MGT407 S-2 Social Sciences Essay Research Paper Coursework

For this assignments in this course, you first discussed the role of HR staff in treating employees as assets. You also learned how the various HR laws protect both employees and employers. In Module 2, you will learn about the different steps in the talent management process. Talent management is the catchall heading for recruiting, interviewing, selecting, and on-boarding new employees. In your Module 2 SLP assignment, you will begin to follow two employees through the entire hiring process from being recruited through to a possible promotion or termination.
The first step to take in the hiring and selection process is to conduct a job analysis to determine what skills are required for someone to be successful in the vacant position. Note that the focus here is on the job, not on the person filling the position. You will determine “what tasks people actually perform in the job” (Schmitz, 2012, Ch. 4, Job Analysis and Job Description). As noted in Schmitz, the purpose of a job analysis is to determine the right fit between a person and the position.
Once you know for sure that a job opening is going to be filled and you have completed a job analysis, you will begin the staffing process with recruiting strategies followed by interviewing and the selection processes. The type of recruitment tools used depend upon the level of the job to be filled. For example, an ACME Packing’s skilled tradesman position would more than likely be marketed via the least costly type of marketing, such as on the company’s website and through a job posting at the local union. On the other hand, a vacant position in the IT department would likely be advertised in an IT magazine as well as the company job site. Once resumes are received, an HR staff member reviews them and selects those which indicate someone with the required skills and experience and forwards them to the correct hiring managers for consideration through the recruitment process, beginning with identifying those to bring in for an interview.
There are several modes of conducting interviews, and the mode chosen depends upon the position to be filled. Using the ACME Packing skilled tradesman and IT staff opening as examples, consider which type of interview is best for them. A first interview can be a screening phone interview that is usually conducted by an HR staff member. These culling interviews are a way to drop applicants from the list as you compare their skills with those required according to the position’s job analysis. Another type of interview can be an offsite meeting, such as at a coffee shop, restaurant, or bar. Interviews can also be conducted in a formal manner, such as using the behavioral interview process (please see the Background page).
But interviews are not the only tool used to narrow down a list of potential job candidates. Candidates can also be asked to take a test, such as a personality or ability test. It is up to the hiring manager or HR policy to determine what interview type or other tools you want your job candidates to complete.
ACME Packing
Talent Management
1. Job analysis
2. The staffing process (Recruitment, Interviewing, Selection Measures)
3. Retaining employees
4. Promoting the best
In Module 2, you will follow a couple job candidates as they go through the hiring and selection process. Your SLP assignment will cover what triggered the HR staff of ACME Packing to begin the talent management process. It will also cover retention strategies, but keep in mind that there are a lot of steps involved between those two key points in the process.
You will begin this assignment by reviewing the background material covering the topics in Module 2. Once you complete the required readings on the Background page, address the following:
1. Determine what the triggers were for having to hire two new employees.
2. Determine what type of recruitment process will be used for two vacant positions.
3. Determine what type of selection process you will conduct to fill these two positions and why you selected them (such as interviews and testing).
4. Determine the steps you will take to retain your employees.
5. If you could promote one employee at ACME Packing and you had narrowed the selection down to two people, with all variables being equal, which employee would you select for promotion and why?
Your paper for this assignment will be 2-3 pages (which means not less than two full pages) that cover the following topics:
1. Job analysis
2. The staffing process (recruitment, interviewing, selection)
3. Retention strategies
4. Promotions
In addition to the background readings, find one additional peer-reviewed academic journal article to support your discussion about one of these four topics. These are usually found in the Trident Online Library.
Required reading:
Remember to participate in the Module 2 Discussion early in the module and engage with your peers throughout the module.
Talent Management
Before we jump further into Talent Management—and specifically recruitment, selection, and retention—we need to briefly discuss job analysis. Job analysis is akin to preparing the ground before we plant a garden.
Job Analysis
Job Analysis is a process to identify the particular job duties and requirements and the relative importance of these duties for a given job. Job Analysis is a process where judgments are made about data collected on a job.
The job, not the person: An important concept of job analysis is that the analysis process studies the job, not the person. While job analysis data may be collected from incumbents through interviews or questionnaires, the product of the analysis is a description or specifications of the job, not a description of the person.
