of industry and the unprecedented mobility of labor during the following few years. Leaders in the labor management movement have consistently had as one, if not the one, of their major interests, the development of scientific methods of selecting workers. The nature of the research and administrative activities in the field of industrial personnel during these years is reflected in the Proceedings of the Employment Managers' Conferences (121, 122, 123, 124, 125) and in the annual reports of the National Association of Corporation Schools (104, 105, 106, 107, 108), in the papers collected by Bloomfield (18), and in such studies as Kelly's Hiring the Worker (68).

In the years immediately following the war personnel work continued its rapid expansion and many psychologists (as well as social workers, teachers, and preachers) entered industry as personnel experts, as consultants, or as students in pursuit of special researches. In part there has been an effort to bear to industry the torch of Army methods and in part the attempt has been to develop new tests and other employment devices. Much of this work has supplemented in a valuable way the practical procedures that had been developing in industry. The net result of the combined research and applied activities has been a decidedly significant body of material in scientific employment methods. The more important features of these industrial selection methods, bringing together the experience of the Army and of industry, are described in numerous special articles and in many of the recent books on employment and personnel, such as those of Tead and Metcalf (157), Shefferman (146), Frankel and Fleisher (43), Kelly (70), Simons (148), and, with more psychological emphasis, Link (83), Scott and Hayes (142), and Reilly (128).

In England during the last year or two a number of books have appeared in industrial psychology. Prominent among these are Muscio (101), Myers (102), Watts (171), Drever (35). Significant lectures and articles have also appeared by Burt (24), Pear (115), Watts (170, 172), and others. In the books cited, problems of selection do not play the disproportionately large part that has been true of the work of American psychologists in the industrial field. As regards selection, the English books have done little more than rewrite the American experiences in employment psychology from Münsterberg to Link. Watts (170, 172) and others have stressed the necessity for a broader analysis of men in selection than has been common, including a study of instinctive trends and of higher creative qualities.

In Germany, a group of psychologists have been tackling industrial problems in a thoroughgoing manner with their emphasis, however, more upon vocational guidance and training than upon selection. Some work, however, has been done on selection, tending to follow Münsterberg's precedent of using miniature representations of tasks and elementary analyses. A few of the more important studies and discussions that have been published are those of Moede (95, 96), Piorkowski (119, 120), Stern (152), Martens (90), and Lipmann and Stolzenberg (86). Brief notes on the recent work of industrial psychologists in Germany are contributed by Link (85) and Kitson (76).

Little work on selection methods appears to have been done in France, aside from valuable physiological researches and a few scattered studies such as that of Lahy (79).

During the past year in this country there has been comparatively slight progress in employment psychology as a direct result of the industrial conditions. "Selection psychologists" are suffering with other industrial groups during the depression in business. The wave of high labor turnover on which employment methods were wafted into prominence has broken and further development of hiring technique does not appear to flourish in the resultant spray. There can be little doubt, however, that the application of psychological methods to the selection of industrial workers has gained a permanent place in the increasingly important movement to regard the human element in business. A certain amount of "over-selling" of the possibilities of psychological selection must be lived down; a considerable body of unscientific work must be scrapped; a more vital grasp of the employment problem in its industrial setting must be obtained; a host of painstaking and thorough researches must be pushed to completion. The lean years of the business cycle, in other words, are but forcing a purification of the soul of industrial psychology. Recent months have brought real though not unadulterated blessings in the progress of scientific methods in vocational selection.

ANALYSIS OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF VOCATIONS

The foundations of job analysis for purposes of selection may be traced to two independent sources. On the one hand, the scientific management movement, with its devotion to increased efficiency, recognized the importance of knowing the requirements of the work in order that competent individuals might be selected as workers. But no systematic attack upon job analysis is reported. The second source was that of vocational guidance. The early vocational bureaus developed discursive characterizations of the kind of individuals needed in various vocations but all these attempts were non-specific and, of course, not intended for vocational selection. Typical of these "vocational psychographs" are those of Parsons (112), Bloomfield (20), and many other workers, a number of whom are included in Part III of Bloomfield's readings (19). Ulrich (166) uses the same sort of method in describing the requirements for certain higher callings such as that of medicine. (The early work in vocational guidance and more recent advances are summarized by Brewer (22).) Münsterberg in his Vocation and Learning (100), although he uses an impressive psychological scaffolding for his occupational analyses, adds little to the preceding literature since he retains the loose and general qualitative descriptions. Schneider (135, 136) strikes a somewhat original chord by describing the requirements of jobs in a series of paired broad characteristics, as settled-roving, creative-imitative, etc., which, however, are open to the same criticisms of generality, non-quantitativeness, and questionable usefulness for selective purposes. Seashore (144) describes the detailed psychological abilities that seem to be required in singing but his method was not extended to industrial vocations. In Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (99), Münsterberg adds little to the discussions in the vocational guidance literature and confines himself in the main to the use of job analysis for test building purposes. In a later book (97) he omits all reference to the study of jobs.

