Diversity Resource Center

 Employee Selection and Workforce Diversity: Are Current Tools Up To The Task?                                                      

Hispanics, African Americans, Asians and Native Americans now constitute more than one-third of the U.S. population. By 2042, they are projected to make up nearly one-half of all Americans. Given these rapidly changing demographics-and consequently, the rapidly changing U.S. marketplace-many organizations are recognizing that workplace diversity is a business necessity. Creating and promoting a diverse workforce is particularly essential for industries where a significant number of employees deal face-to-face with prospective customers, because the latter are more likely to buy from people like themselves. So retail, financial, legal, insurance, hospitality and consumer goods businesses may want and need staff diversity. Yet existing selection tools may not be up to the task.

Here's why:

1. Job tests based on outdated material

 
In the context of legal defensibility and employee selection tools, the concept of "validation" simply refers to accumulated "evidence" showing that a given selection is, indeed, a good (or valid) predictor of job performance. Selection specialists (or those who design selection tests) typically gather validation evidence by correlating job applicants' scores on a given selection test (e.g., on intelligence, job knowledge, values, personality) with their future job performance (predictive validation) or using incumbents (concurrent validation). If the resulting correlation is relatively high, the test is considered to be a valid predictor of job performance. Employment tests and other employee selection tools are judged on their "validation" strength, or the degree to which they can accurately predict future job performance. If there is a high correlation between an applicant's score on a given selection test (e.g., testing intelligence, job knowledge, values or personality) and his/her future performance, the test is considered to be a good predictor.

One critical issue with the above approach is that the majority of the tests used in the U.S. today were validated primarily on a Caucasian pool. This means that while a given test may work well in predicting job performance