THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RECRUITING SOURCE, APPLICANT QUALITY, AND HIRE PERFORMANCE: AN ANALYSIS BY SEX, ETHNICITY, AND AGE

This study investigated both an applicant pool and its resulting class of new hires in an attempt to clarify a number of empirical questions concerning recruiting source effectiveness. A pre-established database of applicants and hires for the job of life insurance agent in a large insurance company was analyzed for recruiting activity. Differences in applicant quality and new hire survival were found in favor of the informal recruiting sources. A second measure of hire success, new business commission credits, failed to show differences across recruiting sources. The informal recruiting sources yielded significantly higher selection ratios than did formal sources for all groups. Examination of recruiting source use showed significant group differences, with females and blacks using the formal recruiting sources more frequently than males, non-minorities, and Hispanics. While the informal recruiting sources yielded higher quality applicants and more successful hires for all groups, this research cautions that the implementation of revised recruiting policies must be carefully monitored for adverse effects on protected groups.     

EFFECTS OF JOB ATTRIBUTES AND RECRUITING PRACTICES ON APPLICANT DECISIONS: A COMPARISON1

Previous research on the factors which affect applicant decisions concerning jobs has focused on the effects of either job attributes or recruiting practices. The present study examined the simultaneous impact of job attributes and recruiting practices on the likelihood of job acceptance by actual job applicants. Path analysis revealed that job attributes but not recruiting practices influenced the likelihood of job acceptance by graduating college students (N= 200). Given that college students might be expected to be the job applicants most swayed by recruiting practices because of their lack of work experience, the results suggest that the emphasis placed on recruiting practices as determinants of applicant decisions may be overstated in the literature.     

THE EFFECT OF SEX SIMILARITY ON RECRUITERS' EVALUATIONS OF ACTUAL APPLICANTS: A TEST OF THE SIMILARITY-ATTRACTION PARADIGM

The present study examined the effect of sex similarity on recruiters' evaluations of actual applicants in campus interviews and tested whether perceived similarity and interpersonal attraction mediated this effect. Structural equation modeling was performed on data from 476 campus interviews. The results revealed complex effects of sex similarity on recruiters' decision processes. Perceived similarity and interpersonal attraction mediated the effect of sex similarity on female recruiters' assessments of applicants' qualifications. Unexpectedly, female recruiters saw male applicants as more similar to themselves and more qualified than female applicants. For male recruiters, interview outcomes were not affected by sex similarity. Social identity theory, which suggests that the status associated with demographic characteristics may influence the nature of demographic similarity effects, provides a possible explanation for the findings.     

Marital satisfaction and topographical assessment of marital interaction: A longitudinal analysis of newlywed couples

Despite numerous tests of social learning hypotheses relating to marriage, important questions remain concerning how best to quantify behavior displayed in marital interaction. In the present study, 60 newlywed couples reported their marital satisfaction, engaged in a 15-minute problem-solving discussion, and reported their marital satisfaction again 6 and 12 months later. The interactions were microanalytically coded, the codes were assigned a numeric value, and each spouse's cumulative point totals were plotted as a function of time in the interaction. This was done separately for all 60 couples. Graphs were divided into groups based on the topography of the graphically represented interactions. These groups differed cross-sectionally and longitudinally in their level of marital satisfaction. Couples tended to have lower satisfaction scores when their initial interactions were characterized with behavioral parity between the spouses at the beginning of a discussion, changing to asymmetrical patterns of behavior later in the conversation. This method was found to be more predictive of marital satisfaction than were standard methods of assessing dyadic interaction (i.e., base rates of behavior and sequential analysis). Implications of these data for understanding how interactions relate to the course of newlywed marriage are discussed.