Kayla’s Experiences with Employee Recruitment and Selection

Before this class, when thinking about recruitment and selection, I thought about this process from a very surface level perspective and didn’t take into consideration that different tests and assessments may be better suited for specific jobs whereas others won’t be as effective.

The most important thing I learned in this class was learning the different types of predictors, defining, and evaluating the adequacy of them. In looking at the criterion related validity, presence of subgroup differences, user acceptability and utility, this can help determine which predictors should be utilized to ensure not only is the best candidate hired, but also to ensure that the experience is one that applicants won’t be resistant to either.

In learning the differences between evaluating cognitive ability, job knowledge, personality, integrity, unstructured interviews, structured interviews, physical ability, and situational judgement tests, I’ve gained tools that can benefit me as both an applicant as well as being involved in the hiring process. As an applicant, I know more of what to expect as to what a company or hiring manager may use as a predictor for different job roles that I apply for. This can help me better prepare as if I guess that cognitive ability tests may be utilized, I can spend time practicing cognitive ability tests to become for familiar with that experience. When I have the opportunity to be part of a hiring team or committee, I feel well prepared to be able to give insight and recommendations as to what predictors would be most effective in identifying a top candidate for the specific job role we are hiring for.

The factors that I will consider when analyzing predictors both as an applicant and as a person responsible during the hiring process will be the criterion related validity, presence of subgroup differences, user acceptability and test utility.

I believe this framework has really elevated my knowledge of the hiring process and factors to consider and have set me up for success when I get to the point where I am a part of the hiring process for a company.

1. What am I good at?

I am a very positive person and am good at bringing this outlook into the workplace which commonly rubs off on my peers. In addition to that, I am also good at working with diverse groups of people. I am am open to other cultures, experiences and opinions which creates an inclusive work environment.

2. What do I value?

I really value recognition as this something that I find motivating. I also value working with others and having respect for people regardless of their appearance, background, etc. Not to sound shallow, but money is very important to me so it is something I value.

3. How did I get here?

Knowing very early on that I wanted to attend Oregon State was the first step in how I got here. Once completing my undergraduate degree, I landed a role at Nike, which was a dream come true. My ambition to continue growing my career at Nike and moving up in the company motivated me to pursue my MBA with a focus in Organizational Leadership which has led me to this point.

4. Where am I going?

The actions that I’ve taken to get me to where I am today, are actions that I continue to take. I am confident that in continuing to set goals for myself and always achieve more is going to lead me to a successful career at Nike. I predict that as I continue to gain experience I will be in a leadership/manager role over a smaller team and then continuing to progress to manage and lead larger groups.

The results I received after taking the IPIP test were not too surprising to me, although I was surprised to see I ranked low in openness to experience.. I was high in extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and ranked low in neuroticism and openness to experience. These results show that I prefer to be around people most of the time, am pleasant to be around, cooperative, reliable and hardworking. I also don’t tend to react with emotions even in stressful situations. Being low in openness to experience meant that I think to think in plain and simple terms and generally am described as down to earth, practical and conservative.

Based on my results, here is what I think a potential employer would see as strengths and weaknesses. I think for each of the categories strengths and weaknesses could be identified, but these are what came to mind first for me.

My low scoring on openness to experience, may cause the following concerns around weaknesses I may have. I think the most prevalent is that they may think I am not one to think outside of the box add creativity to the workplace. Another weakness they may see is that, I may not handle change well.

Being high in neuroticism, an employer may see my strengths as being able to perform well and remain composed in high pressure/high stress situations. Based on the high extraversion and agreeableness scores, and employer would likely see me as being a good team player, an energetic addition to the team and someone who can adapt well to different groups of people. I could also see an employer potentially viewing my high ranking in agreeableness as a weakness, especially if they are looking for someone to challenge the status quo. Based on the type of work or the current office environment, they may be looking for people less introverted as well , so if that was the case, this could be another weakness.

• If you were in the shoes of the business owner and had to choose which person would you hire (Avery or Jaime) and why?

