Staffing

Staffing has been an important aspect in all types of organizations' development. More and more companies have noticed a good staffing plan could increase productivity and reduce operation costs in terms of lower turnover rate and transition costs. Good staffing could be able to minimize cost in order to maximize profit, because it could assist the company to stay more competitive within the industry. According to the definition by Dr. Green, "staff is the process of identifying work requirements within an organization; determining the number of people and the skills necessary to do the work; and recruiting, selecting and promoting the qualified candidates. It is the selection process of screening and hiring new employees, which includes functions like resume reviewing, interview, drug testing, assessment testing, and background check" (Green, 2003). Different companies have different strategies in how to select their candidates. Depending on the size, geographic and industry etc, so that their strategies could be very different. Therefore, one specific staffing plan might work for one company, but it might not work for another.

"In staffing an organization or an organizational unit, it is important to consider its developmental stage-embryonic, high growth, mature, or aging-in order to align staffing decisions with business strategy" (Cascio, p.268). In the 21st century, due to the reason that new technologies have been invented and improved. That had lead to many organizations change its behavior in terms of the way they deal with customers, suppliers, business partners and employees. Without a careful selection, organizations often hire people that do not fit the job or it is just not the type of work the employee wants to do. There are people who could not keep up with the technology trend working in a place where new technologies always come into place. There are people who could not deal with other people, or with no patient working as a teller in the bank, or going into the teaching field. There are so many different examples in today's world where people apply for jobs that they could not be successful, or in many cases that organizations hire people who do not have the qualifications for the job.

Organizations have encountered some problems that associated with which method to use in the selection process. There are so many tests that organizations could use to select whom to hire, for example: recommendations, reference checks, employment interviews, drug tests, handwriting analysis, polygraph examinations, work-sample test and etc. Organizations could select one or more of these tests, but they have to be careful of the reliability and validity of all the results. Some results might be different depending on the environment of the testing area, or the relationship between the applicants and their previous employer/manager.

Many organizations depend only on the result of the test without taking the reliability and validity into considerations, which that might lead to in hiring the wrong people. What is the difference between reliability and validity? "Reliability is the consistency and the stability of a selection measurement and validity is the degree to which a measure predicts on-the-job performance" (Green, 2003). For instance, the consistency of a test is made for to measure reliability and what kind of method to use to test the candidate is to measure validity. Since reliability and validity are both important aspects in the selection process, let's look at several methods that are used in today's industries.

College Grade Point Average (GPA) is one of the areas that employers look at and might weighted heavily in the selection process. According to a study, "grades have a fully corrected validity in the mid .30s for predicting job performance"(Roth, BeVier, Switzer, & Schippmann, 1996) and "a validity for .20 for predicting starting salary" (Roth & Clarke, 1998). However, those results do not take into other considerations like the ethnic background of the college students. In the 20th century, many companies weight GPA very heavily in determine a candidate should be hired or not, but what does GPA tell us? " GPA represents both verbal and mathematical ability, like SAT, but it is most strongly represents personal motivation" (Brown & Campion, 1994).

With a group of candidates that without any working experiences, GPA has more valid reason to use as a method in the selection process. However, in most cases, there are many people from different backgrounds that apply for the same job. Some of the candidates might have a high GPA without any working experiences, and some of them might have a moderate GPA with working experiences. How could the employer decide which one is the best fit for the position? "The career planning literature suggests GPA is sometimes rated as moderately important" (Posner, 1981). But it is typically rated as one of the most important pieces of information considered in the interviewing process.

"Hypotheses indicated that GPA will change as students progress through college as well as students from different ethnic group" (Roth & Bobko, 2000, p. 400). Many studies have shown that Whites tend to have a higher college GPA than Blacks, "Use of college GPA to select for employment is associated with fairly large ethnic group differences for seniors. Although college GPA has moderate validity for predicting job performance" (Roth et al., 1996), the large ethnic group difference means that many Blacks might be screened out of jobs. " Blacks will be screened out at higher rates than Whites if cumulative GPA is used in selection" (Roth & Bobko, 2000, p. 404). Does that mean employers should hire Whites instead of Blacks? Definitely not, GPA is just one of the ways to determine if the candidate have verbal, mathematical skills and personal motivation, but does not mean a person might have a lower GPA would perform worst than a person with a higher GPA at work.

"Interviews are notoriously unreliable and invalid in predicting on-the-job performance, interviewers' decision are overly influenced by first impressions, non-relevant individual characteristics, contrast effects and general impressions" (Dr. Green, Spring 2003). Some companies require a telephone interview before a face-to-face interview, because there would be cheating problems associate with just conducting a telephone interview alone. With regards to the unreliable and invalid information that has been given out to the interviewers, why do most companies require at least one interview in order to consider the candidate? Telephone interview has the problem that "the interviewee might have someone else take the interview