EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY
NEWLY HIRED VERSUS OLD EMPLOYEES
Measurements of abilities may be evaluated by compar-
ing them with the vocational accomplishment of seasoned
employees, or by obtaining these measurements on new
workers at the time of hiring, and postponing the valida-
tion until their vocational accomplishment has been de-
termined. Either method is justifiable, but there are sev-
eral points in favor of the use of newly hired employees.
The most important is that by examining the men at the
time of application the influence of special training in the
firm may be eliminated. The abilities measured will be
those possessed by applicants on whom the tests will be
used in future if they prove valid. In other words, the
validation of the tests on new employees approaches nearer
the situation under which the tests are eventually to be
used. A second point is that the range of ability among
applicants will be “greater than among old employees and
this will tend to increase correlations of tests with the
criterion and give a truer picture of the value of the tests.
Indeed, in some occupations the elimination of the ill-
adapted goes forward so persistently during the early weeks
of training or of employment on the job that the body of
experienced workers constitutes a highly selected group,
much too uniform in ability to serve satisfactorily for an
experiment in determining the correspondence between test
performance and relative proficiency in the occupation. In
the third place, foremen and managers frequently object to
the disturbance and expense of taking men off their work
to be tested. This objection does not hold with applicants
at the time of hiring. Finally, there may be too few old
employees on whom to validate the tests. If applicants are
used, cases may be accumulated until sufficient data are at
hand.
The most important point in favor of testing old em-
ployees is that the delay incident to the testing of new
workers is avoided. It may require one or two years to
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