Abstract This paper reviews the literature regarding the utilization of intelligence measurement and Big Five personality

dimensions in employee selection by organization. Both of the methods play significant role in assisting the organization to select the right employee to the job or task in the organization. Individual who has high intelligence is an indication of rapid learning, good in analyzing, well verbal capacity, able to think critically, which might lead to excellent job performance. The Big Five personality dimensions encompass extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness, which are the key criteria in selecting new employee. However, there is grey area in personality traits measurement.

I. Introduction Employee selection is the process of selecting the best candidate for the position or job. An effective employee selection requires the matching of the organizations requirements with the qualifications and personalities of the applicant. The process of employee selection involves many stages such as employee testing, background investigations and reference checks, preemployment information services, honesty testing, graphology and substance abuse screening. Careful selection of employee is vital because the performance of the employer often depends on the subordinates. It is also costly to recruit and hire employees. Hence, it is important to select the right candidate for the job so as to save time and cost. Besides, mismanaging hiring process has various legal implications that include equal employment, negligent hiring and defamation. However, in the research by Behling (1998), it is noticed that selection decisions are not always primarily determining the job candidate and the job. Behling (1998) stated that most human resource managers thinking and the process of employee selection involves matching of knowledge, ability and skill profiles. Human resource managers select employee by considering all aspects because the best candidate will only assure top employee performance. Since years ago, companies understand human resources are a source of competitive advantage in order to sustain and survive in the long term. Talents that are rare and able to 1

perform works that are unable to perform by others are considered valuable assets to a company, which contribute to the companys success and effectiveness. Therefore, it is important for companies to carefully select and choose the members of the companies. In order to select the right person among job applicants, there are several criteria for companies to consider, which include personality and cognitive ability of the applicants. This paper has been organized in the following way. Section 2 presents the literature review of intelligence or cognitive ability and Big Five personality dimensions. The last section which is section 3 is the summary or conclusion of this paper.

II. Literature review 1. Intelligence According to Dickens (2008) cognitive ability refers to the mental ability of a person to understand new concepts faster, able to overcome problems even quicker, able to perform critical thinking, and more knowledgeable. Possess good memory is strongly associated with academic performance, rapid learning, analyzing ability, well verbal comprehension, inductive and deductive reasoning, and numerical ability are also the abilities that can be found in person that has higher intelligence. The higher the cognitive ability, the person is said to possess higher intelligence, or known as IQ (Dickens, 2008; Dessler, 2011; Schmidt, 2000). Certain researchers believe that people that scored in intelligence tests are better in developmental resources, enabling them to learn extra abilities over time, and eventually able to perform better in their jobs. There was a study proved that there is a positive relationship between IQ level and job performance. Intelligence is undeniable a critical element in performing a job (Byington & Felps, 2010). People with higher intelligence level will tend to perform better in jobs in all fields and therefore, intelligence is good to predict the applicants future job performance (Schmidt, 2000). Schmidt even stated that: Intelligence is the major determinant of job performance, and therefore hiring people based on intelligence leads to marked improvements in job performance, and the improvements have high economic value to the firm (Schmidt, 2000). 2

Furthermore, selecting employees who possessed higher intelligence will be able to acquire more work which related to facts and principles, more procedural knowledge and skill. This contributes to job success, individual productivity, and eventually led to the success as well as the effectiveness of the company (Schmidt, 2000). As according to the findings of Byington and Felps, innate potential, which is intelligence, will lead to superior developmental opportunities and caused to development of job-relevant knowledge, the eventually lead to superior job performance (Byington & Felps, 2010). Due to this reason, IQ testing has become a convincing tool for allocating scarce resources in the United States as well as other countries in the past century (Byington & Felps, 2010). 2. Big Five personality dimensions The Big Five personality or personality trait dimensions, which consist of extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness are also apply to utilize in employee selection. Some scholars think that personality traits are often parallel with job performance (Dessler, 2011), however there are also some who do not believe that big five frameworks is best in utilize for employee selection (Behling, 1998). The characters or the attitudes of the employees are considered as the key factors in selecting the personnel. In this study which has done by Behling (1998), the authors reported that although not all the people agreed that the employees attitudes should be taken into account in employee selection, some of the presidents supported this type of personnels selection. Moreover, according to Rothstein and Goffin (2006), based on the research which they have done, they found out that the measurements of personality in employee selection would contribute to the jobs performance. Nowadays, organizations start to use the personalitys measurement as one of the tools in employee selection. Judge, Bono, Ilies and Gerhardt (2002) mentioned that the personality dimensions of an individual do relate to tasks performed. The authors found out that in leader emergence, extraversion, openness to experience and agreeableness showed there are strong relationships among these two variables. These three personality dimensions, however, did not predict overall performance for all types of jobs. Instead, these three variables did predict overall performance in specific occupations (Barrick, Mount, Judge & 2001). Furthermore, the understanding of the relationship among the 3

