Weighted Application Blanks (WABs)

Some of the organisations assign numeric values or weights to responses given by applicants to make the application form more job-related. The items, generally, that have a strong relationship to job performance are given high scores. For instance, for a medical representative's position, items like previous selling experience, age, marital status,  commission earned on sales in the past, etc., can be given high scores when compared to other items like sex, religion ,language, place of birth, etc. The sum of each applicant is got by summing the weights of the individual item responses. The resulting scores are then utilized in the selection decision. The WAB is most suited for jobs where there are several workers, especially for sales and technical jobs and it is specifically useful in reducing turnover. However, there are several kind of problems related with WABs. It takes time to build up such a form. The expense of developing a WAB could be prohibitive if the organisation has many operating levels having unique features. The WAB ought to be "updated every few years to make sure that the factors previously recognized are still valid predictors of job success". And in the last, the organisation should be careful not based on weights of a few items while choosing an employee.