The Scientific Approach to Recruitment When it comes to selecting candidates through interview, more often than not the decision is made within the first five minutes of a meeting. Yet employers like to 1 themselves that they are being exceptionally thorough in their selection processes. In today’s competitive market place, the 2 of staff in many organizations is fundamental to the company’s success and, as a result, recruiters use all means at their disposal to 3 the best in the field. One method in particular that has 4 in popularity is testing, either psychometric testing, which attempts to define psychological characteristics, or ability & aptitude testing 5 an organization with an extra way of establishing a candidate’s suitability for a role. It 6 companies to add value by identifying key elements of a position and then testing candidates to ascertain their ability against those identified elements. The employment of psychometric or ability testing as one 7 of the recruitment process may have some merit, but in reality there is no real 8 _, scientific or otherwise, of the potential future performance of any individual. The answer to this problem is experience in interview techniques and strong definition of the elements of each position to be 9 as the whole recruitment process is based on few real certainties, the instinctive decisions that many employers make, based on a CT and the first five minutes of a meeting, are probably no less valid than any other tool employed in the 10 of recruitment.