1. in industrial and organizational settings, a method of evaluating jobs for the purpose of setting wages or salaries; jobs are ranked according to their overall value to the company. The advantage of the method is that it is fast and simple; the disadvantage is that such whole-job comparisons tend to be subjective and become more difficult as the number of jobs in the organization increases. Compare classification method; factor-comparison method; job-component method; point method.

2. an employee comparison technique in which the employees in a selected group are ranked from the highest to the lowest on one or more criterion dimensions.