Personnel selection: an important success factor in recruitment

Personnel selection is one of the most important success factors for a company. HR managers are faced with the ongoing challenge of filling open positions with the right people—those with the perfect blend of skills, experience, and cultural fit for the role and company. 

This article will explore the best practices associated with personnel selection and explore tools and techniques that will help you and your team achieve your goals. You’ll also learn about how to set criteria for personnel selection and how artificial intelligence can help automate and streamline this process. 

Let’s dive in. 

Definition: What is personnel selection? 

Personnel selection—a part of human resource management—is a set of processes and strategies used to identify the best talent on the market for open roles, and to screen them for suitability. 

This set of processes and strategies outlines the criteria relevant to filling a position and the strategies that will be used to identify qualified candidates. The goal is to fill the vacancy with the highest-quality candidate possible in the shortest time. 

Important factors in personnel selection

In an ideal world, personnel selection should be as objective as possible and free from the recruiter’s personal views and biases. In reality, however, it’s hard to avoid either explicitly or implicitly injecting one’s own subjective opinion into the screening and selection process. The goal is to identify and mitigate these instances as much as possible, while still giving the recruitment team space to make informed decisions. 

Cognitive biases can be reduced, or at least managed, by using techniques like structured interviews and standardized job test procedures. This ensures that all candidates are screened on a level playing field, ensuring that all receive equal opportunity and consideration. 

Standardized personality or cognitive performance tests—which are often automatically evaluated early in the application process—also help to ensure objectivity and reliability in candidate screening. 

As a rule, final hiring decisions should not be made solely based on the opinion or assessment of a single person. Instead, collaborative hiring best practices dictate that a hiring team should be consulted, thereby ensuring that a variety of opinions and assessments are taken into account. A single person—such as the hiring manager—may still make the final hiring decision, but that should be informed by the input of a dedicated recruitment team. 

Criteria for personnel selection

Ideally, as mentioned, hiring teams would screen candidates based on a uniform evaluation criteria. These criteria can be defined for each new position filled, and at the start of the recruitment process. 

Examples of personnel selection criteria include: 

• Motivation. How willing is the candidate to commit to the company, and achieve the best performance possible? 
• Competence. Does the candidate have the necessary knowledge, experience, and skills needed to do the job? 
• Intelligence. Does the candidate have the intellectual and cognitive abilities required for this job level? 
• Soft skills. Does the candidate show the necessary social skills for the job, such as strong communication, conflict resolution, and the ability to work with a team? 
• Personal strengths. What personal strengths does the candidate have that could be an asset? For example, resilience, analytical skills, independent work, or a strong ability to manage teams and projects across departments. 
• Learning ability. Is the candidate able—and eager—to acquire new knowledge in a reasonable amount of time? 
• Technical knowledge. Does the candidate have mastery over the necessary technical skills for the job? 

The more specific you are about the personnel selection criteria, the higher the probability that the right candidate will apply. At Tellent Recruitee, we recommend holding a kick-off meeting with all recruitment team members at the beginning of the recruitment process. 

During this kick off, the team should hash out, in as much detail as possible, the ideal candidate profile for the position, the job requirements, and what selection criteria will be used to evaluate applicants. The job title and salary should also be discussed here, along with interviewing questions and tactics. The goal should be to walk away from the meeting closely aligned on the type of candidate required and how you will identify the right person for the job.

The importance of personnel selection for corporate goals

A company’s productivity and performance depends, to a large extent, on employees being able to effectively use their skills and expertise to achieve the company’s strategic goals. When personnel selection and company strategy align, there are several key benefits for all parties involved. 

Specifically: 

• Productivity and efficiency increase
• Costs are reduced due to efficient recruiting processes
• The employee brand remains strong
• Employee satisfaction, and thus retention, increases 

Of course, the opposite is also true. If you don’t pay attention to your personnel selection processes and strategy, you become less attractive as an employer, and employee disengagement and attrition become a problem. All of these factors have a drag effect on your company’s performance, in addition to the immediate costs associated with a single—or repeated—bad hire. 

Effective personnel selection is an essential pillar of any company’s success, and is of great strategic and competitive importance. Efforts should be taken to continuously evaluate and improve this critical part of the company’s operations. 

5 proven personnel selection methods 

Historically, recruiters focused mostly on the job application process and the interview phase when selecting and screening candidates. Today, new tools and automations make it possible to optimize every minute state of the selection and hiring process. 