The purpose of job analysis is to establish and document the job-relatedness of employment procedures such as training, selection, compensation, and performance appraisal.
Source: HR Guide to the Internet; Job Analysis: Overview. Retrieved from Saylor.org, BUS301-2.1.1.
The Staffing Process
Creating valid recruitment and selection processes is of critical importance in human resource management. Knowing the job content is key to designing valid recruitment and selection activities. HRM professionals design recruitment processes and personnel selection systems to find the best candidate for the job.
Recruitment is the process of identifying qualified candidates and encouraging them to apply for jobs with an organization. Recruitment processes include developing job announcements, placing ads, defining key qualifications for applicants, and screening out unqualified applicants.
Selection is the systematic process of hiring and promoting personnel. Selection systems employ evidence-based practices such as interviews, personality inventories, psychomotor and physical ability tests, and work samples to determine the most qualified candidates.
HR professionals must evaluate the validity of measures to determine the extent to which selection tools predict job performance. To do this, they look at content validity, construct validity, and/or criterion validity.
Validity: A quality of a measurement indicating the degree to which it measures what it is supposed to measure (e.g., if its measurement reflects the underlying construct).
A major HRM task is to design the recruitment processes and selection systems highlighted below:
Recruitment
Recruitment is the systematic process of hiring and promoting personnel, and includes the search for potential applicants for actual or anticipated vacancies. It is the first step in the hiring process. No matter how a company recruits, the goal of a recruitment strategy is to produce viable applicants who fit in with the company's needs and values. Therefore, it is beneficial to attract not just a large quantity of applicants, but a group of individuals with the necessary skills for the position. It includes developing job announcements, placing ads, defining key qualifications for applicants, and screening out unqualified applicants.
Selection
The next step in the hiring process is selecting new employees from the pool of qualified candidates. After obtaining a large, qualified applicant base through recruitment, managers need to identify the applicants with the highest potential for success in the organization. Selective hiring is critical because it reduces future staff turnovers and costs, and increases morale and productivity. Selection systems employ evidence-based practices to determine the most qualified candidates for a job. To find the best fit, managers create a list of relevant criteria composed of critical skills and behaviors for each position. It is important that managers select candidates based on fit with the culture of the organization, as well as technical skills and competencies. Common selection tools include ability tests, knowledge tests, personality tests, structured interviews, the systematic collection of biographical data, and work samples.
Read Hire the Right People, which explains why hiring and retaining the best people will result in a high-performing company.
Types of Selection Measures
HR professionals use a variety of measures to select applicants who are the best fit for a position. The main goal of these tests is to predict job performance, and each test has its own relative strengths and weaknesses in this regard. When making a hiring decision, it is critical to understand the applicant's personality style, values, and motivations. Technical competency can be acquired by new employees, but personality is not easy to change.
Interviews: Interviews are one of the most common ways that individuals are selected. The best interviews follow a structured framework in which each applicant is asked the same questions and is scored with a standardized rating scale. In this way, structured interviews provide more reliable results than unstructured interviews.
Personality Testing: Another tool sometimes used for selection is personality testing. Personality tests can provide an accurate analysis of an applicant's attitudes and interpersonal skills. These tests can reveal a variety of things about an applicant, such as how well the applicant gets along with others, self-discipline, attention to detail, organization, flexibility, and disposition.
Ability Tests: Psychomotor ability tests are sometimes used to measure fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. These skills are important in jobs like carpentry that require a lot of hand-eye coordination. Unlike psychomotor ability tests, physical ability tests measure gross motor skills, such as lifting and running. These skills are important in jobs such as construction, where strength is needed.
Work Sample: Another selection technique is to have the applicant complete a hiring assignment. The applicant is asked to complete a task that simulates the actual job. The goal is to assess how well the applicant can learn and perform the tasks.
Validity and Reliability
HR professionals must evaluate the validity of these measures in order to determine the extent to which selection tools can predict job performance. Measures have different types of validity that capture different qualities. There are three major types of validity: content validity, construct validity, and criterion validity.