The voices of these earlier writers come not from industrial plants but from vocational guidance offices, libraries, and armchairs. Nor was their work aimed at problems of selection, though it had a pronounced effect upon the later job analyses constructed more distinctly as aids in selection. Much of the literature is still compelled to speak in the same loose terms that were used by vocational counselors ten years ago (as is evident, for example, in a score of books and articles that give analyses of the requirements for salesmanship); there are still outcroppings of Münsterberg's tripartite division of requirements of jobs according to the thinking, feeling, and willing, categories; and Schneider's classification appears to be especially favored by later writers, though how these requirements are actually to be used in selection remains, to the reviewer, something of a mystery.

But the present status of job analysis is to be interpreted as due more definitely to another line of development. In a sense this second line is continuous with the scientific management influence already mentioned. We refer to the rise of centralized hiring in industrial plants. In the period preceding our entry into the war, studies of job requirements were beginning to be made in industry, aimed specifically at the selection problem. Blackford and Newcomb (17) view the analysis of jobs in definite relation to centralized employment procedure, although their actual analysis blank calls for general mental and physical requirements the determination of which has not been demonstrated to be possible. Among the early developments of job specifications in industry are those reported by Reilly (127, 129) and Burke (23), and among the somewhat later improvements in form, those of Hubbell (61) and Stearns (150). These men (and many others) succeeded in putting the descriptions of occupations into brief, fairly definite, systematic, and readily usable, form. The occupational description work in the United States Army (117, 155, 14) and the descriptions published by the United States Department of Labor (167) present important examples of the methods that were just budding in industry before 1917. More important, this work served as a tremendous advertising influence and example which led to much wider study of job requirements in industry.

Recent advances in methods and forms of occupational descriptions for hiring purposes are well summarized in a number of publications in the field of personnel work (70, 146, 157) and particularly in Meine (91), Link (83), reports of the National Association of Corporation Schools (107, 108) and of the Industrial Relations Association of America (63). The recent emphasis is decidedly upon the need for descriptions that are more definite and concise and standard; statements of requirements that are in quantitative and determinable terms; the analysis of requirements that are differentially characteristic of particular jobs. Descriptions of jobs for purposes of hiring have been strongly influenced by the admirably detailed and exact work in job study of Gilbreth (48), Merrick (92), Lichtner (81), and others. The desirability of quantitative and detailed statements of requirements is well illustrated by Kitson (77) using the example of the work of proofreading. Some writers, including Hollingworth (59) and Link (83), seem inclined to undervalue the importance of specifications other than those that can be stated in terms of test standards. In the literature of employment management, however, occupational descriptions are discussed primarily as aids to interviewers-memoranda to guide the interviewer in ascertaining qualifications and in describing opportunities to the applicant. Insofar as the required qualifications can be stated quantitatively as, for example, in test scores, this should be done, but a vast amount of additional essentially non-quantitative information exists which is and will, despite advances in test methods, continue to be an essential part of job specifications.

ANALYSIS OF THE QUALIFICATIONS OF APPLICANTS FOR WORK

The Employment Interview and Aids in Interviewing.-In vocational selection, not a great deal that can be called psychological has been done toward making more adequate the common-sense methods of interviewing applicants and interpreting the information obtainable from application forms, letters of recommendation, and the like. Numerous reports of current employment office practice in books and conference proceedings contain useful information on these matters-based, however, upon opinions of employment managers and not upon any scientific determinations. A number of forms and methods that have proved valuable are presented by Kelly (68), Reilly (128), and Shefferman (146), including application forms, letters of inquiry, and interviewers' rating blanks.

One of the first clear statements of interviewing methods is that of Huey (62) in which several notes are sounded that have echoed through the later literature-the desirability of placing the applicant at ease, the importance of studying his appearance and manner, drawing out his interests and desires, weighing the facts of his personal history, rating (even though crudely) his character qualifications, and acquainting him with the essential features of the position for which he is being considered. Kelly (69) and Jones (66) emphasize many of the same factors but with more systematized methods of procedure. Avery (7) presents some keen and thoroughly behavioristic observations by which to interpret the applicant's actions and the information on the application form, but most of these are personal reactions and of doubtful validity. Link (83) strongly emphasizes the desirability of the interviewer's assuming the applicant's point of view. Scott (138, 140, 141, 27) stresses the value of considering the applicant's previous experience and judgments concerning the applicant made