Employee Selection Process in Private Company
EMPLOYEE SELECTION FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS: THE INFLUENCES OF THE UNIFORM GUIDELINES AND COURT DECISIONS
Edward, Ph.D. McKendree College Business Division 701 College Road Lebanon, IL 62254 (618)-537-4481 ABSTRACT The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (1978) were promulgated with large businesses in mind in order to affect large numbers of employees as rapidly as possible. However, the employee selection validation procedure advocated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, criterion related validity, is one that small business owners are unable to use due to statistical restraints and the lack of personnel with the esoteric knowledge of validation procedures. These restrictions, coupled with court decisions such as Albemarle Paper Company v. Moody in which the United States Supreme Court ruled the test validation guidelines issued by the EEOC were to be given "great deference" by lower courts, have left small business owners with one practical and potentially legally defensible approach to employee selection. This paper briefly mentions the advantages of valid employee selection procedures, followed by a detailed description of the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (1978), relevant court cases, and a case study describing the validation of a small business employee selection test by the author. INTRODUCTION The importance of small business to the U.S. economy was well summarized by Siropolis (1986), who wrote: ... more than 99 percent of the nation 's 16 million businesses are small-even if we define a small business as one that employs fewer than 100 rather than 500 .... Further evidence of its vitality is the fact that small business employs roughly half of the nation 's workforce (pg. 8). In addition, Siropolis (1986) listed numerous other reasons for the importance of small business to the U.S. economy, such as the higher return on equity small manufacturers earn than large manufacturers, the innovation found in
Edward, Ph.D. McKendree College Business Division 701 College Road Lebanon, IL 62254 (618)-537-4481 ABSTRACT The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (1978) were promulgated with large businesses in mind in order to affect large numbers of employees as rapidly as possible. However, the employee selection validation procedure advocated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, criterion related validity, is one that small business owners are unable to use due to statistical restraints and the lack of personnel with the esoteric knowledge of validation procedures. These restrictions, coupled with court decisions such as Albemarle Paper Company v. Moody in which the United States Supreme Court ruled the test validation guidelines issued by the EEOC were to be given "great deference" by lower courts, have left small business owners with one practical and potentially legally defensible approach to employee selection. This paper briefly mentions the advantages of valid employee selection procedures, followed by a detailed description of the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (1978), relevant court cases, and a case study describing the validation of a small business employee selection test by the author. INTRODUCTION The importance of small business to the U.S. economy was well summarized by Siropolis (1986), who wrote: ... more than 99 percent of the nation 's 16 million businesses are small-even if we define a small business as one that employs fewer than 100 rather than 500 .... Further evidence of its vitality is the fact that small business employs roughly half of the nation 's workforce (pg. 8). In addition, Siropolis (1986) listed numerous other reasons for the importance of small business to the U.S. economy, such as the higher return on equity small manufacturers earn than large manufacturers, the innovation found in
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