EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
duction, or costly breakage in one department. If no such 
definite and limited problem has been made obvious, but if 
the management wishes to raise the general level of effi- 
ciency in its employment department, then the investigator 
will find it advisable before he proceeds with his investiga- 
tion to ask the cost department to help him find the job 
where increased efficiency in selecting employees would 
bring about the greatest economic saving. 
A New England investigator, a novice in research, was 
given an assignment in the personnel department of a pub- 
lic service corporation to “try out this psychological test 
business, and see if there is anything in it for our company.” 
He asked a psychologist, “What tests do you recommend 
that we should try?” But he could not state whether the 
heaviest losses due to poor selection were being suffered in 
the office or in the boiler-room, among the executives or 
among the sales representatives. It was a new idea to him 
that his own cost accountant might be able to advise him 
better than a psychologist as to the most promising point 
of attack in his research. Later he assured himself that the 
number of clerical workers hired and the cost of training 
them were such that a 5% increase in accuracy of selection 
would more than pay for the cost of administering a scien- 
tific program. 
An association of employing printers, in cooperation with 
the typographical unions of New York City, was considering 
a research to develop a scientific technique of selecting boys 
to receive training as compositor apprentices. The research 
worker’s inquiry, however, as to the effectiveness of the 
present informal but carefully administered methods of selec- 
tion, revealed the astonishing fact that only 2% of the boys 
selected proved to be unsatisfactory students in the appren- 
tice school. As this was the only available criterion of good 
selection, it was decided, wisely, to defer research on psycho- 
logical tests for selection. Better tests of progress and of 
trade proficiency were the immediate need. 
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