254

EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

burden  of  which  he  should,  to  a  very  large  extent,  have
been  relieved.  In  exceptional  cases  the  employment
office  may  be  obliged  to  ask  some  expert  in  the  shops  to
interview  an  applicant;  but  in  the  majority  of  cases  the
employment  office  should  be  able  to  make  and  be  responsible ­
  for  its  own  decisions.
Another  plan,  and  one  which  is  also  commendable,  is  to
give  prospective  interviewers  a  special  course  of  training
in  order  to  acquaint  them  with  the  kinds  of  work  for
which  they  are  to  hire  applicants.  This  is  a  vast  improvement ­
  over  the  plan  which  allows  mere  clerks  to  conduct
the  interviews.  However,  it  also  has  its  drawbacks.  In
the  first  place,  a  man  trained  in  this  way  is  likely  to  have
only  a  superficial  knowledge  of  jobs;  and  while  this  is
better  than  none,  it  is  still  too  fragmentary  to  make  his
estimate  of  an  applicant’s  ability  in  a  certain  direction
very  authoritative.  Moreover,  as  long  as  the  knowledge
of  jobs  is  based  upon  the  impressions  which  a  group  of
constantly  changing  interviewers  gain  in  this  manner,
there  is  certain  to  be  a  trouble-breeding  variation  and
inconsistency  in  their  methods  of  employment.  This
difficulty  has  already  been  pointed  out  in  Chapter  I  and
elsewhere.
None  of  the  plans  mentioned  provide  for  a  permanent
and  reliable  solution  of  this  problem.  What,  then,  can  be
done  to  meet  this  difficulty?  The  plan  which  seems  most
hopeful  and  which  is  gradually  being  adopted  is  the  one
which  provides  for  a  standardized  description  of  all  the
jobs  involved,  based  upon  a  thorough  and  practical
analysis  of  all  jobs  by  persons  entirely  familiar  with
them.  It  can  readily  be  seen  that  once  such  a  set  of  job
specifications  has  been  drawn  up,  it  will  serve  as  a  comparatively ­
  permanent  and  reliable  basis  for  reference  in  all