
Person Perception in Human Resources
•Perceptions play an important role in human resources in areas such as:
–The employment interview
•Structured, semi-structured, and unstructured interviews
•Validity of the interview improves when interviewer conduct a
more structured interview
• Factors threaten the validity: 1) applicants are usually
motivated to present an especially favourable impression of
themselves 2) interviewers have a tendency to exhibit primacy
reactions
•Perceptual tendencies at work in interviews 1) Negativity Bias
interviewers tend to give less importance to positive
information about the applicant. Interviews get more feedback
about unsuccessful hiring thank successful hiring (why did u
send me that idiot?!) 2) Contracts effects sometimes occur in the
interview applicants who have been interviewed earlier affect
he interviewer’s perception of a current applicant..comparing
• Structured interview involves 4 dimensions:
•Evaluation standardization
•Question sophistication
•Question consistency (extend to which interviewer ask
same question in same order for every candidate)
•Rapport building (extend to which interviewer does not
ask personal questions unrelated to the job)
•Biases affecting interviews
•Primacy effect
•Negativity bias
•Contrast effects
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•Cognitive limitations
–Applicant perceptions of recruitment & selection
•Signalling theory: job applicants interpret their recruitment
experiences as cues or signals about what it is like to work in an
organization
•Organizational justice theory: job applicants form more positive
perceptions of the selection process when selection procedures
are perceive to be fair and are more likely to view the
organization favourably and to have stronger intention to accept
a job offer and recommend the organization to others
–The performance appraisal
•Objective and subjective measures
•Objective measures= measures that doesn’t involve a
substantial degree of human judgment
•When objective indicators of performance do exist, they
are often contaminated by situational factors
•Organizations must often rely on subjective measure of
effectiveness, however, the employee’s job activities cannot
be monitored directly (eg. A police sergeant can’t ride
around in six squad cars at the same time)
•Errors in Subjective Ratings
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•Leniency- the tendency to perceive the job performance of
rates as especially good
•Harshness- tendency to perceive the job performance of
rates as especially ineffective
•Central tendency- the tendency to assign most rates to
middle range job performance categories
•Halo effect: the rating of an individual on one trait or
characteristic tends to colour ratings on other traits or
characteristics (eg. A manager might rate an employee as
frequently late for work, and this might in turn lead her
to devalue the employee’s productivity and quality of
work)
•Similar to me effect: a rater gives more favourable
evaluations to people who are similar to the rater in
terms of background or attitude
•Ratings are a function of:
1Accuracy
2Motivation
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