THE PROBLEM OF SELECTION -
times social acceptability, either within the group of fellow-
workers or with the public, is essential. To know the
outstanding requirements of each job, whether of inspector,
elevator operator, millwright, salesman, or accountant, and
to be able to discover and rightly appraise indications of
ability to succeed in this job as they are revealed in the facts
of the applicant’s personal history and of his behavior in
examination and interview—these are the difficult duties of
the specialist in employment.
Initial selection of employees for particular positions in
industry, business, and the civil service is, however, no more
vital than the selection of applicants for special vocational
training. The number of college graduates annually seeking
admission to such a professional school as the Harvard Med-
ical is much larger than the number of available places,
making it necessary for the faculty to give a great deal of
time and consideration to the selection of those who are
admitted. The dental faculty of another university, realiz-
ing that men they had taught for two or three years fre-
quently had to be dropped for lack of fundamental muscular
coordinations essential to the acquisition of skill, asked a
psychologist to prepare a battery of motor coordination tests
as an aid in selecting first-year students. The works man-
ager of a prosperous and progressive factory is debating
with his staff—while these words are being written—as to
the advisability of introducing a two- or three-year course
of instruction and factory experience for the purpose of
developing supervisors. “How will you pick your young
men for this training?” he asks of his educational director.
“Tell me how you are going to select the boys who have it
in them to make good supervisors.” Since the educational
director has at present no plan of demonstrated worth for
selecting future supervisors from among the factory em-
ployees and the young high-school and college graduates of
the community, he proposes to make a thorough study of
the personal histories, the personalities and the abilities of
those young men now in supervisory positions in the com-
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