Analytic hierarchy process in academic staff selection at Faculty of Science in University Technology Malaysia

Abstract

Academic staff selection is an important process for a university since the decision affects the quality of education and the success of the university. Selection committee always faces up to the uncertainty and vagueness in the conventional decision making process. These subjective perception and the experiences of decision maker can be effectively represented and reached to a more effective and unbiased decision by introducing Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to the normally practiced selection process. AHP permits pair-wise comparison judgments in expressing the relative strength of impact for the criteria in the hierarchy which can be translated to quantitative data to help in improving the traditional method and simplifies the process of selecting a best academic staff by considering the criteria that may influence the decision made. This is crucial in order to formalize a decision process, reduce time commitments, create a process orientation, document the strategy, and result in better decisions for the selection process. This study embarks on finding out the potential criteria and developing an AHP aided decision making model for the academic staff selection process in the Faculty of Science, UTM. The selection criteria of Knowledge, Working Experience/Interpersonal Skill, General Traits, Scholar/ Extra Curricular Activities and References used in the model developed are determined based on the knowledge acquisition from experts’ in the university and literature reviews done. The ranking of generated candidate profiles shows that Candidate 2 possesses the highest priority, thus should be selected as the academic staff, by using the AHP model developed. Microsoft Excel and Expert Choice 11.5 are used to assist in accomplishing the tedious calculations involved, as well as providing effective aids for discussions and analyzing of the results. A few suggestions for future work and research direction in the area of academic selection process is also being discussed.