CONTROL OF LABOR-SELECTION AND TRAINING 1. Selecting the "right stripe."—The employer of labor is inclined to select men for their qualities rather than for their experience. If an applicant has ability and willingness to work he can be taught what to do; whereas laziness, dishonesty or wrong preju dices will inhibit the best results of experience.
In determining an applicant's fitness, every em ployer of labor should have certain standards to guide him in selection. These standards should involve an understanding of the requirements of the situation; a knowledge of the aptitudes, abilities, interests, ambi tions, resources and limitations of the applicant ; and a careful consideration of the relationships of these two groups of facts.
2. Methods used by Chalmers and Taylor.—In view of the importance which the average employer attaches to experience, the following lists are very significant. One comes from an expert in the selling field, Mr. Hugh Chalmers, president of the Chalmers Motor Company; the other, from an authority in pro duction, Mr. F. W. Taylor. Not more than one quality in each list refers to experience or business training. All the others are inherent.
3. .Aid gained from a written list.—The employer may be greatly helped in choosing his men if he makes out a similar list of the prime characteristics which his own experience has shown him to be necessary in the men who are employed in his business. With this list before him he can mentally check up the applicant and feel sure that he has not let some essential slip by unnoticed. Mr. Chalmers' testimony may be helpful along this line: When I was working as a salesman myself I was always trying to analyze successful men to find out the reason for their success. Later when I became sales manager and had to employ, train, and supervise men, I had these (ten) requi sites put on a blackboard in my office, and I used them for measuring men, for discovering their weak spots, and I have always found them very helpful.
4. Make a man analyze himself.—Besides the in
formation which a manager of labor gathers from ob servation, there is much benefit to be gained if he can induce the applicant to carry on a proper self-analysis. Altho the man's estimation of himself may be wrong, nevertheless the manager will see the problem from a different angle by means of this procedure, and many a characteristic will disclose itself, even where the ap plicant has attempted to cover it up. The following questions prepared by Mr. Gustav A. Blumenthal are suggestive of what may be done along this line: When the applicant has filled out the above blank the employer may classify the information under the following headings : mental characteristics; physi cal characteristics ; moral and social characteristics ; abilities and talents ; vocation in which success may be reasonably expected ; courses of study and hobby ad visable.
5. Use of written and oral oldest method of determining fitness is the written or oral examination, but little use has been made of it in the business world. The Chicago and Northwestern Railway, however, has a system of progressive exami nations running thru three years.
Each fireman when he is employed is given the first year's book of questions, the company's book of rules and a time-card. As soon as convenient after the expiration of his first year's service, he is given a written examination by the traveling engineer or trav eling fireman, who also examines him orally. If suc cessful in passing this test, he is given the second year's book of questions, upon which he is examined a year from that time in the same manner. At the end of his third year the fireman is examined by a joint board of examiners appointed for the whole system; this board sits in Chicago each spring and fall. Some of the traveling engineers and the airbrake instruc tors compose this board, and their favorable report makes the man eligible to promotion to the position of engineer whenever he is needed on his own division.