Applicant Reactions to Selection Procedures

We note that applicant reactions to selection procedures may be of practical importance to employers because of influences on organizations’attractiveness to candidates, ethical and legal issues, and possible effects on selection procedure validity and utility. In Study 1, after reviewing sample items or brief descriptions of 14 selection tools, newly hired entry‐level managers ( n = 110) and recruiting/employment managers ( n = 44) judged simulations, interviews, and cognitive tests with relatively concrete item‐types (e.g., vocabulary, standard written English, mathematical word problems) to be significantly more job related than personality, biodata, and cognitive tests with relatively abstract item‐types (e.g., quantitative comparisons, letter sets). A measure of new managers’cognitive abilities was positively correlated with their perceptions of the job relatedness of selection procedures. In Study 2, applicant reactions to a range of entry‐level to professional civil service examinations (assessed immediately after tasting the exam) were positively related to (procedural and distributive) justice perceptions and willingness to recommend the employer to others (assessed one month after the exam, n = 460).