At a basic level, all selection programs attempt to identify the applicants who have the highest chance of meeting or exceeding the organization’s standards of performance. In this case, however, performance does not refer simply to quantity of output. It can also involve other objectives, such as quality of output, absenteeism, theft,
employees’ satisfaction, and career development. Compounding the problem of developing and effective selection system is the fact that the goal isn’t always to find applicants who have the most of a given quality. Rather, selection is the search for an optimal match between the job and the amount of any particular characteristic that an applicants may possess.