 1,153 quantified bacterial proteins, we thereby identified 72 surface exposed antigens and further prioritized candidates by computational homology inference within and across species. We next tested candidate-specific immune responses. All candidates were recognized in sera from infected patients, and readily induced antibody responses after vaccination of mice. The candidate jhp_0775 induced specific B and T cell responses and significantly reduced colonization levels in mouse therapeutic vaccination studies. In infected humans, we further show that jhp_0775 is immunogenic and activates IFNγ secretion from peripheral CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. Our strategy provides a generic preclinical screening, selection and validation process for novel vaccine candidates against gram-negative bacteria, which could be employed to other gram-negative pathogens.

Survey of residency program directors' perceptions of nontraditional pharmacy residency applicants.

The attitudes and expectations of residency program directors (RPDs) regarding nontraditional residency applicants (NTAs) were evaluated. This was a cross-sectional, survey-based study targeting RPDs of American Society of Health-System Pharmacists-accredited residency programs. A 14-question survey requesting information related to demographics, perceptions of NTAs compared with traditional applicants, advantages and disadvantages of NTAs, and advice for NTAs was administered electronically to RPDs. The primary outcome of this study was to determine RPDs' perceptions of NTAs as suitable residency candidates. The secondary outcome evaluated the rate of NTA acceptance into residency programs and a qualitative assessment of RPDs' advice for NTAs. Of the 1,414 RPDs contacted to participate, 328 (23%) completed the survey. RPDs were primarily affiliated with postgraduate year 1 pharmacy practice (52%) or postgraduate year 2 specialty residencies (30%), and 35% reported having an NTA in their program. Most respondents (87%) reported that NTAs are given equal consideration relative to traditional residency applicants. RPDs rated work experience as the most important quality of an NTA, followed closely by the ability to work with others and teachability. Most (277 [85%]) RPDs agreed that NTAs should possess experiences beyond work experience, such as research, leadership, and community service. The biggest concern regarding NTAs was significant time since graduation prior to application. The majority of RPDs did not perceive NTAs differently from traditional applicants in the selection process of prospective candidates.

ЯКІСТЬ ВІДБОРУ ОФІЦЕРІВ ЗС УКРАЇНИ ДЛЯ НАВЧАННЯ В АД’ЮНКТУРАХ ВВНЗ, НАУКОВО-ДОСЛІДНИХ УСТАНОВ: ТЕОРЕТИЧНІ ТА ПРАКТИЧНІ АСПЕКТИ

Introduction. The article deals with the quality of selection of officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for military postgraduate study in the HMEI, RI. The system of military training needs to be improved in order to influence positively the further development of the Armed Forces, to develop promising and improve existing models of weapons and military armament; to substantiate and introduce new approaches to the application and provision of troops (forces); to carry out scientific and pedagogical activity in appropriate educational institutions and scientific institutions.Purpose. The purpose of the article is to analyze the process of selection of officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for military postgraduate study in the HMEI, RI and justification on this basis of recommendations on improving its quality through the introduction of appropriate tools and proposals for making changes to the current legal and regulatory basis.Methods. The following methods were used: system analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, comparison, classification, generalization and systematization.Results. The proposals to the current legislation on improving of quality of selection of officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for postgraduate education in military institutions were presented in the article.Originality. Authors developed a questionnaire for admission process, proposed and substantiated recommendations to the legal and regulatory basis on improving of quality of officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for military postgraduate study in the HMEI, RI.Conclusion. Such an approach will allow to make more objective previous rating of the candidates for admission, to forecast the success of his\her research and defense of the thesis, and to promote the improvement and greater openness of the selection process for candidates for postgraduate military study.

Consistent Shape Matching via Coupled Optimization

AbstractWe propose a new method for computing accurate point‐to‐point mappings between a pair of triangle meshes given imperfect initial correspondences. Unlike the majority of existing techniques, we optimize for a map while leveraging information from the inverse map, yielding results which are highly consistent with respect to composition of mappings. Remarkably, our method considers only a linear number of candidate points on the target shape, allowing us to work directly with high resolution meshes, and to avoid a delicate and possibly error‐prone up‐sampling procedure. Key to this dimensionality reduction is a novel candidate selection process, where the mapped points drift over the target shape, finalizing their location based on intrinsic distortion measures. Overall, we arrive at an iterative scheme where at each step we optimize for the map and its inverse by solving two relaxed Quadratic Assignment Problems using off‐the‐shelf optimization tools. We provide quantitative and qualitative comparison of our method with several existing techniques, and show that it provides a powerful matching tool when accurate and consistent correspondences are required.

