346

EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

well,  or  because  it  promises  to  allow  him  to  be  near  his
friends,  his  preference  for  that  work  may  be  called  a  derived ­
  preference.  Such  a  preference  may  usually  be  modified ­
  during  the  course  of  an  employment  interview.  If
not,  it  belongs  in  the  group  of  fixed  preferences.  Finally,
there  are  many  applicants  who  have  very  little  choice  or
none  at  all.  These  applicants  are  willing  to  take  almost
any  job,  at  a  reasonable  rate,  which  the  employment
office  can  give  them.
The  first  step  in  every  interview  should  be  to  ascertain
the  nature  of  the  applicant’s  preference  and  to  which
of  these  classes  it  belongs.  When  this  has  been  done,
the  subsequent  steps  can  be  guided  accordingly.  We
shall  take  up  each  one  of  these  possibilities  separately,
since  in  each  case  the  plan  of  procedure  involves  fundamental ­
  variations.  In  a  case  of  the  first  kind,  where  the
applicant’s  preference  has  been  fixed  by  previous  training,
the  procedure  is  a  straightforward  one  of  discovering
how  much  the  applicant  knows  about  his  trade  and  how
well  he  is  fitted  for  the  work  which  the  employment  office
has  at  its  disposal.  In  discovering  these  facts,  the  interviewer ­
  will,  unless  he  is  very  familiar  with  the  work  in
question,  first  look  up  the  description  which  has  been
furnished  by  the  job  analysis.  He  will  then  compare  the
candidate’s  application  blank  with  the  job  description  to
discover  whether  the  applicant  has  the  requisite  experience, ­
  age,  education,  and  so  forth,  required  by  the  particular ­
  job.  If  the  information  on  the  application  blank  is
satisfactory,  the  next  step  is  to  conduct  tests  which  shall
reveal  how  thorough  and  extensive  the  education,  experience, ­
  and  ability  of  the  applicant  really  are.  Obviously,
it  is  one  thing  to  claim  certain  things  on  an  application
blank  or  in  an  interview  and  another  to  be  in  possession