If I was in the shoes of a business owner, I would hire Avery. Although Avery’s work performance is inconsistent, if I had a business-critical task that I needed someone on my team to get done, I would want to be confident in the quality of work and it sounds like with that extra push and challenge Avery would be able to rise to the occasion. Also, with having a high-performance ceiling, I’d imagine that Avery associate’s themselves with others who also have high-performance ceilings. I would leverage their network to hopefully find others that are more consistent and also are high performers to bring into my company.

• Describe a type of job where it would be better to hire someone like Avery (i.e., high potential, poor consistency) than Jaime? What is it about that job that makes someone like Avery more valuable than Jaime?

I think Avery would thrive better in a job that doesn’t have the same routine day-to-day. The work is more ambiguous and dependent on their own efforts such as a sales job, or other commission-based roles. What makes Avery valuable is their ability to perform very highly occasionally, this in a way, can potentially allow employers to look past her slacking off if high potential is critical.

• Describe a type of job where it would be better to hire someone like Jaime (i.e., low potential, high consistency) than Avery? What is it about that job that makes someone like Jaime more valuable?

Jaime would likely do better in an environment in which the work doesn’t vary much on day to day basis and the pay is based upon the work and not necessarily performance-based. They will come to work to get the job done, but won’t give much extra effort or put in extra hours if needed. A job like this may be an office type job, with very routine work. What makes Jamie valuable is the fact that they are extremely consistent, this makes for a dependable employee and someone that can be counted on for consistent results

When I brand myself to potential employers, I strive to put off the impression that I am a young professional who is extremely driven. When applying for a role, in addition to my resume, I provide a one-pager, which is essentially a visual document to provide more about me beyond my professional and academic achievements. I try to utilize my one-pager and resume as a way to present my personal brand to employers before meeting them in person for an interview. My one-pager includes a visual showing my short term and long term career goals which displays my ambition to future employers.

I think one of my biggest strengths is being confident in the actual interview and leveraging that confidence to build rapport quickly. I use a firm handshake as well as eye contact to help build this rapport.

To creatively brand myself to a potential employer, I would like to utilize a build-your-own website tool such as wix.com, to create a website that is focused on presenting myself to potential employers. I would use this to present my education, work history, work examples, and more about myself through a visually appealing site. This in itself would likely give off the impression that you’re creative as well as that you think outside of the box.

I would want to site to flow in a way where the viewer is not having to click around a lot to see the different aspects of the site. It’d be created in a way where the viewer can continuously scroll to learn about me. The content would be listed in a strategic way that would build my personal brand as the reader scrolled. My main goal would be that the reader doesn’t view reading the site as an inconvenience, but that its an experience they’d enjoy and would be memorable.

The job I am currently am in was an internal job change and a natural progression from my prior role. Therefore, I did not give much consideration to the job description as I knew my skills were applicable. The one concern I did have was around the number of years of experience as I know I was lacking in that area (I only had about 1 year of relevant work experience) and I believe they were looking for 3-5.

My job role prior to my current role was the job that got me hired at Nike. Throughout my undergraduate studies, I had worked in food service roles but didn’t have relevant work experience for a real-world ‘Finance’ job, which is what I got my degree in. Therefore, I took that into consideration when applying for roles. I looked for very entry-level finance jobs at all different companies. I also took into consideration that working for Nike was a life long dream/goal of mine. This led me to give it a shot and apply for any finance role that I kind-of met the qualifications for Nike’s job site. What I mean by this is that I didn’t meet every qualification listed, but I felt I could provide applicable examples if given the opportunity. This led me to getting an interview and eventually getting hired.

Although my experiences have been more of a “shoot your shot” methodology, it has worked for me up to this point. When applying for job roles, I tend to focus more on how that role fits into my long term career goals and less on the years of experience. As my career advances and I look for roles to apply for, I do look to see how my work experience relates to the experience and qualifications they’re looking for.

