| Summary: | With so much rhetoric placed on the importance of “hiring the right employee” in every
organization to ensure a ‘fit’ between the potential candidates and the company as a wrong
hire could amount up to 30% of the employee’s earning in the first-year to an organization
(Hacker, 1997). This topic – employee selection has received little attention in the Malaysian
context, therefore, this research was conducted with the main objective to study organizations
hiring or selection methodology, the analytic/ rational or intuitive/ social approach they
choose in reaching a final hiring judgment, the issues and challenges that they faced, as well
as their future strategy among organizations in Malaysia. The limitations within selection’s
decision-making due to humans’ subjectivity are known as bounded-rationality is also
explored in this research. A total of 50 surveys were carried out among companies from
various industries, and 3 interviews were conducted with senior human resource personnel of
varying company size and industry in relation to the subject of decision-making approaches
to selection among organizations in Malaysia. The key findings of this research suggest that
the majority of Malaysian organizations neither wholeheartedly accept nor reject an analytic/
rational approach but favors a hybridization approach to selection where there is a blending
of both analytic and intuitive model which provides an acceptably holistic approach in their
hiring judgment. There are, however, a haphazard way in the practice of an analytic/ rational
approach which could be improved on. Perhaps, organizations in Malaysia could adopt a
more rigorous scientific-based selection process as a compliment to the preferred intuitive/
social approach in their decision-making.
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