Developing a situational judgement test for admission into initial teacher education in Oman: An exploratory study

ABSTRACT In Oman, applicants are selected for initial teacher education programs (ITEPs) based mainly on their academic achievements. Applicants’ non-cognitive attributes (NCAs) (e.g., resilience and motivation) receive less attention. Situational judgment tests (SJTs) are a type of simulation test that are used in the candidate selection process for different professions. We aim to (a) develop an SJT for selecting ITEP applicants in Oman, (b) explore its psychometric properties, and (c) explore applicants’ reactions to the test. There were four study phases. Phase 1 used a multi-step design to explore the NCAs’ underlying teacher effectiveness. Phase 2 used these NCAs to develop an SJT with working teachers (N = 116). The developed SJT was initially piloted in Phase 3 with new ITEP candidates (N = 171) and was then piloted with other criterion measures in Phase 4 (N = 142). Results demonstrated good SJT internal consistency (α = .75). SJT scores correlated significantly with scores on two facets of the Big Five personality measure (i.e., conscientiousness and agreeableness). Additionally, SJT scores were positively correlated with participants’ GPA, but not with their interview scores. Participants’ reactions to the SJT were positive. With further research, SJTs could prove helpful for selecting teachers in Oman.

Espionage against Poland in the Documents and Analyses of the Polish Special Services (1944–1989) – as Illustrated by the Intelligence Activities of the USA

Tekst omawia problem działalności szpiegowskiej wobec Polski w okresie 1944–1989. Analiza ta została wzbogacana danymi ilościowymi z okresu 1944–1984 w zakresie skazań za udział w obcym wywiadzie, działanie na jego rzecz oraz przekazywanie informacji. Problematykę szpiegostwa przedstawiono na przykładzie działalności USA, co zostało zobrazowane przykładami poszczególnych osób, które zostały skazane za działalność szpiegowską. W rozważeniu problemu badawczego posłużono się dokumentami i analizami opracowanymi przez Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych, głównie przeznaczonymi dla pracowników Służby Bezpieczeństwa i Milicji Obywatelskiej. W pracy podjęto się zweryfikowania następujących pytań badawczych: (1) W jakim stopniu charakter systemu społeczno-politycznego wpływał na liczbę skazań za szpiegostwo wobec Polski w analizowanym okresie 1944–1989?; (2) Jaki był poziom zainteresowania wywiadowczego obcych służb specjalnych Polską przed 1990 r.?; (3) Czy można wskazać na specyfikę działalności wywiadowczej USA przeciw Polsce?

The Evaluation of Emotional Intelligence among Medical Students and Its Links with Non-cognitive Acceptance Measures to Medical School.

BackgroundThe importance of emotional intelligence (EI) to the success of health professionals has been increasingly acknowledged. Concurrently, medical schools have begun integrating non-cognitive measures in candidate selection processes. The question remains whether these newly added processes correctly assess EI skills.ObjectivesMeasuring EI levels among medical students; examining the correlations between participants’ EI levels and their scores on the non-cognitive MOR test; and exploring students’ attitudes regarding the importance of EI in medical practice.MethodsThe study included 111 first-year and sixth-year students at the Faculty of Medicine at the Technion, Haifa, Israel. Emotional intelligence was assessed by the Bar-On EQ-i 2.0, and MOR evaluation scores were provided by the faculty. An additional questionnaire was designed to rate students’ attitudes toward the importance of EI to the success of medical doctors (MDs).ResultsNo significant correlations were found between MOR test scores and EI evaluation scores. Of the 15 EI competencies evaluated, mean scores for flexibility, problem-solving, and independence were lowest for both the first-year and the sixth-year study groups. No differences in EI levels between first-year and sixth-year students were found. Both groups of students considered EI to be highly important to their success as MDs.ConclusionsWhile further studies of the links between MOR tests and EI are required, the current findings indicate that MOR test scores may not be predictive of medical students’ EI levels and vice versa. As previous evidence suggests that EI contributes to professional success and to better outcomes in the field of medicine, integrating it into selection processes for medical students and into the curricula in medical schools is recommended.

