Personnel Selection in Private Industry: The Role of Security

Abstract

Personnel selection procedures used in private business and industry suffer from a lack of attention to security considerations. This neglect is a result of training, philosophy, structural rigidity, turf protection, and political and legal trends aimed at protecting individual rights. Past performance remains the best predictor of future performance, but discovering a job applicant's history is becoming increasingly difficult. Legal rulings have made criminal, medical, and financial records safe from inspection by personnel managers. Even previous job performance records are being made off-limits by employers who have come to fear lawsuits filed by previous employees on grounds of defamation. The personnel selection techniques used by private security companies would greatly aid private business and industry in attempts to acquire a quality work force. The possibility of genetic screening poses new challenges to our moral, ethical, and legal systems of thought.

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References

1. The District of Columbia and 12 states prohibit the use of the polygraph in personnel selection. As of this writing, federal legislation is pending that would ban the use of the polygraph in the private sector except for specific polygraph exams.

2. William C. Cunningham and Todd H. Taylor , Private Security and Police in America (The Hallcrest Report) (Portland, OR: Chancellor Press, 1985), p. 25.

3. Larry Reibstein , “Firms Face Lawsuits for Hiring People Who then Commit Crime,” Wall Street Journal, 30 Apr. 1987.

4. “The Boom in Digging into a Job Applicant's Past,” Business Week, 11 June 1984, p. 68E.

5. Guardsmark, Inc., administers the MMPI to every new employee. Over the years, the test has been taken by approximately 75,000 employees, forming perhaps the largest collection of MMPI results in existence.

6. James N. Butcher , “Use of the MMPI in Personnel Selection,” in New Developments in the Use of the MMPI, ed. James N. Butcher (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), pp. 165-201.

7. Harold M. Schmeck, Jr. , “Potent Tool Fashioned to Probe Inherited Ills,” New York Times, 11 Aug. 1987.

8. James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein , Crime and Human Nature (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), pp. 104-147.

9. For advocacy of this position, see Saul D. Astor , “Biological Welfare,” Security Management, May 1986, pp. 67-69.

10.

10. Brian Dumaine , “The New Art of Hiring Smart,” Fortune, 17 Aug. 1987, pp. 78-81.