I wouldn’t immediately jump to conclusions on how I felt about a company if they were charged with a discrimination lawsuit. I would first look into the type of discrimination suit the company was being charged and read up on the allegations. Especially with larger companies, I would want to understand if the suit was being brought on by a single individual or multiple parties. I feel like this would help show whether discrimination is a systemic issue, or if it was isolated to a certain manager or group at the company.

If this was a recurring behavior or a lawsuit that involved many parties at the company, it would definitely change how I viewed that company as to me, that would show it is a systemic issue rather than one bad apple. If this was a first-time issue, or specific to one individual, I would want to look further into the claims against the company and follow the lawsuit to see the end result as this may have been a case of a single bad manager.

I also think that how a company responds to a lawsuit can say a lot about the company as well. If they stay silent and tend to ‘hide’, this would make me wary about how they deal with issues. Guilty or not, I think it shows professionalism when a company releases a statement of some kind acknowledging that they are involved in a lawsuit and what they are/aren’t doing in regards to it.

In our personal lives as well as in business, I think reputation is extremely important and I want to work for companies that have similar values as I do and if a company had a discriminatory reputation, that is not somewhere I would want to work.

• Why might organizations decide to allocate more resources toward marketing or product design rather than using those same resources to do a really good job in employee recruitment and selection?

Typically, it’s easier for people to see the direct correlation between marketing and product design efforts and costs because there is a tangible outcome such as a product or advertisement. When it comes to employee recruitment and selection, there is a lot of intangible work that goes into the development of the job posting, interviews and selection processes so unless you’re involved in that process you don’t necessarily “see” it. When it comes to looking at an advertisement or product, people can look at it and instantly form an opinion on the effectiveness it whereas you can’t really look at a human and instantly gauge their work ethic and skills.

• What are the potential strengths and weaknesses of an organization’s decision to not prioritize recruitment and selection in favor of a focus on other aspects of the business?

Strengths that a company may have by prioritizing their focus on other areas of the business such as innovation and marketing provide greater allocation resources for other areas in the company that can create a competitive advantage.

By placing a greater emphasis in areas such as innovation, this could help them gain a competitive advantage by offering more innovative products than their competitors.

Marketing plays a critical role in how consumers connect with a brand. By placing a greater focus on advertising, this could allow a company to better connect with consumers over their competitors.

One weakness of not prioritizing recruitment and selection is that the quality of work will greatly suffer. Regardless of how many resources are poured into other areas of the business, if you don’t have quality people working in those functions the work results will likely be sub par.

Another weakness is that company culture will likely suffer. If the people being hired have poor attitudes and lack work ethic, the culture will not be one in which people feel they can thrive. Sometimes an organization’s culture can be one aspect of their competitive advantage.

• Describe your experiences from the perspective of an applicant for the last job you for which you applied.

In working at a company that has many job opportunities and encourages career growth a development I have been exploring job opportunities and applying for different roles within the same company I currently work for. Within the company’s online job site, once you’ve applied for one job, most of your information is saved, so it makes it quick and easy to apply for multiple jobs.

The application/interview process for the role I am currently in went as follows. Although I was an internal applicant, the application process was the same as if I was applying externally. I completed the online application and received confirmation once the application was submitted. The next step was a phone screening with an internal recruiter asking questions regarding my experiences and how they match the role. After that, I received an email from the recruiter to schedule an in-person panel interview. After the in-person interview occurred, the internal recruiter called to officially offer the job, once I accepted the role, a formal job offer letter was sent to me via email.

• Explain how your experiences during the job application process shaped your impression of the job you were applying for and your desire to work there (or in some cases to not work there).

From an applicant’s perspective, in my opinion, filling out the applications is usually the most tedious piece of the job search, so when a company can make this process as efficient as possible it makes me want to continue to apply for roles at that company.

Although it would be nice to go through a shorter process being an internal candidate, I do appreciate and respect their equitable hiring processes to give internal and external candidates the same opportunity. I feel like this helps make it more about ‘what you know’ rather than ‘who you know’, which also gives me confidence in the company.