Students can earn money for participating in a virtual hiring study done by the College of Business Administration and Information technology professors.
Assistant professor of marketing, Dr. Ryan Jessup, and assistant professor of computer science, Dr. John Homer, started the research study of virtual hiring. Senior psychology major from Abilene, Levi Ritchie, also participated in the study. Ritchie said they started testing participants in the summer, but the actual study started much earlier than that.
“It began when Dr. Ryan Jessup and Dr. John Homer started the earliest conceptual steps involved in professional academic research,” Ritchie said. “Still, further back are the many studies into behavior that set the foundation for this study and continue to guide our research.”
Ritchie explains that even though it is a study on virtual hiring, it is not only limited to COBA students or people in the human resource field.
“Interestingly, neither Dr. Jessup nor Dr. Homer specialized in human resources and the research, while it can be related to business fields, is more of a broad study into decision-making than it is specifically COBA related,” Ritchie said.
The study is mainly meant to address how people make decisions. Ritchie said the study is about judging applicants based on a set of criteria and not through normal interview methods.
“For us, it means judging applicants based on a set of criteria, and deciding which, if any, to hire,” Ritchie said. “This is not, obviously, how the hiring process works in real life. You spend several days looking over applications, listening to interviews and doing background checks to determine who to hire.”
Ritchie explains that they are looking for people will all different kinds of backgrounds to participate in the study.
“Any student who hasn’t already tried can and should participate in this study, as long as they’re at least 18 years old.” Ritchie said. “Some students may believe that they’re at an inherent disadvantage because they have no human resources experience, but we’re looking for participants of all kinds and have no preference for business students over everyone else.”
If just participating in the study isn’t enough incentive, all participants are paid for their time.
“Participants actually get cash payment on-site as soon as they’re done,” Ritchie said. “Anyone will make at least four dollars if they complete the study and, based on their performance in the task, they can make up to five times that much.”