• Content Validity: Content validity refers to how comprehensively the measure assesses the underlying construct that it claims to assess. As an example, let's look at a job interview for a banking position. This measure would have low content validity if it assessed whether the candidate was comfortable talking to many different people, but not whether they were comfortable with math, because the candidate would not have been thoroughly evaluated on every facet of being a banker. The measure didn't cover the full breadth of what the job requires.
• Construct Validity: Construct validity refers to whether the measure accurately assesses the underlying construct that it claims to assess. This can be evaluated by examining correlations with other measures that purport to assess the same construct. When we ask if a measure has good construct validity, we're asking, "Does this test the thing we are interested in testing?" An example of a measure with debatable construct validity is IQ testing. It is intended to measure intelligence, but there is disagreement about whether it indeed measures intelligence or merely one type of skill.
• Criterion Validity: Criterion validity examines how well the construct correlates with one's behavior in the real world across multiple situations and manifestations. For instance, does the measure adequately capture the construct (e.g., work ethic) as it presents in real life (e.g., getting assignments done on time, coming in to work on time, not leaving early, etc.)?
Reliability
The reliability of a measure refers to whether the measure gets repeatable results. Will the recruitment and selection processes that a company uses work every time they need to hire someone, or just once? If their processes get good results every time, those measures can be said to be reliable.
Source: The Psychology of Recruiting and Selecting Employees. Boundless Psychology Boundless, 26 May, 2016. Retrieved from https://www(dot)boundless(dot)com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/workplace-psychology-21/workplace-psychology-106/the-psychology-of-recruiting-and-selecting-employees-401-12936/. Licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Identifying the traits one will need for success in a position is relatively easy compared to the daunting task of identifying those traits within an applicant. Given the cyclical nature of unemployment, HR professionals likely receive a pile of resumes simply by posting an opening on a company website or job board. But how many of those resumes will be worth looking through? How many will be worth interviewing? And will any of them be the right person for the job? You do not want to just select the best person in the applicant pool; you want to find the best person for the job. Sometimes this means going beyond the normal labor market and recruiting people currently employed at other firms.
There are a number of methods of recruiting the right talent. Some firms prefer to use specialized recruiting firms, while others ask their current employees for recommendations. The point is that a firm needs to cast the widest net possible in order to secure a large applicant pool.
Then the firm must face the challenge of selecting the right applicant by determining whether he or she possesses the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed. Like it or not, the interview method of selection is one of the weakest forms of selection. Critics argue that it is too subjective. While subjectivity is not a bad thing, it must be paired with the right objective measures. This unit will cover a number of such measures that can be useful in identifying candidates. Please note that interviews are still very important and that there are "right” and "wrong” ways to conduct interviews, all of which will be addressed here.
One of the key points to remember when recruiting and selecting human capital is that you should identify individuals who share the company's ideas about the goals and objectives of its business. You should work to identify unique individuals with shared and complementary skill sets in order to build an effective team. Recruiting and selecting human capital should be carried out in order to provide the organization with a strategic advantage.
https://youtu(dot)be/mn5t8JsMMX8
https://youtu(dot)be/oYNssS_DCPo
https://youtu(dot)be/_BpWz-vw35M
Optional reading
Alziari, L. (2017). A chief HR officer’s perspective on talent management. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness, 4(4), 379-383. Located in the Trident Online Library.
Deloitte US. (2016, March 2). Human capital trends 2016: The new organization: Different by design: Deloitte insights [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www(dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=JS7duITSEO8. Standard YouTube license.
Jessee, T. (n.d.). 48 HR KPIs & Metric examples (and how to implement them). ClearPoint Strategy. Retrieved from https://www(dot)clearpointstrategy(dot)com/human-capital-kpis-scorecard-measures/
Seven habits. (2019). 7 habits that are stalling your employee engagement program and how to fix them. Glint. Retrieved from https://info(dot)glintinc(dot)com/rs/586-OTD-288/images/GLINT-15-001_WP_P3.pdf
Zheltoukhova, K. (2015). New ways of working: What is the real impact on the HR profession? Strategic HR Review, 14(5), 163-167. Located in the Trident Online Library.