Job-search strategies and reemployment quality: The impact of career adaptability

Past job-search research has focused on how hard unemployed people search for a job, but we still know little about the strategies that people use during their search and how we can predict the quality of the reemployment found. The first aim of this study was to predict the use of different job-search strategies via job-seekers' career adaptability. The second aim was to examine the impact of different job-search strategies on both the number of job-offers and the quality of the obtained job. In a two-wave study, 248 unemployed people indicated their career adaptability and the job-search strategies that they used. The use of a focused and exploratory strategy contributed to the number of job offers, whereas the use of an exploratory strategy reduced the quality of reemployment 8 months later. Moreover, career decision making and career confidence positively predicted reemployment quality. Implications for reemployment practice and further research are discussed.     

Choosing How to Choose: Institutional Pressures Affecting the Adoption of Personnel Selection Procedures

The gap between science and practice in personnel selection is an ongoing concern of human resource management. This paper takes Oliver's framework of organizations' strategic responses to institutional pressures as a basis for outlining the diverse economic and social demands that facilitate or inhibit the application of scientifically recommended selection procedures. Faced with a complex network of multiple requirements, practitioners make more diverse choices in response to any of these pressures than has previously been acknowledged in the scientific literature. Implications for the science‐practitioner gap are discussed.     

Impression Management Behavior in Assessment Centers: Artificial Behavior or Much Ado About Nothing?

Candidates’ assertive impression-management (IM) behaviors affect performance ratings during selection interviews, a finding that has caused some concern about selection interviews’ objectivity and accuracy. Similar effects have been proposed for assessment centers, yet research on IM in assessments centers is rare and inconclusive. This study uses trait-activation theory (Tett &; Guterman, 2000 Tett, R. P. and Guterman, H. A. 2000. Situation trait relevance, trait expression, and cross-situational consistency: Testing a principle of trait activation. Journal of Research in Personality, 34: 397–423. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to predict how assertive IM-behaviors emerge and influence performance ratings during assessments centers. Results showed that candidates’ ingratiation behaviors related to observer ratings on the conceptually related AC-dimension cooperation, whereas self-promotion behaviors related to ratings on the dimensions leadership and planning. Furthermore, assertive IM behaviors during the assessment center construct-related validity and correlated significantly with candidates’ performance in non-evaluative situations. Consequently, assertive IM behaviors in personnel selection may pose less of a threat than frequently assumed but may partially reflect a behavioral manifestation of candidates’ underlying interindividual differences.     

Training career adaptability to facilitate a successful school-to-work transition

The transition from school to work is one of the most critical steps in graduates' careers, as it can determine vocational outcomes and future career success. Yet, these newcomers to the labor market often take longer than regular job seekers to find a suitable job, are more likely to experience a job mismatch and to suffer from underemployment. In this study, we proposed that career adaptability might help remedy this problem. We therefore developed a training aimed at providing graduates with career adaptability resources, with the assumption that this may foster training-participants' later career adaptability and employment quality. A longitudinal field quasi-experiment compared the development of each career adaptability dimension between a training group (n = 32) and a control group (n = 24) over three points in time (pre-training measurement, post-training measurement and follow-up measurement six months later). Repeated measures analyses showed an overall increase in concern, control and curiosity within the training group, whereas there was no increase (concern) or even an overall decrease (control and curiosity) within the control group. Consequently, the training succeeded in enhancing participants' control and curiosity in the long run. Furthermore, among participants who had found employment half a year later, training participants reported higher employment quality than did members of the control group. In sum, results show that providing graduates with career adaptability resources can raise their chances on finding a qualitatively good job.     

Career adapt-abilities scale — Netherlands form: Psychometric properties and relationships to ability,personality, and regulatory focus

The Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS) — Netherlands Form consists of four scales, each with six items, which measure concern, control, curiosity, and confidence as psychosocial resources for managing occupational transitions, developmental tasks, and work traumas. Internal consistency estimates for the subscale and total scores ranged from satisfactory to excellent. The factor structure was quite similar to the one computed for the combined data from 13 countries. The Dutch version of the CAAS-Netherlands Form is identical to the International Form 2.0. The convergent validity of the CAAS-Netherlands was established with relating the CAAS subscales to self-esteem, Big Five personality measures, and regulatory focus. Relations between the subscales and these stable personality factors were largely as predicted. The discriminant validity of the CAAS-Netherlands was established by relating the CAAS scores to general mental ability; no significant relationship between career adaptability and general mental ability was found.     

Transparency in Structured Interviews: Consequences for Construct and Criterion-Related Validity

Although researchers agree on the use of structured interviews in personnel selection, past research has been undecided on whether these interviews need to be conducted nontransparently (i.e., without giving interviewees any indication of the evaluated criteria) or transparently (i.e., by revealing to interviewees the dimensions assessed in the interview). This article presents two independent studies examining the effects of interview transparency on interviewees' performance and on the interview's construct and criterion-related validity in the context of an application training program. Results from both Study 1 (N = 123) and Study 2 (N = 269) indicate an improvement in interviewees' performance under transparent interview conditions. Both studies further support the assumption that transparent interviews show satisfactory construct validity, whereas nontransparent interviews do not. Moreover, Study 2 showed no significant difference between the interview's criterion-related validity under transparent versus nontransparent conditions. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

“I Know What You Want to Know”: The Impact of Interviewees' Ability to Identify Criteria on Interview Performance and Construct-Related Validity

The current study tested whether candidates' ability to identify the targeted interview dimensions fosters their interview success as well as the interviews' convergent and discriminant validity. Ninety-two interviewees participated in a simulated structured interview developed to measure three different dimensions. In line with the hypotheses, interviewees who were more proficient at identifying the targeted dimensions received better evaluations. Furthermore, interviewees' ability to identify these evaluation criteria accounted for substantial variance in predicting their performance even after controlling for cognitive ability. Finally, the interviewer ratings showed poor discriminant and convergent validity. However, we found some support for the hypothesis that the quality of the interviewer ratings improves when one only considers ratings from questions for which interviewees had correctly identified the intended dimensions.     

Social Facilitation and Inhibition During Maximum Versus Typical Performance Situations

The distinction between maximum performance (“what people can do”) and typical performance (“what people will do”) has received considerable theoretical yet relatively little empirical attention. Findings from social facilitation and inhibition suggest that the relationship between performers' typical and maximum performance may not always be as straightforward as had originally been assumed. Ninety-four psychology students underwent a manipulation of their self-efficacy before doing an explaining task both under typical and maximum performance conditions. Results revealed a social inhibition effect in the maximum performance condition for participants of the low self-efficacy conditions. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.