Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2 (2009), 163–170. Copyright c  2009 Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. 1754-9426/09 COMMENTARIES How Special Are Executives? How Special Should Executive Selection Be? Observations and Recommendations DENIZ S. ONES University of Minnesota STEPHAN DILCHERT Baruch College, CUNY Hollenbeck (2009) suggests that executive selection decisions are often wrong and believes that selection of executives should be differentiated from selection at lower lev- els. In addition, he asserts that by focusing on competencies, rather than characteris- tics, ‘‘we are doing it backwards.’’ We agree with Hollenbeck that sound personnel selection should start with and be based on personal characteristics rather than amor- phous, often ill-defined competencies. Yet, this principle applies to all selection not just executive selection. In order to determine whether executive selection should truly be a special process, two key questions must be asked and answered. How Unique Are Determinants of Executive Success? In nearly a century of applied psychological research, our field has learned that certain Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Deniz S. Ones, Department of Psy- chology, University of Minnesota; Stephan Dilchert, Department of Management, Zicklin School of Busi- ness, Baruch College, City University of New York. E-mail: deniz.s.ones-1@tc.umn.edu stephan.dilchert@baruch.cuny.edu Address: Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455 or Department of Management, Box B9-240, Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, One Bernard Baruch Way, New York, NY 10010 characteristics, such as cognitive ability, if assessed using reliable psychometric mea- sures, predict performance well for all kinds of employees (Ones, Dilchert, Viswesvaran, & Salgado, in press; Ones, Viswesvaran, & Dilchert, 2005). Hunter’s (1981) reanalysis of cognitive test score validities reported by Ghiselli (1973) yielded a mean opera- tional validity of .53 for predicting man- agerial performance. Salgado et al. (2003) reported an operational validity of .67 for general mental ability tests predicting job performance among managers, based on European validation studies. A recent meta- analysis reported a true score correlation of .33 between paper-and-pencil intelligence measures and objectively assessed leader- ship effectiveness (Judge, Colbert, & Ilies, 2004). One of the best established find- ings from the literature on validity gener- alization is that the validity of cognitive ability increases as the complexity of jobs increases. Increased knowledge and infor- mation processing demands of high com- plexity jobs also underlie the importance of cognitive ability for executives. Few would doubt that executive jobs are among those highest in complexity. Consequently, cognitive ability is a key determinant of executive job performance. The commonly voiced objection that executives among 163