Personnel Assessment and Selection in the Service of the Applicant (PASSA): Shifting the Applicant Perspective on Selection from Reaction to Action

Research on staffing organizations traditionally focused on hiring the best performing applicants. This paradigm is restricted to serving the employer's interests, and its utility may be limited by skill shortage. It is therefore proposed to complement traditional recruitment and selection based on a paradigm labeled Assessment and Selection in the Service of the Applicant (PASSA). PASSA is meant to support applicants taking on the agentic role in mutual interactions, such that they become recipients of the information gathered, whereas employers become targets of assessment. This idea is elaborated on along the typical stages of the staffing process, from defining goals and decision criteria, to job analysis, to recruitment, to assessment and selection, to validation. At each stage, implications and challenges for implementing PASSA in research and practice are discussed. Finally, theoretical arguments as to why and under which conditions both employers and applicants may benefit from this implementation are offered.