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and that it influences the business strategy. This is a challenge
because a lot of research on recruitment and selection has often
used individual job performance as a criterion. Now, there is
some intriguing recent research that shows recruitment and
selection have effects on firm performance. This is excellent
news because it means that the effects of recruitment and
selection on individual performance translate to firm perfor-
mance.
PERSONALquarterly:
In your opinion, what are the main challen-
ges with regard to recruitment and selection in the next five
years? Which trends do you predict for practitioners and/or
researchers?
Filip Lievens:
I generally see three main challenges. First of
all, there is a trend that has already been going on for years,
which is called the “de-jobbing” of organizations. It means
that real jobs often do not exist in organizations anymore
and people work on different projects. This de-jobbing trend
challenges one of the main assumptions in recruitment and
selection, namely that people have a static job that can be
accurately described, which then serves as foundation for
designing recruitment and selection procedures.
The second challenge is that we have to do a better job in
proving to top management and higher management that re
cruitment and selection works. As I mentioned, recent research
shows that recruitment and selection have not only effects on
individual job performance, but also on the performance of the
firm. In any case, we have to be more “commercial” in selling
our recruitment and selection solutions to higher management
and in using various analytics to show that we really have an
effect on the bottom line.
The third and maybe the most important trend relates to
the Big Data movement, not only in selection but also in hu-
man resource management. Although there are still ethical
and privacy issues that need to be solved, we can for instance
now scrape the social media pages of people through machine
learning and obtain information about them. Recent research
shows that social media extractions, for instance of what people
like on their social media pages, enable organizations to make
predictions about their personality and interests. Similarly,
coding what people write in their tweets and feeds on social
media platforms enables organizations to estimate peoples’
personality. If one can extract all kinds of information about the
competencies, knowledge, skills, and abilities of people by just
scraping their social media pages, the question arises whether
we really need to use tests and inventories in the next years.
I’d say that we still need tests and that the solution is again
probably a “best of two worlds” in combining information that
has been extracted by computer algorithms based on people’s
social media pages with other information that we obtain
through traditional interviews, assessment center exercises,
and standardized tests. In any case, a key challenge for re
cruitment and selection is doing research on these new “talent
signals” and, at the same time, tackling the thorny standardi-
zation, privacy, and ethical issues that are inherent in them.
„Recruitment and selection have effects on firm per-
formance. This means that the effects of recruitment
and selection on individual performance translate into
firm performance.“
Prof. Dr. Filip Lievens
Weiterführende Literatur
Publications can be downloaded on:
Some of Prof. Dr. Lievens recent research has examined how applicants‘
beliefs about employer image can be changed via, for example, word-of-
mouse, employee testimonials, grapevine information or publicity. The
most recent article in this line of research is:
Windscheid, L./Bowes-Sperry, L./Kidder, D./Cheung, H.K./Morner, M./
Lievens, F. (2016). Actions speak louder than words: Perceptions of diversi-
ty mixed messages. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101, 1329-1241.
The articles below give an overview of the broad field of employer image
and employer branding:
Theurer, C.P./Tumasjan, A./Welpe, I./Lievens, F. (in press). Employer
branding: A brand equity-based literature review and research agenda.
International Journal of Management Reviews.
Lievens, F., & Slaughter, J.E. (2016). Employer image and employer
branding: What we know and what we need to know. Annual Review of
Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 3, 407-440.
Sackett, P.R./Lievens, F./Van Iddekinge, C./Kuncel, N. (2017): Individu-
al differences and their measurement: A review of 100 years of research.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 102,254-273.
Lievens, F./Sackett, P.R. (2017): The effects of predictor method factors
on selection outcomes: A modular approach to personnel selection proce-
dures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102, 43-66.
