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Public sector personnelists are often asked to select or recommend a job analysis system. Selecting the approach which is most likely to meet their agency's needs is a complex task, demanding attention to factors such as staff requirements, type of information obtained, and legal ramifications. The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, and judicial interpretation of legal requirements are of paramount importance in choosing a particular system. This paper examines three significant issues related to selecting a job analysis system, and recommends a multi-method approach as the best way to obtain useful information while complying with regulatory guidance and case law.

Selection measures that are content-validated may be biased if the job content domain, as defined by a job analysis, is dependent on the characteristics of the people who hold the job or who complete the job analysis ratings. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship may exist between race and job analysis ratings. Clerical workers employed by state government agencies completed job analysis questionnaires on their own jobs and their co-workers' jobs. The workers evaluated job tasks which belongs to three content domains. Job content for the clerical job was related to race, such that the relative ratings of the three job domains for the black incumbents who had black coworkers differed from those for the other three racial groups — black incumbents who had white coworkers, white incumbents who had white coworkers, and white incumbents who had black coworkers. It was argued that these differences represented actual job differences. Under these conditions, a job analyst should not define different job titles for different racial groups, but attempt to understand why the differences exist. Through such analyses and evaluation of results, bias in application of the job analysis data, such as defining the content domain of selection measures, can be avoided.

Competence has been defined as "the ability to meet or surpass prevailing standards of adequacy for a particular activity" (Butler, 1978 p.7). The authors describe in this article a framework for competency-based training, focused on the importance of training the public personnelist responsible for implementing staff development programs. Kolb's (1984) experiential learning model is suggested as a vehicle for instilling competencies which overcomes difficulties with many traditional, single modality approaches to training. The implications for public sector training programs are discussed.

This paper addresses management's need to train supervisory personnel in the use of employee performance appraisals. First, the application as well as the usefulness of the appraisal system is described — as dictated by and in relation to — recent litigation concerning discrimination charges. After exploration of the various approaches to employee evaluation, recommendations for effective training of supervisory personnel in implementing appraisal systems are presented. These recommendations take into consideration often neglected factors such as employee motivation, employee aptitude and discussion of performance evaluations with the employees.