Dr. Hough is known for her independent thinking and work challenging “received wisdom” about what is and is not useful for predicting important outcomes in organizational settings and for evaluating similarity of jobs/work. She is one of the world’s leaders in developing innovative candidate assessment systems, focusing on new, non-traditional assessment strategies that show solid payoff and are fair for all candidates yet mitigate adverse impact against protected classes. She is expert in designing measurement systems of people, work, and performance and is often called upon as an expert witness for plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases (selection, promotion, compensation) including reverse discrimination cases. Class action settlements against companies such as Google, Disney, Goldman Sachs, and Oracle for gender pay inequity have each been in hundreds of millions of dollars.
She is president and founder of Dunnette Group, Ltd., and past president of SIOP and FABBS (Federation of Behavioral and Brain Sciences). She is treasurer of SIOP Foundation and past treasurer of FABBS. She is the 2016 recipient of SIOP’s Distinguished Professional Contributions award as well as SIOP’s 2019 Scientist-Practitioner Recognition award. She received FABBS’ “In Honor of” distinction and the University of Minnesota’s Psychology Department’s Distinguished Alumni award. She is a fellow of four professional organizations – Association for Psychological Science (APS), American Psychological Association (APA), APA’s Division 14 (SIOP), and APA’s Division 5 (Division of Evaluation, Measurement, and Statistics).
Dr. Hough has published dozens of articles in referred journals, book chapters, and reviews. She was co-editor of the four-volume Handbook of Industrial & Organizational Psychology. Three of her articles were reprinted in Employee Selection and Performance Management, a book consisting of articles that I-O psychologists identified as the seminal publications in the last 100 years. Her work has helped shape the science and practice of I-O Psychology.
