Sept. 10, 2019

Assistant Professor, Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management (OB/HRM)

My research interests involve organizational hiring practices and bridging the gap between the way that companies hire people and the best practices from the research literature. My article entitled “Selection Tool Use: A Focus on Personality Testing in Canada, the United States, and Germany” was recently published in Personnel Assessment and Decisions.

One of the unique contributions of this article was uncovering the current hiring practices being used by companies across Canada and the United States. The research team also included faculty member Chet Robie and doctoral student Peter Fisher from the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics as well as Dr. Cornelius König (Universität des Saarlandes, Germany). We found that some of the hiring practices that are not commonly being used by companies are some of the practices with the best research evidence in terms of predicting future job performance (e.g., general mental ability testing, personality testing). We also found that there is a preference for sorting test takers into personality types even though the research literature has provided more compelling evidence in favour of the use of personality traits. Overall, it appears that a research–practice gap is still prevalent in terms of organizational hiring practices and preferences.

The next step in this research area, funded by a Lazaridis Institute Research Seed Grant, is to specifically address the hiring practices of growth-oriented technology companies in the Waterloo Region as well as the reasons why these companies have decided to use their current hiring practices. This work will continue to add to the research literature while allowing companies that do choose to use evidence-based practices to operate and grow in a successful and scalable manner.

Learn More

• Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Management (OB/HRM) PhD in Management
• Steve Risavy Faculty Profile