The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 2 - 62

Reverse-Engineering the RA Hiring Process

placement of RAs within academically aligned
learning communities.
One described limitation of this study addressed the inability to study the job performance of candidates not selected for the RA
role. One alternative for practitioners is to consider running analyses on hiring data with a
different dependent variable-perhaps simply
the binary "hired or not"-to understand who
is not being selected. Using data to alter the
hiring process does not necessarily have to
focus on the successful portion of the candidate pool; in fact, many institutions may find
inherent benefits in understanding the population of unsuccessful applicants for the benefit
of future hiring iterations. Put another way,
mathematical models can sift through data
to locate people who are likely to face great
challenges . . . It's up to society whether to
use that intelligence to reject and punish
them-or to reach out to them with the
resources they need. (O'Neil, 2017, p. 118)
If patterns emerge about certain demographic categories underperforming in the hiring
process or challenged in achieving successful
hiring, departments should consider adding
more targeted recruitment and preparation
components before their hiring process.

FUTURE RESEARCH
Further research and data analysis on competency areas within the RA job description
would be especially illuminating and may
better inform the ability to select high quality
candidates who most possess desired traits.
For example, if an institution subdivides the
RA job duties into various categories, they
might learn that approximately 25% of the job

Using data to alter the hiring
process does not necessarily
have to focus on the successful
portion of the candidate pool; in
fact, many institutions may find
inherent benefits in understanding
the population of unsuccessful
applicants for the benefit of future
hiring iterations.

falls within an administration competency.
A reasonable assumption is that combining
all relevant questions and metrics focused
on administration across the entire selection
process (i.e., summing relevant administration application question scores, interview
question scores) should inform a candidate's
potential to perform administration duties as
rated on their performance evaluation. Competency-based models of performance appraisals have met with success in other fields such
as public health nursing (Kalb et al., 2006)
and construction (Dainty, Cheng, & Moore,
2005). Thus, expanding this study's analysis
to include time allowance for job duty competencies may be especially revealing.
Although the featured simple linear regression analysis became quite granular,
other analysis may better serve additional exploration in this area of study. With the conclusion of this exploratory study, RA hiring
practices would benefit from additional research mapping the individual components
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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 2

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