Employment psychology : the application of scientific methods to the selection, training and grading of employees / by Henry C. Link.

  • Henry Charles Link
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Employment psychology : the application of scientific methods to the selection, training and grading of employees / by Henry C. Link. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTION Science finds that individuals differ, and differ widely, in any trait or combination of traits. They thus differ in their fitness for certain studies in school, games at play, and jobs at work. Industrial practice finds that a large fraction of this variability remains within a group willing to do a given sort of work at a given wage per hour. Consequently if there are ten applicants for a certain job there will commonly be a large advantage to the em- ployer who selects the most fit rather than the least fit of the ten. Also if an individual has the choice among ten jobs of equal wage there will commonly be a large ad- vantage to him if he selects the job for which he is most fit rather than the one for which he is least fit. Other things being equal, both the employer and the employee gain in proportion as men work at a job for which they are more fit than any other men are, and as each man is given the job for which he is better fitted than for any other job. The country as a whole, of course, gains very greatly as such a double fit is approximated. If sufficient ability and effort are expended it is possible to measure the comparative fitness of any number of men for any one given job, or the comparative fitness of any one man for any number of different jobs. These are the tasks of scientific personnel work, the former being the special work of the employment manager and the latter being the special work of the vocational counsellor. In some cases a direct trial at the job itself is still the best way to measure fitness; but usually the scientific