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Showing posts from December, 2011

On diagnostics in personnel selection

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David Creelman will soon publish an article on the use of diagnostics in personnel decisions. In it, he points at some problems with formal diagnostic tools. He argues that organizations should always use formal tools in combination with informal tools. I'll link to the article when it's online. Meanwhile, David asked me for my views on the use of diagnostics in personnel management and here is what I said:

Do recent publications prove Anders Ericsson and colleagues wrong about the importance of deliberate practice? No.

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About deliberate practice I have written much about deliberate practice . Researchers have demonstrated there is a lack of evidence for the claim that natural ability is the main factor behind top performance. They have found out that what is crucial instead is the amount of time the individual has practiced and the specific way in which he or she has practiced (read more about deliberate practice here and here ). Recently, two articles were published on the relative importance of deliberate practice and 'talent' for achieving high levels of performance. First, there was Deliberate Practice Is Necessary but Not Sufficient to Explain Individual Differences in Piano Sight-Reading Skill by E. Meinz and D. Hambrick. Second, there was  Deliberate Practice: Necessary But Not Sufficient   by G. Campitelli and F. Gobet. Do these articles shed a new light on how important deliberate practice is? Do they call for a return to the idea that innate abilities are, in the end, mo