Person to Organization Fit & Person to the Job Fit Impact on Employment Interview Decisions. An Exploratory Field Study in Greece

Abstract

Person to organization fit and person to the job fit are considered among many other factors that affect employment outcomes during employee selection process. There is a consensus to a large extent, that both of them as candidate’s qualities have great positive influence and affect recruiters, personnel managers and employers’ decisions, and respectively hiring results. This study aims to assess the level of influence of employee candidates’ qualities of Person-to-Organization fit and Person-to-the Job fit, and their relative affect in recruiters’ hiring decisions on staff selection through interview process. The study also aims to explore if there is a significant difference between the effects that these factors have on hireability-selectability of candidates. The significance of candidate’s Person to Organization Fit and Person to the Job Fit were measured according to three choices of recruiter’s decisions during interview, which were more specifically the possibility to hire them, the possibility to consider them as suitable for the position they applied for, and the possibility of giving them a second chance for another interview. These three measures were consolidated in one indicator with the term hireability-eligibility which has been tested for reliability using Cronbach’s alpha. A field study has been conducted in order to research the importance and relative influence of candidates’ person to organization fit and person to the job fit as well, in recruiters’ hiring decisions, during interview selection process. Findings reveal that both of these candidates’ attributes, Person to Organization fit and Person to the Job fit, have significant effects on recruiters’ decisions and selection outcomes, regarding the hireabilty, eligibility index when they are assessed separately, using simple regression analysis. However, when they are combined in a multiple regression analysis model, only Person to Organization fit has a significant effect on recruiters, employers’ decisions.