The importance of representative design in judgment tasks: The case of résumé screening

A policy capturing study was conducted to determine if résuméprofile judgments are generalizable to judgments of actual résumés. Forty recruiters judged 60 résumés or corresponding profiles on interview suitability. When profiles were judged, more variance in suitability judgments was accounted for, there was higher agreement among recruiters, the judgments were more favourable, and cue usage was different than when actual résumés were judged. Thus, inferences based on profiles were not generalizable to actual résumés. The importance of representative design and limitations of policy capturing for understanding résumé screening judgments were discussed.