System may transform hiring, online dating
A University of Calgary professor says he's designed a computerized unified selection process that promises to revolutionize the world of human resources.
Its technical name is "synthetic validity," and once the system is implemented it's expected to streamline hiring processes, save businesses many thousands of dollars, and contribute hundreds of billions of dollars annually to North American economies, said Piers Steel, a professor in UC's Haskayne School of Business.
And it can even be applied to online dating, he said.
"Essentially this is a single standardized system that could select almost anybody for anything in one-thousandth the time and one-thousandth the cost," said Steel, lead author of a paper on synthetic validity published in the current issue of the International Journal of Selection and Assessment.
The system uses data about the skills of approximately 50,000 people currently employed in a range of jobs
Current selection systems use a similar process, but they are labor intensive, expensive and available to only a few of the largest companies.
Steel says his online computerized system would create a high-quality selection system in hours, cost only pennies, and be able to withstand the harshest legal scrutiny.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
