1. Stefan
Mol
Anne
Keegan
Gabor
Kismihok
The Cinderella Predictor:
Taking job knowledge to the personnel selection ball

2. Content
Related
Validity
Criterion
Related
Validity
Construct
Related
Validity

3. Content
Related
Validity
Criterion
Related
Validity
Construct
Related
Validity

4. Job Knowledge
“…people who are more intelligent learn
more job knowledge and learn it faster, the
Criterion
Related
major determinant of job performance is
Validity
not GMA but job knowledge” (Schmidt and
Hunter, 2001).
Job
GMA Job knowledge
Performance

5. Criterion
Job Knowledge Related
Validity
“Validity is nearly twice as high for job specific
tests than for of the-shelf tests. In fact, the
levels for locally developed tests appear to
rival those of general ability tests” (Dye, Reck
& McDaniel, 1993,p. 156).
ρ=.62, k =59, N=3965
Job
GMA Job knowledge
Performance

6. Criterion
Job Knowledge Related
Validity
“Content-related evidence of validity
has traditionally involved … rational Content
Related
examination of the manner in which Validity
the performance domain is sampled by
the predictor” (Binning &
Barrett, 1989, p. 482).

7. Criterion
Job Knowledge Related
Validity
Job knowledge: According to the APA
publication manual which statistics do Content
you need to report in a regression Related
analysis table? Validity
GMA: How smart do you need to be to
publish an article?
Hunter (1986, p. 353) “knowledge is a
much better measure of performance
than [supervisor] ratings”.

8. Criterion
Job Knowledge Related
Validity
“construct validation and theory
development imply the same basic Content
Related
process….” “If it can be shown that a Validity
test measures a specific construct …
that has been determined to be critical
for job performance…, then inferences Construct
Related
about job performance from test scores Validity
are by logical implication justified”
(Binning and Barrett, 1989, p.487, p.
480

9. Criterion
Job Knowledge Related
Validity
Content
Substantiation
Related
Validity
Construct
Related
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Validity
Job Knowledge Specificity Job Performance Specificity

11. Towards a research agenda
Undeniably Job General
Unequivocally Job Specific (albeit more portable for more related occupations)
Job Job
GMA
Knowledge Performance
Education
Job Specific – Job
General

12. Development of Job Knowledge Tests:
Implications
• Focus on idiosyncratic job knowledge
requirements
– Requires use of inductive, interpretive research
methods
• Implications for status and acceptance of
qualitative research within the personnel
psychology community
– “Qualitative research often advances the field by
providing unique, memorable, socially important and
theoretically meaningful contributions to scholarly
discourse and organizational life” (Gephart and Rynes
2004, p.461)

13. Job Knowledge as Matchmaker
• Connecting:
– HRM, eLearning & Knowledge Management
(foster collaboration)
– Academia and industry (Science and practice)
– Employees and workplaces (Enhanced Matching)
– Policy and Education (Training)
– Government and Labor Market (Needs analysis)
http://www.ontohr.eu

14. Technology is on our side
• Flexible systems for matching employees, organizations and
educational institutions
• Process Management
• Semantic applications
– Data structuring
– Comparability
• Text/data mining
– Automatic data collection and recognition
• Content management
– eLearning methodologies for content representation
(LO, LOR, OER)
• Adaptive testing

15. Why make the effort?
With representative job knowledge tests:
• We no longer need to reject candidates on stable
dispositional characteristics
• We can inform candidates as to where they can
obtain missing knowledge
• We can inform educational institutions about
missing job knowledge of their graduates
• We can gauge the knowledge of
immigrants, informal learners, and the elderly