This text presents and criticizes a video that can be found by copying and searching the following link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=NgRkiEEhm2M&feature=emb_title
Author’s name is Stephen B. Jeong and he is an industrial-organizational (I/O) psychologist and his goal for this 10-Minute I/O video series is to build an online video library resource containing all topics related to I/O Psychology.
The Adverse impact (AI).
If candidates apply for a position we should ethically, morally hire people who are qualified to do the job. People who would do well in a particular position. But human beings are biased: we tend to like ppl who are like us, we tend to attribute good looking people with more of certain positive qualities than others, and there’s tons of these. In the end, we might hire people not because there are qualified but because we like them.
What is adverse impact, and what does it have to do with this phenomenon?
Adverse impact has to do with hiring and promotional practices: occurs if a particular group (not only race or ethnicity but also gender or age…) is being hired or selected at a lower rate than another group.
Warning point: just because a company employs a certain percentage of employees does not mean that it is guilty of adverse impact. The assessment depends on the distribution of people applying for the given position.
It’s important to know that AI can occur either intentionally or unintentionally. But it’s up to the company to make sure than they’re not guilty of it. They should gather information about their hiring procedures to justify the AI, at least the proportion of hired people from a particular group, in order to avoid serious law-sue from the EEOC (Equality Employement . TheEOC
Companies should gather information about the candidates that apply and those who end being hired, they should keep records of promotional decisions, etc. They also have to use valid tools: you can’t have AI if you can justify through data that your selection tool screens out people who will not perform well in the future position. So, if you gather information that proves the validity of your test, you can’t be accused.
There is one important rule to be known with AI, which is the 80% rule: candidates go through screening procedures (personality assessment, panel interview…), and then the ratio between the number of people hired in the first group and the number of people hired in the second must remain below 80%, otherwise the company is considered guilty of adverse impact.
From a critical point of view…
The presentation is interesting and allows people to understand even if they are neophytes on the subject. This is a great initiative to democratize I/O psychology. However, as a future “expert” on the subject this video does not teach us much, except for the 80% rule.
The presentation is clear but remains very academic and not very dynamic, which is a pity when you know what is being done on other subjects by other YouTube channels, such as history by Nota Bene for example.