Question

Munsterberg had an impact on the field by applying psychology to the selection of employees. In my experience over the past couple of years, organizations are competing to get the best employees possible for their open positions. This can be a challenge for potential candidates as they are competing more and more for fewer jobs. Since 2008, many organizations have fewer open positions as they try to be profitable with the headcount that they have, asking current employees to take on more responsibilities. Fewer jobs mean top candidates are competing for these top positions. Class, what exactly did Munsterberg say about employee selection? How is this relevant to psychology?

Answer 1

1Munsterberg was a founder of Industrial psychology. He suggested that, the key of work efficiency is matching the jobs. He stated that the job needs to be matched with the emotional and mental capacities of the selected employees. According to Munsterberg, A successful job matching can lead to employee’s satisfaction and excellent work performance. Munsterberg has stated that, Business organizations also need to select the appropriate employee for a particular job for increasing the profits and achieving their business goals.

Munsterberg had created a lot of mental tests and job related questionnaires for testing candidate’s capacity, ability and professional skills.

Not only that, he also have done some researches to find the significant co-relation between these mental tests and job efficiency.

So we can conclude that, Munsterberg have suggested that, job profile should be matched with the employee’s ability. He has done so many researches to discover some relevant mental and ability test for the employee selection.

2) This is relevant to psychology because all the discussion of employee selection is based on the Industrial psychology. Here Munsterberg had invented some mental tests which can address someone’s mental set, ability, emotional capacity and other skills. Psychology is the subject what we can use to know someone’s mental condition. So we can say that, here this mental tests are based on the psychology. Industrial psychology has a great role in employee selection. Perfect job selection can be done if a business organization can match the job profile with the candidte. This matching only can be done by testing mental condition of the employee.Psychology helps to understand someone's mental condition and other abilities. So we can conclude that this is much relevant to psychology.