Here are some proven personnel selection methods to consider and optimization. 

1. Analysis of the application process

Online application workflows act as recruiters' initial screening phase, weeding out candidates who do not meet minimum qualifications. This phase includes everything from the job ad and description to the questions asked in the application portal. 

The goal is to ensure that candidates have enough information about the position to self-select before applying and that baseline screening questions are asked to help weed out unqualified candidates early. 

Like all personnel selection processes, this phase should be reviewed, tested, and refined regularly. 

2. Job interviews 

Job interviews—whether face-to-face, over the phone, or through video chats—are a tried, tested, and critical part of any personnel selection process. Companies should experiment with different formats, structured interview questions, and evaluation criteria to ensure their interview strategies are effective and reliable. 

Reducing bias, as mentioned earlier, should be a top priority during the interview process. Structured interviews are a great technique for this, helping to ensure that all candidates are evaluated on an equal playing field.

3. Assessment Centers

Assessment Centers are a popular tool in the personnel selection process for evaluating the suitability of candidates for a specific role at the company. 

The Assessment Center (or AC) usually lasts between a half day and up to three days—depending on the role and the number of applications. It can be carried out either by the company, or via external service providers, such as consultants or even psychologists. 

ACs are often used for deep screening and assessment for roles that require significant skills and abilities, and a very specific personality or cognitive ability. These ACs are designed to test candidates from a variety of angles to weed out most suitable candidates.

‍Did you know? Tellent Recruitee’s Marketplace allows you to connect with dozens of sourcing and assessment tools. TestGorilla, for example, integrates with Tellent Recruitee to provide a library of 200+ tests to aid in personnel selection. 

4. Aptitude tests 

Another technique for evaluating candidates is through aptitude tests, an evaluation of how likely candidates are to succeed in the role by testing their strengths and weaknesses in various competency areas. 

Cognitive performance tests, for example, can provide information about the candidates’ intellectual abilities. Personality tests all you to understand each candidate’s unique personality traits, and map that against the requirements for the role. 

Aptitude tests are typically conducted using a scientifically-backed screening model. As such, they tend to be quite objective. If you choose to use them, however, you should be clear on how you will evaluate and action the results to ensure that the time and effort are used for your personnel selection needs.

5. Trial work

Another screening tactic in personal selection is to have candidates work temporarily on a trial basis. This is a great option for roles that are a bit harder to screen for, and require the hiring team to see how the candidate will perform in the real world. A paid trial period allows the candidate to show what they can do, and how they operate on your team. 

Trial work lets recruiters assess how quickly the candidate gets up to speed in a new environment, and how likely they are to be successful on their new team. 

The role of AI in personnel selection

Like in most business sectors, AI usage and adoption is accelerating rapidly in HR. According to HireVue’s 2025 AI Report, AI adoption among HR professionals surged from 58% in 2024 to 72% in 2025. 

How AI is being used varies. For example, chatbots are commonly used to provide applicants with answers to questions related to their application, reducing the burden traditionally placed on recruiters. 

AI tools can also accept applications in dialogue form, further freeing up recruiters' capacity. This is also an attractive option for candidates, who can now submit their applications quickly and with minimum effort. 

HR process automation is one area that is particularly ripe for optimization through AI. This is especially true for contract administration, compensation management, and employer compliance efforts. 

Surveyed companies also see big potential in using AI to help with applicant tracking and predictions. For example, recruitment teams can use self-learning AI algorithms combined with recruitment analytics to recognize patterns in their hiring data to identify areas of improvement, and to make predictions on the probability of success in the future. 

Other areas where AI can be useful in personnel selection include:

• Identifying suitable job sites and outreach channels
• Searching those channels for suitable candidates
• Automating communication with applicants via chatbot or email
• Pre-screening and pre-selection of applications
• Monitoring and analyzing the performance of the recruitment process

At Tellent Recruitee, we are convinced at this point in time that personnel selection should never be completely outsourced to AI. The human interaction and assessment of candidates cannot be replaced completely by such tools. 

While AI should not be left to its own devices in your recruitment process, it can be used to help inform and enhance your existing workflows and team capacity. Automation, enhanced by AI, is the biggest immediate opportunity for recruiters. 

Conclusion

To determine the best candidates for the job, it’s critical to first establish an ideal candidate persona and criteria for success. This comes from close alignment with your hiring team, and a well-established recruitment process that can turn these personas into job descriptions that attract the right candidates. This process can be enhanced—but not replaced—by automation and AI.