CRITERIA OF VOCATIONAL SUCCESS 21
does it better, with less supervision, with less interruption
through absence from the job. He makes fewer mistakes
and has fewer accidents. He offers a larger number of good
original suggestions looking toward improvement of condi-
tions or of processes. He ordinarily learns more quickly,
is promoted more rapidly, and stays with the company.
His quantity and quality of output, rate of advancement,
length of service, and so forth, are aspects of vocational
success, each of which can be measured, expressed in nu-
merical terms, and used as a criterion against which to
check the validity of predictions based upon employment
tests, personal history items, interest questionnaires, or in-
terviews.
Dependable measures of actual accomplishment, of suc-
cess or failure at the job, are needed for any scientific in-
vestigation in selection of personnel. Many a study of
methods of selecting people for positions has led to ambigu-
ous conclusions because of the inadequacy or unreliability
of the criterion by which the methods were judged. All too
often a research has passed through the laborious and ex-
pensive stages of making the job analysis, constructing in-
genious tests, and giving the tests to numerous employees,
before the investigator discovered that no adequate and
reliable measure of relative individual achievement on the
job was to be had. The salesmen for a corporation doing a
business of national scope were given a battery of tests at a
series of sales conventions with the thought that the value
of the tests would then be ascertained by checking the
Scores against the auditor’s records of commissions earned.
Later it was found that commissions were not a fair cri-
terion of sales ability in that concern because of gross dif-
ferences of territory and inadequate bases for quota setting.
Ratings of the value of the salesmen to the company, made
by the branch sales-managers and the home-office execu-
tives, did not agree. No other criterion of success was
available except length of service with the concern, and that
measure was not considered a good one by the interested
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