2:30 - 3:30 pm

So, You Want to Get a Job with a Psychology Degree

Dr. Shawn Bergman and Dr. Jacqui Bergman

Appalachian State University

3:40 - 4:50pm

Taking Your Education to the Next Level: Getting into Graduate School

Dr. Christopher J. L. Cunningham and

Dr. Bart L. Weathington

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Keynote: Validity and Utility of Selection Methods

Schmidt and Hunter (1998) presented meta-analytic summaries of the validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology based on 85 years of research findings. This presentation will discuss updates to those findings, adding results from the last 15 years, including previous and newly investigated methods.

International Perspectives on Work-Family Balance and Strategic HR

This session includes presentations about I/O psychology work conducted in Cuba. It describes projects by I/O psychology graduate students and work by I/O psychology faculty to develop relationships with I/O psychologists in Cuba. The panelists discuss the challenges and benefits of working on international projects.

Competency-based selection

The case for competency-based selection is a strong one. As work-related roles and environments become increasingly dynamic, organizations need an alternative to task-based models of workforce selection and development. Competencies offer this alternative, as they can represent complex individual differences in behavioral tendencies that are relevant to an organizations current and future needs. A competency-based approach to selection provides organizations with a tremendously adaptive way to understand new prospect and incumbent candidates’ current and future potential to contribute to an organization’s goals at multiple levels. This session will provide a brief background to the competency movement, contrasting it with more traditional, task-focused approaches to selection. Benefits and challenges associated with working with competencies will also be discussed.

BYOV (Bring Your Own Virtue):

A Theoretical Model of Virtue Exchange in Leader-Follower Relationships

Virtue in leadership has become an increasingly popular topic of late, within industry as well as the academy. To date, most scholarly work on the topic has focused on leaders’ virtues, their virtuous behavior, and the impact of virtuous leadership on followers (e.g., Authentic Leadership, Servant Leadership). However, such a unidirectional focus fails to capture the role of virtuous behavior as a critical input in the social exchange relationships that exist between leaders and followers. This presentation provides an integration of leader-member exchange theory (LMX) and virtue-based leadership perspectives, introduces a new construct called virtue exchange (VX), provides a conceptual basis for VX, and explicates potential antecedents and consequences. Additionally, next steps for a VX research program are described and implications for research and practice are discussed.

Dr. Daniel L. LeBreton,

Peter Rock Consulting, Inc.

Measuring faking using the Overclaiming Instrument (click here for the recent OBHDP article mentioned during this presentation)
Researchers have recently asserted that popular measures of response distortion (i.e., socially desirable responding scales) lack construct validity (i.e., measure traits rather than test faking) and that applicant faking on personality tests remains a serious concern (Bing, LeBreton, Davison et al., 2007; Griffith & Peterson, 2008; Holden, 2008). One relatively new measure of individual differences, the overclaiming instrument (Paulhus, Harms, Bruce, & Lysy, 2003), has been shown to quantify response bias, and thus offers great potential to measure faking tendencies on the part of respondents. Specifically, the overclaiming instrument assesses the degree to which respondents indicate familiarity with nonexistent items, and as such quantifies respondents’ actuarial and inaccurate inflation of the extent of their knowledge. This presentation will provide an overview of the overclaiming instrument, and present recent research that shows how overclaiming captures individual differences in faking and subsequently increases personality test score validity via suppressing unwanted systematic error variance in personality test scores.

Dr. Mark N. Bing & Dr. H. Kristl Davison,

University of Mississippi

Rating Formats Revisited: Yes, They DO Matter!

