PSY09700 Work Psychology Report: Candidate Selection Process

This report, written for a Work Psychology course, addresses the task of advising Smithson Care Company on selecting candidates for Marketing Assistant and Public Relations positions. It outlines a comprehensive selection process, emphasizing the assessment of Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics (KSAOs). The report details methods for evaluating candidates, including background checks, personality tests, cognitive assessments, aptitude tests, and interviews. It justifies the chosen methods based on reliability, validity, fairness, and utility, providing a strong rationale for each step. The report also offers recommendations for Smithson Care Company, such as implementing value propositioning, providing training programs, and developing contextual selection strategies. The conclusion reinforces the effectiveness of the KSAO selection process in identifying the best candidates, thus ensuring better business performance. The report is designed to provide a robust framework for making informed hiring decisions.

Running head: WORK PSYCHOLOGY
Work Psychology
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Discussion..............................................................................................................................2
2.1. Assessment and Methods of KSAOs..............................................................................2
2.2. Methods of Candidate Selection.....................................................................................4
2.3. Justification.....................................................................................................................5
Reliability...........................................................................................................................5
Validity...............................................................................................................................6
Fairness..............................................................................................................................6
Utility.................................................................................................................................6
3. Recommendations..................................................................................................................7
4. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................7
5. References:.............................................................................................................................9

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1. Introduction
Building and developing a company, brick by brick, is tough. However, the leadership
or management skills that hold it together is the one that takes it further down the lane of
successful entrepreneurship (Envick, 2014). A company cannot strive long without its valued
employees, and at the same time, an employee can induce an uncalled-for debacle upon the
company. Therefore, it is essential to hire the best suitable candidate for a post.
Smithson Care Company, a personal care material providing company, has two vacant
posts for Marketing Assistant and Public Relations. It wants to hire the best graduate
candidate to fill these posts. The main aim of this report is to advise the Smithson Care
Company on the best selection process for selecting the best graduate candidates to fill the
positions of Marketing Assistant and Public Relations in the company. It shall cover the
KSAO that would be assessed and the methods that would be used for making the selection
decision. It shall document a selection process, which could be used for selecting the
candidate with proper evidence for the recommendations. The main objective of this report is
to gain a deep understanding of the essential procedures and techniques within the external
environment of the company for conducting the selection process for the two mentioned
posts.
2. Discussion
2.1. Assessment and Methods of KSAOs
It is to note that KSAO (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Other Characteristics) tests
are the metrics that are used during the hiring and training process to assess the trainees and
applicants (Schulze & Krumm, 2017). These are the main aspects that the selection team need
to examine within a candidate to ensure whether he or she is suitable for the right position.

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Knowledge- It is measured in terms of degrees of high education that a candidate
possesses along with his or her experience in the filed in question (Dong et al., 2014). It is to
mention that Smithson Care Company need to evaluate the knowledge of the potential
candidates that they have about Marketing Management and Public Relations. Candidates
who would know about marketing and other public relation activities would be suitable for
these positions in the company. They are required to have the ability to arrange these
activities and drafting leaflets and other literature of advertising. Also, candidates are
required to have sufficient knowledge in the field of social media and its handling. They are
also required to have a thorough understanding of how to manage customer queries and calls,
proofreading the works and safety handling the data (Janssen, Van der Voort & Wahyudi,
2017).
Skills- Skills are everything that a person needs to be able to do within his or her job
role. Candidates need to have practical skills in communication and management to be
suitable for the post of Marketing Management and Public Relations (Kivunja, 2014). In the
area of marketing management, there can be many times when the marketing manager would
be required to prove his or her effectiveness in managing the challenges related to marketing
and communication. Therefore, the chosen candidate should be sufficient enough to play
these roles properly so that the company does not face any serious issue. With the same,
candidates should have the strong literary skill, collaboration and inclusion skills,
administration skills and also the skill of IT application.
Abilities- It is all about the capabilities of a candidate to learn new things. It is to
mention that no matter what the job role is, the attitude that one holds while working in a
firm, play a crucial role in the overall outcome of job performance (Pandya, 2014). There can
be a myriad of issues that the marketing manager and public relation manager can face in
their job roles, especially in terms of customer service. They should always have an urge to