personality characteristics and the job performance has increasingly being concerned of the industrial-organizational psychologists throughout the globe nowadays. There is also another study stated that the personality dimensions were related to the management performance by Rothmann and Coetzer (2003). With better personality or the right attitudes, the employees are believed to perform better than those who are weak on these characteristics. With these personalities, the employees are able to perform well in their work and task creativity. Hurts and Donovan (2000) are agreed upon the utility of the Big Five personality dimensions in employee selection. The authors also added this is due to the meaningful relationship incurred between the characteristics of an employee and the job performance. Various personalities did affect the performance of an individual in different jobs. Agreeableness is said to be a very important requirement in jobs related to interpersonal interactions. For openness to experience, it is said to be a very critical requirement in jobs related to customer service while extroversion is said to be very vital in jobs related to sales as well as management. Cole, Field and Giles (2003) also supported that the recruiters should hire the employees based on the extroversion personality for sales representatives. Researchers normally make intuitive sense on findings, for instance it would be expected that individuals who are emotionally stable and are high in conscientiousness are liable to perform well. Individuals who are emotionally stable are those who are not temperamental, not stress-prone, not anxious and not worrisome while those who are persistent, efficient, hardworking, organized and achievement-oriented are known as conscientious individuals (Barrick, Mount & Judge, 2001). Emotional stability, another big five personality dimensions is the tendency to experience positive emotional states, for instance feeling psychologically secure, calm and relaxed (Ivancevich, Kanopaske, & Matteson, 2011). Emotional stability is also known as neuroticism. An emotionally unstable person can be said to be a person who is angry, anxious, depressed, emotional, insecure and worried (Behling, 1998). In short it is the converse of emotional stability. The level of emotional stability affects the happiness and conduct of a person. From the research by Barrick& Mount (1991), it is found that emotionally stability has relatively low correlations with employee selection. Individuals who are highly neurotic are realized to be unable to effectively work on their own. Hence, they are unlikely to be in the 4

organization. These individuals are said to have exclude themselves from the organization. In other words, individuals with low emotional stability may have selected out based on their own interests or perceptions of their emotional stability. Therefore, results showed that there is no linear relation between emotional stability and job performance, which is beyond the critical unstable range. Furthermore, the predictive value of any differences can be minimized if the individuals possess sufficient emotional stability. However, results also suggested professional jobs require that individuals who are worrying, nervous, emotional and high-strung, since they are found to be better performers in professional jobs. This may be due to the pressures to high performance in professional jobs that led to the neurotic traits of individuals. In the research by Fisher & Boyle (1997), emotional stability is found to be negatively strongly related to job performance. In year 2001, results by Barrick, Mount & Judge for emotional stability and employee selection showed the lowest validity as compared to the other four big five personality dimension. The validity of the emotional stability in predicting job performance appear to be distinguishable from zero, the overall relationship is smaller than the effect for

