A Square-Root Based Evaluation Method for Engineering Personnel Selection: A Case Study of Quality Engineer Selection

Abstract

Personnel selection represents one of the most important tasks of human resource management, while the selection of engineering personnel is of particular interest to the industrial manufacturing sector. This study dealt with the problem of selecting a quality engineer based on applications submitted in response to a job advertisement announced by a company that manufactured industrial equipment. The aim of the research is to demonstrate the robustness of a hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) model based on the integration of the CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) method and the Square-Root based Evaluation Method (SREM). Such a model aims to reduce subjectivity in the decision-making process and serves as a supporting tool for company management in the personnel selection process. The results obtained from the case study demonstrated that the proposed model objectively and reliably identified the most suitable candidate, while taking into account different performance characteristics. The solution proved to be highly stable, since the sensitivity analysis revealed that even in the case where all criteria had equal importance, the best candidates remained at the top of the ranking list. Furthermore, this research indicated that the proposed CRITIC–SREM model could probably be a standard decision-support tool for decision-makers in personnel selection and the handling of similar problems.