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improving themselves using facing workforce challenges and issues. The candidates who are
applying for the post should have all the flexibilities for responding to the requirements and
needs of the customer and their job roles beyond their regular office hours. With the same,
they should be positive and confident enough not to get influenced by any negative factors
within the company. Also, they are required to be self-motivated and play the role of a strong
team.
Other Characteristics- These characteristics constitute every other human-related
attributes that are not covered by the above mentioned three aspects. Among these
characteristics fall the ability of the candidates to accept workplace challenge, leadership,
team working and marketing and communication skills.
2.2. Methods of Candidate Selection
Smithson Care Company should adopt this method of selection for identifying and
evaluating the performance of the potential candidates based on different qualitative factors
that are linked with them to get matched with the respective job posts. It should be noted that
this selection method should always be developed based on the required criteria and needs of
specific job profiles. It is to note that the best way of selection that Smithson Care Company
can take into consideration for selecting candidates for the job role of marketing manager and
public relation manager is that of KSAs analysis (Nankerviset al., 2016). The company
manager should follow the below-mentioned steps to take an overall interview:
Step 1: Thorough background checking of the candidates by assessing their resumes.
Through this assessment, the organizational managers can understand whether or not the
candidates' qualifications are matching with the job profiles and whether they are proficient
enough for the required job roles.

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Step 2: Taking a personality test to evaluate their overall score on their personality. This
will allow the company to assess all the negative and positive sides of the potential
candidates based on their personality development behaviour. Therefore, the candidates
should also be evaluated based on a cognitive assessment test. It would help in measuring
the knowledge part of the candidates in terms of the job roles given to them.
Step 3: After the personality and cognitive assessment test, an aptitude level test shall also
be conducted. This would be done only for the candidates who successfully clear the above
mentioned test. It would be held in the form of written and oral for evaluating their writing
and verbal skills and their ability in the respective job structure.
Step 4: Interviewing the candidates. It shall include a one-to-one interview process with the
potential candidates. It would help the company to analyze and assess the correct qualitative
aspect of the potential candidates along with the remaining other knowledge, skills and
abilities.
These steps are the functional aspects of selection that would be very helpful for the
Smithson Care Company authorities for understanding the skills, abilities and knowledge of
the candidates utilizing taking their personality test and through taking one-to-one interview.
In this way, a robust process of selection could help Smithson Care Company in adopting
future systematic initiatives along with the help of quality candidates in the team.
2.3. Justification
Reliability- In terms of safety, it is to note that the suggested selection process for the job
profile of marketing management and public relations of Smithson Care Company is highly
reliable. It is because, through this process, both the experience and educational levels of the
candidates should be provided to the company to assess them based on the same. The skills of
communication that the candidates possess can be analyzed through the face-to-face

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interview process with the candidates (Blacksmith, Willford & Behrend, 2015). In this way,
the Human Resource (HR) team of the company can get a good and reliable idea of the skills,
knowledge and ability of the candidates.
Validity- It is essential to assess the efficacy of a chosen process to evaluate whether it can be
used in the long run. From the above mentioned steps of the selection process, it is clear that
the process would first assess the necessary real-life experience and educational qualification
of the candidates before anything. The company can go through many round selection
processes to get a clear idea of whether the candidate is efficient enough in terms of his or her
educational qualification and experience to move forward in the selection process.
Fairness- The whole selection process is fair enough to bring out the most potential candidate
for the two job roles. Through this method, no candidate would feel that the interview process
is unfair to them, and the company has unethical practices (Bjarnegard & Kenny, 2015). As
the whole process is systematic and thorough test conduction, this is why it would make the
candidate to get a clear idea that nothing unethical and biased is taking place. Besides, no
external factor can influence the decision making process of the company. The company
should note that if it practices taking particular preferences to choose a candidate for the two
job roles, then it would ultimately harm the business and they would then fail to choose the
right and skilful employee for the organization. Any lousy performance of the employee can
affect the brand image and reputation. Hence, the company needs to be fair enough with the
selection process, and the suggested selection process is best suitable to ensure appropriate
section practice.
Utility- KSAOs method of selection would help Smithson Care Company to measure, assess
the qualities and skills within the candidates, and then choose the best suitable ones for the
two job roles. As the company is operating as a personal care provider, it needs to ensure that

