Example Questions

Personnel (Industrial) Psychology:

1. Explain the type and depth of information you would gather to design a job training program. What are the similarities and differences in this data gathering effort to what you would gather to develop a selection assessment? In essence, compare and contrast a job analysis/needs assessment conducted for training to a job analysis conducted for selection.

2. You are managing an organization’s selection system for a customer service agent job with many positions. Because the organization has a business strategy focused on customer service, senior leadership tells you that they only want “the best people” for this position, and they want to reduce the risk of selecting “anyone mediocre.” Accordingly, you apply strict scoring guides and high cutoff scores on your previously validated selection assessments to identify a small but highly qualified final applicant pool for the final stage interviews. On your review, however, you notice that the final applicant pool is not demographically diverse, and in fact might be too small to satisfy the multiple position openings in the organization. How do you proceed from here? Consider what data would you investigate and what options you would consider achieving the right balance between applicant pool quality on one hand and applicant pool size and diversity on the other. Finally, how would you explain the issue to senior leadership in the organization when they ask for an update?

3. Employment interviews remain among the most commonly used selection tools. Why are interviews so popular? How well do employment interviews work in selection contexts and why? What psychological constructs are most often assessed in employment interviews? What are the most pressing issues regarding use of employment interviews and why are those issues important? Describe a new research study (or a series of studies) designed to address one or two issues of these issues.

Organizational Psychology:

1. Quiet quitting, or the act of not doing work beyond the job description, is all over the news. It is often disparaged as a counterproductive work behavior (perhaps not in those terms), however, it may reflect simply an absence of organizational citizenship behavior. Imagine you are asked by a reporter to discuss quiet quitting. Describe quiet quitting using organizational psychology concepts AND one theory of motivation. Then, answer the following questions. 1) Is quiet quitting new? What caused the increase (if any) in quiet quitting? 2) Is quiet quitting indeed counterproductive/harmful, and to whom? 3) According to your chosen theory, how can organizations minimize quiet quitting?

2. You recently accepted a position with Delta Airlines. They have acquired 3 new luggage distribution centers in Atlanta. The morale at these new centers is dismal. Reports indicate that workers are .75 standard deviations below norms for various job attitudes. You are asked for your input at a meeting with the research and development team. Propose a plan to address this.

3. A debate among IO psychologists is “selection versus training.” This argument focuses on whether it is morally, financially, and pragmatically preferred to select the right people for the job, or to train people for a job. Take a stand in this debate regarding the health of workers. Using ethical, financial, practical, or other concerns, make an argument for whether it is better to select people who are healthy or to train people to be healthy.

4. What is organizational culture? Please give a history of the development of the concept in organizational psychology. Review the relevant literature to give an up-to-date analysis of the general state of organizational culture is now in the field. Be sure to include factors that influence culture, what we know about changing culture, and the impact of culture on organizational outcomes. Use citations.

Research Methods:

1. Although cross-sectional, correlational designs cannot determine a causal relationship, they may provide valuable information on the plausibility of a causal relationship. Identify four different requirements for inferring causality in a non-experimental study. In addition, explain what statistical analyses should be run within a cross-sectional study to gain information on these aspects of causality. Connect the information provided by the analysis to the inference of causation.

2. You are working at a company in research and development. The President of HR, with whom you have a good relationship, strongly believes that dog people (i.e., people who strongly like dogs and prefer dogs to cats) are better workers than cat people (i.e., people who strongly like cats and prefer cats to dogs). You've convinced him that it would be a bad idea to hire based on such a construct, and so now he wants to include some survey items about this for team building and developmental purposes. How would you go about writing a scale to measure this construct? Please specifically describe steps taken to clarify the construct and identify its nomological net.

3. Distinguish between test bias and test fairness. Explain the rationales on these notions, for using score-adjustment in personnel selection. Finally, describe three types of score adjustment methods, and indicate the pros and cons of each method.

4. Compare and contrast experiments, quasi-experiments, and nonexperimental methods. Briefly describe an example of each, utilizing the same focal constructs and evaluating the same hypotheses in each example. Consider the tradeoffs of each type of design in terms of threats to validity and the strength of causal inferences.

Ethics/General:

1. a) Describe the role of APA for psychologists. As an I/O psychologist, to what extent are you beholden to the rules of the APA? b) What is the ethical code governing the APA? List the general principles. c) The ethical code identifies our responsibilities regarding (among others) competence, record keeping, human relations, and assessment. Describe a situation in which you might be asked to do something that violates the ethical guidelines regarding competence OR assessment. How might you manage this situation in line with APA standards? You may invoke the SIOP principles for the validation and use of personnel selection procedures to help you respond to this question.

2. It is April, 2025 and you are at a professional conference. You recently accepted a position within the wellness team at Amazon, and after a few drinks, a former colleague gives you a hard time about "selling out" to work for a company that is known to treat employees poorly. Convince your peer that you intend to protect workers. You begin your response "When I see that they want to unionize, I think we have failed our workers. I'm motivated to change that. They shouldn't need outside intervention in order to get the working conditions they need." Explain how you intend to do so by describing specific actions that you know are likely to impact decision making.

3. You are a professor of IO psychology in a psychology department. The university president mandated that the psychology department eliminate one graduate program in the psychology department as a means to save money. How would you make the case the I/O psychology program should be spared the axe? Give a brief definition and history of I/O psychology; indicate what are its scientific and practical contributions and strengths. What evidence do you have the future for the profession looks bright? Finally, your argument will be more credible it you mention at least some of the field’s limitations and how you see them being addressed.