1 The Road to I/O Psychology at the RCMP November 2011 James Lea, Director Assessment and Research HR Sector, RCMP

Overview Background Current job Working in the applied world 2

University road… B.A., Psychology, McGill M.A., General Experimental Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University Ph.D., Basic and Applied Psychology, Queen’s Post-Doctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley Assistant Professor, Queen’s (one-year term) 3

Crossroads: University or applied… Job hunting… Another post-doc? Another one-year term? Personnel Psychology Centre? 4

Industrial and Organizational Psychology Personnel Selection What measured How measure Legal context Performance Management Learning and Development Organizational change Teamwork Org attitudes and behaviours Occupational Health Work motivation Leadership 5

Personnel Psychology Centre Part of Public Service Commission of Canada Test Development, Assessment Centres, Executive Counselling, etc. My tasks Revising a management simulation exercise for economists Development of a job analysis training workshop Working at assessment centres for management trainees, middle managers, entry level economists 6

Heard about another opportunity… 7

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police 8

A safe and secure Canada 9

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police 10

Human Resources Sector Classifying Selecting Training Staffing Compensating Occupational Health and Safety Employee and Management Relations Etc… 11

Assessment and Research, HR Sector Internal Consultants Industrial/Organizational Psychology Currently 5 professional staff Collaborate with Policy Centres on a range of projects Job analyses and competency profiling Assessment tool development and administration for Recruiting, promotion, performance management, etc. Organizational Behaviour Research projects 12

Some A&R specific projects Develop police officer and civilian tests and interviews Processing thousands of answer sheets annually Train interviewers Lead job analysis and competency profiling workshops Implement Computerized Adaptive Testing Improvements to many selection systems Int’l Promotion process web survey Demographic research and requests Research approval board 13

Some A&R specific projects And some tasks that take a huge chunk of time: Putting out fires Making policy recommendations “Debating” with other units re how systems should change…. 14

Some work done on own 15

Much work is collaborative 16

A&R Practical Challenges Persuading management that HR (e.g., personnel selection) is more than “common sense” Getting best practice knowledge on the discussion table Cooperation with people with different backgrounds and agendas 17

Management reviews an HR program 18

Benefits in RCMP HR include… Working for a national icon that’s in the news regularly! Deal with a wide range of interesting jobs Easy to see positive impact of work done by organization (safe homes, safe communities) 19

Committees, networks… Unlike much research, a broad mandate / range of activities People doing very similar work around Ottawa, Canada and the world 20

Professional associations Ottawa I/O Psychology Group Canadian Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conferences, on-line discussions, etc. 21

Applied work: Challenges Less control over research topics Logic doesn’t always carry the day…agendas… Usually generalists rather than specialists Often explaining (and lobbying for) the basics 22

Applied work: Benefits Rule of law; much more structured 9 to 5 (ish) Social Easy to see contribution 23

Lessons Learned Not everyone has faith in expertise and research Goals and agendas can be very different Power of informal communication networks Importance of “soft skills” 24

How to prepare for an applied job…. Broad technical knowledge (at fingertips) Soft skills (communication, planning, …) Teamwork 25

26 QUESTIONS

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Practical Challenges in HR 28

Work sample tests, r =.54 Intelligence tests, r =.51 Structured interviews, r =.51 Job knowledge test, r =.48 Trg & Exp beh. consistency ratings, r =.45 Job try-out procedure, r =.44 Schmidt & Hunter, 1998 – Meta-analysis

Integrity tests, r =.41 Unstructured interviews, r =.38 Assessment centres, r =.37 Biographical data measures, r =.35 Situational judgment tests*, r =.34 Conscientiousness tests, r =.31 Reference checks, r =.26 Schmidt & Hunter, 1998 – Meta-analysis

Job experience (years), r =.18 Trg. & exp. point method, r =.11 Years of education, r =.10 Interests, r =.10 Graphology, r =.02 Age, r = -.01 Schmidt & Hunter, 1998 – Meta-analysis

General mental ability AND  Integrity tests, R =.65  Work sample tests, R =.63  Structured interviews, R =.63  Conscientiousness tests, R =.60  Job Knowledge tests, R =.58 Schmidt & Hunter, 1998 – Meta-analysis