Selection of industrial and organisational psychology master’s students: Exploring the predictive validity of a person–job fit approach

Orientation: Valid selection of master’s students is essential to the training and development of competent Industrial and Organisational Psychologists. Research purpose: To validate a person-job fit data aggregation approach based on an integration of psychometric results in the selection of Industrial and Organisational Psychology master’s students. Motivation for the study: The Employment Equity Act requires psychological assessment to be valid, reliable, culturally fair and based on the inherent requirements of the job. This mandates context-specific validation research, such as the current study. Research approach/design and method: A non-experimental design was applied to secondary data ( N = 133) derived from the Occupational Personality Questionnaire, Verify Ability Tests and academic success results of 5 student cohorts registered in the years 2012 to 2016. Data was analysed by means of descriptive and correlation statistics. Main findings: The overall Person Job Match score did not show a statistically significant relationship with academic success. A significant relationship was observed between cognitive ability and academic success. Specific Person Job Match competencies presenting a significant relationship with academic success, contained scores from both personality and cognitive measures. Practical implication: Ability tests should be weighted more strongly in selecting master’s students. A review of the master’s students’ competency profile may be needed to align with future world of work demands, and to improve its predictive role in academic success. Contribution/value added: This study contributes to the predictive validity of the selection criteria for Industrial and Organisational Psychology master’s students.