Practical Considerations for Conducting Job Analysis Linkage Exercises

What is it about?

To follow best practices in creating selection tools, an important phase in job analysis is gathering linkage ratings between knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) and job tasks. However, the literature provides little guidance on best practices for collecting linkage ratings. Two studies were conducted to contribute to the limited research. Study 1 examined the inter-rater agreement of different types of raters: job incumbents, managers, or job analysts. Results revealed that job analysts have the highest inter-rater agreement. Study 2 examined the impact of a frame of reference (FOR) training for raters. Results suggested that a brief consensus training session vastly improved agreement among raters. These studies provide more guidance on best practices for obtaining high-quality linkage ratings.

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Why is it important?

The linkage exercise in job analysis is a critical step for legal defensibility of employee selection systems that may be created using the job analysis as foundation. However, there is little guidance in the literature for conducting these exercises and obtaining accurate results. This research study compared the results of two methods for conducting linkages, and the article provides practical guidance for conducting these exercises.