Despite a voluminous body of literature on performance appraisal (PA) rating format design, the results have been interpreted as disappointing (Murphy, 2008). Indeed, since Landy and Farr’s (1980) proposed moratorium, PA rating format design research has been scarce. However, it is now widely recognized that rater “errors” are poor indicators of the quality of rating formats (Fisicaro, 1988; Murphy & Balzer, 1989; Murphy, 2008; Nathan & Tippins, 1990). Consequently, the conclusions of the extensive literature base that has “debunked” the usefulness of PA rating format redesign efforts using rater errors to index rating quality are dubious. In fact, research that has used more appropriate indices (e.g., rating accuracy, scale standard error) to evaluate rating format redesign has actually yielded favorable results (Benson, Buckley, & Hall, 1988; Borman, Buck, Hanson, Motowidlo, Stark, & Drasgow, 2001; Goffin, Gellatly, Paunonen, Jackson, & Meyer, 1996; Hoffman, Gorman, Blair, Meriac, Overstreet, & Atchley, 2012; Tziner, 1984). In the proposed session, I will review recent studies conducted by myself and my colleagues that have once again stimulated interest in researching the utility of rating format design research. I will also integrate what we now know about rating format design research with recent research on rater training. Finally, I will discuss the implications of these findings for the application of I/O psychology in organizations.

Dr. C. Allen Gorman, Radford University

Steps for success in graduate school and beyond (Panel Discussion)

The overarching objective of this panel discussion will be to provide current and future students (graduate and undergraduate students) with insight and guidance regarding how best to succeed during graduate training as well as the years after graduation. The panel discussion will be moderated by two current graduate students who will facilitate a discussion between the audience and a panel of graduates from various I/O and Applied Psychology programs. The panelists have varied occupations and experiences and will share their thoughts and guidance on how best to capitalize on the graduate school experience and how to make the most out of post-graduation career opportunities.

Examining Differences in Applicant/Incumbent Response Patterns across Organizational Levels

Past research has established clear evidence of differences in response patterns on assessments between applicants and incumbents, in that incumbents tend to have lower scores than applicants. Less is known about potential differences in response patterns across organizational levels. This presentation will review a research study examining a comparison of applicant-incumbent score differences across two different organizational levels within a healthcare setting on non-cognitive measures. This study extends previous research findings that applicants score higher on non-cognitive assessments than incumbents by investigating job levels. Hypotheses were tested predicting the response difference not only across incumbent vs. applicant samples, but also across professional- vs. entry-level samples. Results suggest that professional-level incumbents score higher than entry-level incumbents, but this trend reverses in a candidate sample.

Dr. Tracey L. Tafero,

Select International, Inc.

Organizational goals and social media: Much to do about nothing? (panel discussion)

It is widely considered that social media provides extraordinary tools and opportunities to forward organizational goals. Whether an organization wishes to utilize social media for recruitment, brand awareness, or increased internal productivity, there are applications and sites marketed for those needs. However, the current social media offerings can be difficult for any organization to keep pace with, and determining the most effective way to use social media is not necessarily easy or obvious. The majority of existing literature implies that there are definitive, best-practices to leveraging social media; yet emerging data suggests that many of these best practices either over-simplify what is needed or miss the mark entirely. The panel will discuss the utility of social media for furthering organizational goals and will focus on social media use for recruitment and selection. The panel will also discuss general best practices often suggested by the academic and popular press literatures, emerging trends from empirical research, and potential hazards of using social media for selection and recruiting. 

Dr. Shawn Bergman & Dr. Brian G. Whitaker,
Appalachian State University

What is Faking and What Do We Do About It?

The use of self-report personality testing for employee selection has been gaining popularity over the past two decades. In addition to moderate correlations of traits such as Conscientiousness with Job Performance, its advantages include additional variance explained beyond commonly used cognitive ability tests, the capability of lessening the adverse impact commonly associated with cognitive ability, and the seemingly tenable theoretical link between personality and performance. However, past research has shown that employees can and do "fake" these tests to appear more employable, leading to inflated estimates of persons' personality traits. In this presentation, the historical path of the faking literature is considered, presenting on overview of past arguments and research findings regarding its effects on decision-making in employee selection contexts. Additionally, an overview of new and cutting-edge research findings are presented that suggest faking does in fact make quite a difference in both correlations with performance and decisions concerning the best possible hires in an applicant pool.