The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 2 - 55

James C. Stoner

. . . the proportion of weight given
to each component was decided
based on departmental value and
philosophy. A greater weight was
given to individual interviews
because the department perceived
more value in the interview
responses compared to the written
short-answer responses.

potential weights of the various components
within the overall score. Thus, the proportion
of weight given to each component was decided
based on departmental value and philosophy.
A greater weight was given to individual interviews because the department perceived more
value in the interview responses compared
to the written short-answer responses. References were given less weight in the overall
score because references were perceived to
hold an inherent bias due to candidates typically selecting people who will provide positive
responses. Ultimately the hiring department
opted to weight the application and individual
interview scores to 40% and 60% of the total
score, respectively.
Hiring supervisors used the total weighted
score as the metric for overall candidate assessment. Candidate files also contained the
responses and all the evaluator qualitative data
collected during the hiring process, which
were used in conjunction with the total weighted score to make hiring decisions.

Annual performance evaluations for RAs
were conducted at the end of the FA16 semester. Various thematic areas of the RA position
were represented on the evaluation (e.g., time
management, policies and procedures, conflict
resolution), but no consideration within the
analysis was given other than the overall evaluation score.
To test whether candidate assessment
scores (with application scores weighted at
40% and individual interview scores weighted
at 60%) predicted future job performance,
a simple linear regression was conducted.
Weighted candidate scores significantly predicted RA job performance, F(1, 46) = 7.572,
p < .01, accounting for 12.3% of the variance in
job performance scores.

Empirical Weight Analysis
The RA hiring process infrastructure and evaluation metrics at the studied institution did not
change between the SP16 and SP17 processes;
thus, data from the most recent cycle could
be used to inform more specific proportions
of component weights. Prior to analyzing the
data, the application and reference scores were
separated into distinct scores independent of
each other, which allowed for a more customized approach to how the perceived inherently
biased references were treated in comparison
to the other self-performance areas.
By separating the application scores and
the reference scores, three variables existed
contributing to an overall score: application,
references, and individual interviews. A database was then created to generate different
total weighted scores based on various combinations of weights (all totaling to 100%). The
purpose of this analysis was to reverse-engi-

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 2

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