Job Performance: Assessment Issues in Personnel Selection

An important construct in Industrial, Work and Organizational (IWO) psychology, organizational behavior, and human resources management (personnel selection, training, and performance evaluation) in general, and personnel selection in particular, is the construct of job performance. Job performance is the most important dependent variable in IWO psychology. A general definition of the construct of job performance reflects behaviors (both visually observable and non-observable) that can be evaluated. In other words, job performance refers to scalable actions, behaviors, and outcomes that employees engage in or bring about that are linked with and contribute to organizational goals. To date, most researchers focusing on the construct of job performance have confined themselves to particular situations and settings with no attempt to generalize their findings. Also, there has been an emphasis on prediction and practical application rather than explanation and theory building. The consequence of these two trends has been a proliferation of the various measures of job performance in the extant literature. Virtually every measurable individual differences dimension thought to be relevant to the productivity, efficiency, or profitability of the unit or organization has been used as a measure of job performance. Absenteeism, productivity ratings, violence on the job, and teamwork ratings are some examples of the variety of measures used to measure job performance.