Human resource department in every organization has an obligation of ensuring that the organization gets the best staff for conducting its business. The department is entitled to evaluation and collection of data from prospective employees in order to offer them employment. This is essentially referred to as staffing process that also entails recruiting, retention and human resource planning. In order to offer an employment opportunity to prospective employees, the organization must have a good assessment strategy (Taylor, 2010). Knowledge, skills and abilities of prospective employees should be assessed and compared to arrive at a valid and reliable choice.

Validity and reliability are critical concepts in staffing process. Every staff selection process must hold high levels of validity and reliability if the organizational objectives are to be realized. Validity in the context of selecting prospective employees refers to the appropriateness, meaningfulness and usefulness of the inferences made during the selection process. It measures the degree of appropriateness that a test usually achieves(Banfield& Kay, 2008).

In prospective employee selection, validity is mainly concerned with what a test measures and how well it has been measured. Human resource management has three types of validity that includes; construct, content and criterion-related.  The selection process must lead to valid and reliable results regardless of the selection process used.

Reliability is another critical concept in the selection process. It refers to the level of consistency achieved during a human recruitment process. Reliability can also refer to how sable or repeatable a measurement is over different testing conditions and periods. A test can be said to be reliable if the same test is conducted on the same applicant but on different occasions yields the same results. For instance, a test on integrity today should yield similar results six months from now for reliability to uphold. This is referred to as test -retest reliability where scores of prospective employees from different conditions are compared.

Any selection process must exhibit high degree of validity and reliability if the selection process is to have positive organizational development. The selection process can be through interviews or sample work tests but either of the two should possess substantial degree of validity and reliability. In case of an interview, the process should exhibit some sense of fairness and reliability by offering employment only to the people who have the required knowledge, skills and abilities(Taylor, 2010).

During an interview process, reliability and validity can be achieved of the interviewers have done a great job analysis. A systematic job analysis will be critical since the organization will have a better understanding of the SKAs that the organization is looking for. This will enable the interviewers to have a common ground upon which to conduct the interview.

The interviewing process must be reliable and valid if the overall objective of human resource is to be realized. For the validity of the process to be unquestionable, the interview questions must map to specific competencies. These competencies should be listed on the competency assessment worksheet and should be guided by results from job analysis. This will form the basis upon which interview questions will be assessed. All the interview questions should have an underlying competency upon which the interviewer will assess the suitability of prospective employees(Sims, 2002).

An interview’s process validity can also be ascertained through the common three types of validity relevant in human resource. These validity measures include; construct, content and criterion related. These are vital instruments in ensuring validity of the interview process. Most interviews are conducted on face to face while others are conducted through telephones or through a video link.

A valid interview process should be able to ascertain presence of some an observable qualities such as leadership, verbal ability, speed and motivation.   If the interview process can be able to outline such traits from prospective employees, then it is said to have construct validity. A valid interview process is the one capable of measuring or identifying presence of desirable but non observable traits. The consistency of such inferences should be maintained to ensure total validity of the exercise(Sims, 2002).

Content validity is also critical in an interview. This refers to the degree with which knowledge, skills, ability are tested to a certain degree.  The primary objective of an interview process is to identify the capabilities of prospective employees in job performance. Content validity is achieved through ensuring high expatriate of the job seeker at the time of hiring.

Criterion-related validity is another essential in the interview process. This describes the extent to which an interviewing process can accurately predict some important elements of the job behavior. Under this validity test, several aspects such as absenteeism, quantity of output, accidents and other general job performance attributes must be highly predicted during the interview(Beardwell& Holden, 2000).

An interview process must not only be valid but must also be highly reliable. An interview process must show a lot of consistency in tests performed. For this consistency to be realized, all the interviewers are expected to use similar interview questions designed for a particular group of potential employees.  Validity and reliability of an interview will be greatly determined by the consistency of the questions asked to the job seekers.  The set of questions must also match the already provided competency work sheet if the reliability of the results is to be achieved.

Interviews have been the common tool used in human resource for staff selection. However, the validity and reliability of this technique is always questionable. This is because the technique is a subjective instrument of selection and therefore prone to biasness. The level of validity and reliability of this technique largely depends on the skills of the interviewer. It is also critical to note that the validity and reliability of an interview is also likely to fall significantly if the interview is conducted by different persons(Gilmore & Williams, 2009). Measures to improve reliability and validity of this exercise must be put in place.  This can be enhanced through provision f interview guidelines to interviewers which will include factors for consideration in the process.

References

Banfield,P. and Kay, R. (2008) Introduction to human resource Management, Oxford, Press

Beardwell, I. and Holden, L. (2000) HRM: A contemporary approach, 3rd edn.

London, Financial Times / Prentice Hall

Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2007) Human resource management Theory and practice, 4th  edn. London. Palgrave Macmillan.

Gatewood, R. D., Feild, H. S., &Barrick, M. R. (2011). Human resource selection (7th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western, Cengage Learning.

Gilmore, S. and Williams, S. (2009). Human resource management, Oxford,

Oxford University Press

Mathis, R. L., & Jackson, J. H. (2011). Human resource management (13th ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson/South-western.

Price, A. (2007) Human Resource management in a business context. 3rd edn.

London. Thomson Learning.

Sims, R. R. (2002). Organizational success through effective human resources management. Westport, Conn [u.a.: Quorum Books.

Taylor, S. (2010) Resourcing and talent management, 5th edn. London, CIPD.

Torrington, D., Hall, L., Taylor, S. and Atkinson, C. (2011) Human resource management, 8th edn. London, Prentice Hall.

 
Do you need an Original High Quality Academic Custom Essay?