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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 respon 
sible 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 improve 
ment 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 com 
paratively permanent and reliable basis for reference in all