| Person-organization fit has been proposed as a key issue for organizational goal attainment, yet research on considerations of applicant-organization fit in the assessment of job applicant resumes does not exist in the published literature. However, resume and job application form screening has been postulated to be the most prevalent employee selection process. The present program of research examined job-specific and organizational fit impressions gained by human resource professionals from resumes and the impact of such impressions on resume screening decisions. Three field studies were performed with practicing human resources professionals, examining the influences of job-specific and organizational fit impressions on resume screening decisions with survey, expert rater, and experimental approaches. Results indicated that human resources professionals look for both applicant-job and applicant-organization fit in resume screening, rate them reliably and relatively distinctly, and make resume screening decisions that reflect differences in both applicant-job and applicant-organizational congruence. Survey data indicated that although human resources professionals regarded skills-related aspects as the most important indicators of applicant-organization fit in the overall hiring process, each of four other aspects of applicant-organization fit (personality-culture fit, values congruence, goals-opportunities fit and industry fit) was rated as highly important in establishing such fit. Industry fit (i.e., fit between an applicant's experience and the target organization's industry) was regarded as least important in establishing applicant-organization fit. As predicted, indicators of applicant-organization fit were regarded as most important or useful in establishing fit for manager and experienced professional job categories, when compared with experienced technical support, entry-level university graduate, and entry-level MBA types of jobs. The former position categories are less constrained by supervision/monitoring, rules, and job-related procedures, and it was anticipated that applicant-organization fit would be more important for these types of jobs. In a second study, human resources professionals were found to rate applicant-job fit, applicant-organization fit, applicant-job focus and applicant-organization focus reliably in actual resumes. The results of the second study demonstrated the importance of impressions of applicant-job and applicant-organization fit in resume screening decisions for an experienced technical support position, whereas in the third study, a resume screening experiment with an entry-level university graduate job, actual applicant-organization fit influenced ratings of interview likelihood to a significant extent. Overall, the findings of these studies point to human resources professionals' beliefs in the importance of applicant-organization fit in hiring. At the resume screening stage of hiring, the importance of actual applicant-job fit and actual applicant-organization fit in screening outcomes was strong, and such differences also led to differences in rated impressions of applicant-job fit and impressions of applicant-organization fit. Findings supported predictions of Schneider's (1987) ASA framework. |
