PART III 
SELECTION AND RETENTION 
A very common notion among industrial and employ 
ment managers is that all their problems will be solved 
when a scheme has been devised which will make it possi 
ble to select the right man for the right place. A scheme 
which will do this, they believe, will do away with the 
enormous labor turnover which is so characteristic of 
industry to-day, and which adds such tremendous difficul 
ties to the problems of production. The right man in 
the right place is a slogan to conjure with in commercial 
circles. It sounds as though it might well be the broad and 
genuine remedy for industrial as well as all other social 
ills. However, at the risk of seeming sensational, it must 
be said that industries to-day, especially the larger or 
ganizations, are suffering not so much from inability to 
select the right man for the right place as from inability 
to know when the right man for the right place has been 
selected. To such an extent is this true that it can further 
be said that even if industries were in possession of a per 
fect system of selection, and were able to use it perfectly, 
their labor turnover would still remain mysteriously high. 
Moreover, this high labor turnover would be in a very 
large measure due to the inability to recognize when the 
right man for the right place had been chosen. 
The business man will not let these statements pass un 
challenged. In anticipation of his challenge the following 
question is proposed for consideration: How is it possible 
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