conscientiousness. One of the possible reasons to explain the relatively low validity for emotional stability is the measurement and conceptualization of the construct. Many measures of neuroticism are too narrow to capture the true breadth of the construct. Moreover, the traits, for instance self-esteem, locus of control and others if included in emotional stability, the validity of the construct in predicting job performance is considerably higher. The most significant big five personality dimensions in the study by Barrick and Mount (1991) is conscientiousness. Individuals who are dependable, organized, thorough and responsible are said to be conscientious (Ivancevich, Kanopaske& Matteson, 2011). These individuals also have a tendency to persevere, work hard and enjoy achieving and accomplishing things. Hence, this personality dimension is an essential for employee selection. Conscientiousness is a feature of personality that appears to tap important traits to the accomplishment of work tasks in all jobs. The construct of conscientiousness includes the achievement tap traits and dependability. Some examples of achievement tap traits are planful, organized, persistent and hardworking while instances of dependability include careful, thorough and responsible (Barrick& Mount, 1991). Those individuals with traits associated with 5

a strong sense of purpose, obligation and persistence normally perform better than those who do not. The mean correlation between conscientiousness and employee selection from Fisher and Boyles (1997) research was positive. It is found to be consistent relations with all job performance criteria for all occupational groups. However, in the research, conscientiousness was not as valuable as compared to Barrick and Mounts (1991) research. In the case of task performance, conscientiousness may increase time on task, effort, persistence and attention to detail that may beneficially impact performance on certain jobs. Moreover, Barrick, Mount, and Judge (2001) found that conscientiousness has the highest validity among the big five personality dimensions. The results supported the previous research by Barrick& Mount (1991). The results emphasized the importance of

conscientiousness as a fundamental individual difference variable that has numerous implications for work outcomes. Also, conscientious individuals appear to be trait-oriented motivation variable that industrial-organizational psychologists have long researched for. In addition, it should also occupy a central role in theories seeking to explain job performance. However, Rothstein and Goffin (2006) commented that hiring based on the personality dimensions may face some faking. This means that the applicants could fake their responses and caused some bias in employee selection. McFarland (2003) agreed that in the hiring process, the applicants can fake, and at the very least faking may as well alter the result of the employee selection. According to Birkeland, Manson, Kisamore, Brannick and Smith (2006) also reported that the applicants would respond in a manner that make them look quailed for the positions and good impression as well as the increment in getting the job from the human resource management. Nevertheless, the research also suggested that the consequences of faking in personality dimensions are unlikely to be critical enough to counteract the utility and importance of personality test in employee selection. The authors also suggested two ways to overcome this problem: faking warning and the forced-choice method.

III. Conclusion This paper has review methods that firms utilize in selecting new employee. The first method that been reviewed is the cognitive ability or intelligence. It is relate to learn new things faster, able to think critically, overcome problem in quicker way, competent in verbal comprehension and inductive and also deductive reasoning. Through utilizing cognitive ability measurement in employee selection, employer might able to predict the future job performance of the candidate, and hire candidate with good intelligence will able to boost up the economic value of the firm. Furthermore, the Big Five personality is another method that been applied in employee selection by organization. Some researchers found that measuring candidate personality during employee selection, the organization will able to recruit candidates that has better personality or good attitude which eventually able to perform well in job. There are several of personality dimensions in Big Five such as agreeableness, openness to experience, extroversion, emotional stability, and conscientiousness. Agreeableness is the personal trait that has significant influence on the job and also interpersonal interactions. While openness to experience and extroversion are significant requirement in customer service and sales related job. Another personality traits such as emotionally stable and high in conscientiousness also found correlated to job performance. Although there are some researchers found that emotionally stability has low correlation with employee selection, but there are some professional job that prefer candidate that has emotional instability like worry, nervous, and high-strung due to they are found able to perform well in professional jobs. Individual that said to be conscientious by researchers are those who are dependable, organized, thorough, and responsible due to they tend to work hard and enjoy achieving and accomplishing given task. It found to be has the highest validity in employee selection among big five personality dimension. In contrast, researchers also found that hiring based on personality traits may face faking issue where candidate could fake their responses to make qualify for the job and create good impression during interview. There are some researchers suggest to overcome this problem through faking warning and forced-choice method. However, researchers suggested the outcomes of faking personality dimensions are unlikely to undermine the significant role in employee selection. 7

In short, the intelligence or cognitive ability and Big Five personality dimensions are relate to job performance across broad dimension of job and situation. Therefore, both methods are applicable in employee selection.

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