{edited to clean up typos}

Certainly, there have been personnel selection techniques forever (didn’t the traditional Chinese civil service exams go back to the 7th century?). However, personnel selection as we know it today is largely a 20th century invention.

First of all, the idea of a “job” that people “apply” for is relatively recent, dating basically to the Industrial Revolution. And, in the early factories, jobs were simple, required little training, and management problems were pretty much limited to coercing workers to show up for 12 hour shifts, standing in front of a loom or spinning frame, every day. This problem was, in part addressed by hiring people with few expectations and who were easily coerced – that is, women and children. For more skilled positions (supervisors, mechanics), one common solution was to hire relatives.

We do see the beginnings of formal recruitment systems as early as the beginning of the 19th century. For example, the Waltham system of textile manufacturing used young women [1], who were recruited from rural New England by travelling agents.

The idea of actually selecting the right person for each job is attributed to the early industrial psychologist Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1912). In his 1913 book (obviously posthumous publication), Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, he discusses the necessity for both describing jobs and their requirements and selecting “The Best Possible Man” for each job.

So, by the early 1900s, there was a distinct idea floating around that the traditional haphazard methods of selecting employees did not contribute to industrial efficiency, but rather detracted from it. I cannot resist quoting from one of my personal heroes, Lillian Gilbreth:

Selecting Workers Under Traditional Management. — In selecting men to do work, there was little or no attempt to study the individuals who applied for work. The matter of selection was more of a process of "guess work" than of exact measurement, and the highest form of test was considered to be that of having the man actually tried out by being given a chance at the work itself. There was not only a great waste of time on the work, because men unfitted to it could not turn it out so successfully, but there also was a waste of the worker, and many times a positive injury to the worker, by his being put at work which he was unfitted either to perform, to work at continuously, or both.

In the most progressive type of Traditional Management there was usually a feeling, however, that if the labor market offered even temporarily a greater supply than the work in hand demanded, it was wise to choose those men to do the work who were best fitted for it, or who were willing to work for less wages. It is surprising to find in the traditional type, even up to the present day, how often men were selected for their strength and physique, rather than for any special capabilities fitting them for working in, or at, the particular line of work to be done.

She goes on to recommend:

Method of Selection Under Ultimate Management. — Under Ultimate Management, the minds of the workers, — and of the managers too, — will have been studied, and the results recorded from earliest childhood. This record, made by trained investigators, will enable vocational guidance directors to tell the child what he is fitted to be, and thus to help the schools and colleges to know how best to train him, that is to say, to provide what he will need to know to do his life work, and also those cultural studies that his vocational work may lack, and that may be required to build out his best development as an individual.

It is not always recognized that even the student who can afford to postpone his technical training until he has completed a general culture course, requires that his culture course be carefully planned. Not only must he choose those general courses that will serve as a foundation for his special study, and that will broaden and enrich his study, but also he must be provided with a counter-balance, — with interests that his special work might never arouse in him. Thus the field of Scientific Management can be narrowed to determining and preparing standard plans for standard specialized men, and selecting men to fill these places from competent applicants.

What part of the specialized training needed by the special work shall be given in schools and what in the industries themselves can be determined later. The "twin apprentice" plan offers one solution of the problem that has proved satisfactory in many places. The psychological study should determine through which agency knowledge can best come at any particular stage of mental growth.

Effect on Workers of Such Selection. — As will be shown at greater length under "Incentives," Scientific Management aims in every way to encourage initiative. The outline here given as to how men must, ultimately, under Scientific Management, be selected serves to show that, far from being "made machines of," men are selected to reach that special place where their individuality can be recognized and rewarded to the greatest extent.

Selection Under Scientific Management To-day. — At the present day, the most that Scientific Management can do, in the average case, is to determine the type of men needed for any particular kind of work, and then to select that man who seems, from such observations as can be made, best to conform to the type. The accurate knowledge of the requirements of the work, and the knowledge of variables of the worker make even a cursory observation more rich in results than it would otherwise be. Even such an apparently obvious observation, as that the very fact that a man claims that he can do the work implies desire and will on his part to do it that may overcome many natural lacks, — even this is an advance in recognizing individuality.

By the late 1920s and early 1930s, the selection procedure as we know it today – application, interview, possibly testing, was seen as the standard of practice for well-run organizations. Writing in 1932, Morris Viteles (an important figure in the history of psychology), took it for granted that the modern organization would use an application form, conduct interviews and test applicants.

[1] The advantage of using these young rural women was that they were accustomed to tight control by their parents. Moreover, working conditions were less of an issue, since these women usually did not plan to work any longer than necessary to accumulate savings for marriage or to pay for a brother’s education. Not that working conditions were not horrible and not that there were no protests, of course.

Sources:

Gilbreth, Lillian Moller. (1914). The psychology of management. Retrieved from Gutenberg.org

McCormick, Ernest J. & Tiffin, Joseph. (1974). Industrial psychology (6th edition). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Viteles, Morris S. (1932). Industrial psychology. New York: W. W. Norton.

Wren, Daniel A. (1994). The evolution of management thought (4th edition). New York: John Wiley.