Bob Sutton quotes a meta-analysis by Frank Schmidt and John Hunter published in 1998 on the factors found to affect job performance:
- GMA tests (“General mental ability”)
- Work sample tests
- Integrity tests: surveys design to assess honesty … I don’t like them but they do appear to work.
- Conscientiousness tests: essentially do people follow-through on their promises, do what they say, and work doggedly and reliably to finish their work.
- Employment interviews (structured)
- Employment interviews (unstructured)
- Job knowledge tests: To assess how much employees know about specific aspects of the job.
- Job tryout procedure: Where employees go through a trial period of doing the entire job.
- Peer ratings
- T & E behavioral consistency method: “Based on the principle that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. In practice, the method involves describing previous accomplishments gained through work, training, or other experience (e.g., school, community service, hobbies) and matching those accomplishments to the competencies required by the job. a method were past achievements that are thought to be important to behavior on the job are weighted and scored.”
- Reference checks
- Job experience (years)
- Biographical data measures
- Assessment centers
- T & E point method
- Years of education
- Interests
- Graphology (e.g., handwriting analysis)
- Age
Arnold Kling loves that years of education just barely beats out handwriting analysis.