Task recommender system using semantic clustering to identify the right personnel

PurposeText mining is growing in importance proportionate to the growth of unstructured data and its applications are increasing day by day from knowledge management to social media analysis. Mapping skillset of a candidate and requirements of job profile is crucial for conducting new recruitment as well as for performing internal task allocation in the organization. The automation in the process of selecting the candidates is essential to avoid bias or subjectivity, which may occur while shuffling through thousands of resumes and other informative documents. The system takes skillset in the form of documents to build the semantic space and then takes appraisals or resumes as input and suggests the persons appropriate to complete a task or job position and employees needing additional training. The purpose of this study is to extend the term-document matrix and achieve refined clusters to produce an improved recommendation. The study also focuses on achieving consistency in cluster quality in spite of increasing size of data set, to solve scalability issues.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, a synset-based document matrix construction method is proposed where semantically similar terms are grouped to reduce the dimension curse. An automated Task Recommendation System is proposed comprising synset-based feature extraction, iterative semantic clustering and mapping based on semantic similarity.FindingsThe first step in knowledge extraction from the unstructured textual data is converting it into structured form either as Term frequency–Inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) matrix or synset-based TF-IDF. Once in structured form, a range of mining algorithms from classification to clustering can be applied. The algorithm gives a better feature vector representation and improved cluster quality. The synset-based grouping and feature extraction for resume data optimizes the candidate selection process by reducing entropy and error and by improving precision and scalability.Research limitations/implicationsThe productivity of any organization gets enhanced by assigning tasks to employees with a right set of skills. Efficient recruitment and task allocation can not only improve productivity but also cater to satisfy employee aspiration and identifying training requirements.Practical implicationsIndustries can use the approach to support different processes related to human resource management such as promotions, recruitment and training and, thus, manage the talent pool.Social implicationsThe task recommender system creates knowledge by following the steps of the knowledge management cycle and this methodology can be adopted in other similar knowledge management applications.Originality/valueThe efficacy of the proposed approach and its enhancement is validated by carrying out experiments on the benchmarked dataset of resumes. The results are compared with existing techniques and show refined clusters. That is Absolute error is reduced by 30 per cent, precision is increased by 20 per cent and dimensions are lowered by 60 per cent than existing technique. Also, the proposed approach solves issue of scalability by producing improved recommendation for 1,000 resumes with reduced entropy.

Combining Clientelism and Incumbency Advantage: Political Strategy in Candidate Selection for the 2017 Local Head Election in Bekasi Regency

This article discusses the post-clientelist initiatives used by political parties in the selection of candidates within the party to determine the regent and vice regents nominated for the local election. Candidate selection is the political domain of political parties, but in the context of figure-based politics, parties tend to play more as political vehicle in the candidacy of local head. Through this role, resource exchanges take place between parties and candidates within the internal party candidacy arena. Using qualitative methods through in-depth interviews and observations of candidate selection in the Bekasi Regent 2017 election, this article seeks to reveal how post-clientelist initiatives are used by party elites to optimize the incumbency advantage as main political resource in the candidate selection to determine who will pair the incumbent. The results show that the dominance of party elites in candidate selection process determines how financial resources and political support are optimized to win the incumbent. Decision to choose the vice-regent from the same party while still forming coalitions with other parties indicates that post-clientelistic strategy is operated both internally and externally. This practice confirms the tendency of the candidate selection model to be more inclusive because it involves other parties, but remains pragmatic.

Competency profiles for lean professionals – an international perspective

PurposeRequirements for business improvement professionals depend on different job characteristics. By focussing on lean management, the purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a comprehensive conceptualisation of competencies relevant for lean professionals by comparing them to an existing project management competency framework; and second, to identify their similarities and differences in three different analysed countries.Design/methodology/approachThis paper investigates 2,701 online published job advertisements in the USA, UK and Germany by means of a content analysis to compare and contrast the respective job profiles.FindingsMain findings are similarities and differences in the specification and perception of lean professional’s roles among the three countries. Strikingly, four out of eight considered competency categories comprise 74 per cent of the profiles’ most relevant keywords. Additionally, with the help of a latent semantic analysis, 16 specific competencies can be summarised in a lean professional’s competency taxonomy.Research limitations/implicationsThe collected data only represent a snapshot of lean professionals’ advertisements. Also, text mining results from job profiles could largely differ from other techniques like recruiter interviews or company surveys. Further research could use different methods or combine them to construct a more complete model.Practical implicationsLean education and training as well as the respective candidate selection processes can benefit from these studies’ results.Originality/valueRequirements and job contents for lean professionals have not been empirically researched on a comparable in-depth level before, even though their expertise is in high demand in any kind of business sector.