- What is bio-data?
Normally used in industrial and organizational psychology to describe biographical data, bio-data is explained as factual questions regarding life and its experiences, including values, beliefs opinions and opinions that show a historical viewpoint.
The foundation of biographical data is that past behavior can be used, and is the best way to, forecast future behavior.
This being said, it is not imagined that biographical data can foresee all future behaviors, but is helpful in personnel selection; bio-data can give an indication to behaviors that are likely to happen, founded on those that have occurred in the past.
Directly portraying a person's past behavior, this technique has an advantage on other techniques, such as interest and personality inventories, as it deals with the facts of what has occurred, rather than judgments from people that could be biased.
Biodata is considered to be a reliable and effective way of predicting future performance and attitudes, due to its high success rates, and so is considered a valuable and necessary technique in personnel selection as a cost effective method.
- Other cultures
For many communities all over the world, such as Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, the practice of using a person's past to look at their effectiveness and value in the future is used much like, and in some cases instead of, a Curriculum Vitae.
Normally containing the same kind of information that you would expect in a CV, such as past work history, educational experiences and income information, biographical data often contains information on the physical characteristics of a person too, including such things like weight, eye color, skin color, hair color and height, providing too a photograph of the candidate.
It is by using this information that some candidates are eradicated from the group of possible candidates before meeting in interviews.
