Effective staff selection

Management needs to ensure successful selection procedures throughout the company because selection is a critically important management function that ultimately influences the success or failure of the enterprise. Poor decisions in staff selection can reverberate throughout the organization by dampening staff morale, wasting valuable time, and reducing productivity. Staff selection consists of several identifiable stages of activities. Although selection can be broken into specific steps, the complexity of human behavior limits the usefulness of the cookbook approach. An emphasis solely on procedural stages provides the form without considering the substance. Nor is it possible to identify all the problem areas possible. With these limitations in mind, this article examines common and critically important problem areas in staff selection and suggests ways of handling or correcting them.