An organization is only as good as the people it employs. Selecting the right person for the job involves more than identifying the essential or desirable range of skills, educational and professional qualifications necessary to perform the job and then recruiting (招募) the candidate who is most likely to possess these skills or at least is perceived to have the ability and inclination to acquire them. This is a purely person/skills match approach to selection.
Work invariably takes place in the presence and/or under the direction of others, in a particular organizational setting. The individual has to fit in with the work environment, with other employees, with the organizational climate, style of work, organization and culture of the organization. Different organizations have different cultures. Working as an engineer at British Aerospace will not necessarily be a similar experience to working in the same capacity at GEC or Plessey.
Poor selection decisions are expensive. For example, the costs of training a policeman are about ￡20,000. The costs of employing an unsuitable technician on an oil rig (石油钻塔) or in a nuclear plant could, in an emergency, result in millions of pounds of damage or loss of life. The disharmony of a poor person-environment fit is likely to result in low job satisfaction, lack of organizational commitment and employee stress, which affect organizational outcomes, i. e. productivity, high rates of staff change and absenteeism, and individual outcomes i. e. physical, psychological and mental well-being.
However despite the importance of the recruitment decision and the range of sophisticated and more objective selection technique available, including the use of psychometric tests, assessment centers etc. , many organizations are still prepared to make this decision on the basis of a single 30 to 45 minute unstructured interview. Indeed, research has demonstrated that a selection decision is often made within the first four minutes of the interview. In the remaining time, the interviewer then attends exclusively to information that reinforces the initial "accept" or "reject" decision. Research into the validity of selection methods has consistently demonstrated that the unstructured interview, where the interviewer asks any questions he or she likes, is a poor predictor of future job performance and does little better than more controversial methods like graphology (笔迹学) and astrology (占星术). This passage is mainly about ______.