This week I took part in an event called “The Future of Selection” which brought together the Manchester branches of three national professional bodies: the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, The British Psychological Society and the Association for Business Psychology. With short talks from six different people we got a fantastic insight into the current issues and trends in selection. My role was to summarise some of the recent research and debates in selection and in keeping with the integrative nature of the evening, Rachel Burnham drew this fantastic artistic summary.
I love events like this because they help us to share our knowledge. Much is often said at psychology conferences about the deplorable gap between research and practice, yet sometimes I wonder if it is really such a big deal. Yes, there are bound to be differences between how researchers and practitioners view their work and what their priorities are. But underlying it all, certainly in selection, is the goal of having more reliable and valid methods. Researchers and practitioners both want a measure that will predict future performance as accurately as possible.
During the evening I was lucky enough to meet some of the people involved in the new gaming approach to selection (Arctic Shores). They develop psychometrically-based games that help their clients to recruit the best candidates. Gameification in selection is a perfect example of how research and practice work hand-in-hand. These trained psychologists draw their ideas from the research literature, develop them into games with artists and game designers, and then test them to ensure they are psychometrically sound. And this, I think, was the overall feel of the evening: that the future of selection can be found in more engaging, more accurate selection tools, and an integration of research and practice.