Discussion:
The position I am creating a job analysis and description for, is a Human Resources Compliance Specialist. This position ensures compliance with both company and state or federal regulations within all levels of staff in the company. It is important when interviewing for this position to have a scoring systems in place for applicant's responses to interview questions, letters of recommendation and questions about prior work experience. "Measurement is critical to staffing because, as far as selection decisions are concerned, a selection decision can only be as effective as the measures on which it is based".
The responses to interview questions would be measured in a subjective way. There is no good way to add a grading scale to the responses and therefore would rely on the judgment of the interviewer to determine how well the applicant performed during the interview. The draw back to utilizing this form of measurement is if different interviewers participated in the process. If the same interviewers were not in every interview, it could cause a "deficiency in subjective measures" (Van Bremen). The alternative would be to incorporate some objective measurement into the interview, by asking questions that would lead to only one correct answer.
The scoring system that should be used for letters of recommendation is, to utilize a standardized scoring key. Letters or recommendation can pose a problem to the employer, because they less often reflect the applicant, but more so the writer of the letter. "Unless a great deal of credibility and accountability can be attached to the letter writer's comments" the letter of recommendation should provide it less weight in the overall evaluation . A scoring key using the categories of KSAO's can be used to allow the employer to put a numerical score to the letter and attempt to place the applicants in an order based on that.
When considering a scoring system for prior work experience, utilizing ordinal scales would be the best option. With this option, the applicants can be ranked from best to worst or from highest to lowest". Because the work experience each applicant brings to the table may be very similar it is okay to use this method as there may be no need presented to distinguish reasoning for the ranking. "The interval between values is not interpretable in an ordinal measure" (Social Research Methods). This area of evaluating the appliance would not be considered with as high of a weight as there is less variance among the applicants.
Overall, the job interview should hold the highest weight in the scoring, even though it is subjective. This category will give the employer the best insight to the applicant. Prior work experience should hold the next highest rank as each applicant can be ranked based on their work history and finally, letter of recommendations should be ranked last as the writers will vary for each applicant.