Selection

'Best-practice' employee selection is usually associated with the 'psychometric' model. This recommends rigorously developed psychometric tests, performance - based or work simulation methods, and the use of multiple methods of assessment, all designed to accurately measure candidates' knowledge, skills, abilities, personality and attitudes. This view has dominated literature on selection. Its popularity is no doubt due to its emphasis on objectivity, meritocracy and efficiency, which are all evident in the story of selection, and indeed the emergence of HRM, over the last century. Industrialisation and mass manpower planning during the early twentieth century required a systematic way of matching the attributes of individuals to the requirements of jobs, and drew from psychological research on scaling individual differences (for example, the work of Alfred Binet or Raymond Cattell in the field of education). Systematic selection is now regarded as one of the critical functions of HRM, essential for achieving firm-level strategy (Ployhart and Moliterno, 2011), and a core component of what has been called a high commitment or high performance management approach to HRM.