Assessing the value of a candidate. Comparing belief function and possibility theories
This work addresses candidate assessment for decision-making in fields like hiring or evaluation, but it is incremental as it compares existing theories without introducing new methods or data.
The paper tackles the problem of assessing candidate value as a multiple combination problem, evaluating candidates across different criteria and expert opinions with varying importance and reliability, using qualitative scales. It compares the transferable belief model and qualitative possibility theory, providing a quantitative and qualitative framework to analyze underlying assumptions.
The problem of assessing the value of a candidate is viewed here as a multiple combination problem. On the one hand a candidate can be evaluated according to different criteria, and on the other hand several experts are supposed to assess the value of candidates according to each criterion. Criteria are not equally important, experts are not equally competent or reliable. Moreover levels of satisfaction of criteria, or levels of confidence are only assumed to take their values in qualitative scales which are just linearly ordered. The problem is discussed within two frameworks, the transferable belief model and the qualitative possibility theory. They respectively offer a quantitative and a qualitative setting for handling the problem, providing thus a way to compare the nature of the underlying assumptions.