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all its employees are efficient enough to maintain the customer safety, product quality and the
public relations to ensure long-term growth and development of the business (Han & Hyun,
2015). Taking the aptitude and cognitive test along with the personality test of the candidates,
can help it is assessing the level of reasoning aptitude and numerical abilities of the potential
candidates. Also, this would help them in determining attitude and communication skills to
handle any conflicts that take place in the organization.
3. Recommendations
a) Smithson Care Company should ensure to develop an efficient system of value
propositioning for the selection process. It would help the company in sharing
relevant data and information for the candidate's inactive manner, and this would also
help the candidates in understanding the functional aspects of the company as well as
the corporate culture.
b) Ample training and development programs should be made available for the
employees of the company as this will help them in benefitting the company in its
functioning.
c) The Human Resource Management of the company should take several initiatives for
developing the strategy for selection on a contextual basis. For making the process
highly effective, the key policy of the company should be that of conducting inbound
selection process that would help the company in delivering a proper and relevant
message for the candidates at the right time.
4. Conclusion
Hence, from the above analysis, it is to conclude that Smithson Care Company should
make use of KASO selection process to find out the best candidate for the two vacant job
positions in the company. Through this process, the company shall be able to find out the best

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employee, and this shall help it in ensuring better business performance in the market.
Candidates who would know about marketing and other public relation activities would be
suitable for these positions in the company. With the same, this process would also help the
company’s selection team need to examine all the required aspects that a candidate possesses
to ensure whether he or she is suitable for the right positions- marketing management and
public relations.

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5. References:
Bjarnegård, E., & Kenny, M. (2016). Comparing candidate selection: A feminist
institutionalist approach. Government and Opposition, 51(3), 370-392.
Blacksmith, N., Willford, J. C., & Behrend, T. S. (2015). Technology in the employment
interview: A meta-analysis and future research agenda. Personnel Assessment and
Decisions, 2(1), 2.
Dong, X., Gabrilovich, E., Heitz, G., Horn, W., Lao, N., Murphy, K., ... & Zhang, W. (2014,
August). Knowledge vault: A web-scale approach to probabilistic knowledge fusion.
In Proceedings of the 20th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge
discovery and data mining (pp. 601-610). ACM.
Envick, B. R. (2014). ACHIEVING ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS THROUGH
PASSION, VISION & COURAGE: A COGNITIVE MODEL FOR DEVELOPING
ENTREPRENEURIAL INTELLIGENCE. Academy of Entrepreneurship
Journal, 20(1).
Han, H., & Hyun, S. S. (2015). Customer retention in the medical tourism industry: Impact of
quality, satisfaction, trust, and price reasonableness. Tourism Management, 46, 20-29.
Janssen, M., van der Voort, H., & Wahyudi, A. (2017). Factors influencing significant data
decision-making quality. Journal of Business Research, 70, 338-345.
Kivunja, C. (2014). Do You Want Your Students to Be Job-Ready with 21st Century Skills?
Change Pedagogies: A Pedagogical Paradigm Shift from Vygotskyian Social

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Constructivism to Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Siemens' Digital
Connectivism. International Journal of Higher Education, 3(3), 81-91.
Nankervis, A. R., Baird, M., Coffey, J., & Shields, J. (2016). Human resource management:
strategy and practice. Cengage AU.
Pandya, K. D. (2014). The key competencies of project leader beyond the essential technical
capabilities. IUP Journal of Knowledge Management, 12(4), 39.
Schulze, J., & Krumm, S. (2017). The “virtual team player” A review and initial model of
knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics for virtual
collaboration. Organizational Psychology Review, 7(1), 66-95.