Author: bollengb

Week 10

While a business needs paying customers in order to be successful you also need to develop a product or service that they want.  The first step into creating a great product or service is to have employees who know what they are doing and have the experience and skills necessary to build a business. 

The most important thing that I have learned in this class is to have the right people for the right job.  I learned in the first week of class that hiring the wrong person can cost a business millions of dollars in time, money, and resources.  However, you have to note that there are many steps to take in order to get a qualified candidate. 

This all starts with advertising for the position and having the right marketing for the right type of job.  Secondly, you also have to have the right tests to select your applicants.  Using the testing validation study you can see how effective those tests are related to the job.  A person testing for an engineering position may need to demonstrate their ability to solve complex problems.  A person that wants to be a lifeguard needs to be CPR certified and know how to swim.  Lastly, when it comes to picking the right people for the job you need to make sure that you are not discriminatory to any group.  This can also be seen with fair tests.  You have to design a test in a way that all people can take it.  However, you have to know when to discriminate.  For example, an airline pilot needs to have good vision and be mentally stable.  You can discriminate against someone if they cannot perform the job at hand in a safe manner.  In the end, it’s important to realize that there are a lot of variables and things that go into selecting and recruiting a candidate.  However, if you do it right, they can make a big impact to your company. 

Week 7

The five dimensions of personality are: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience.  Rating from high to low I scored a 90 on conscientiousness, 68- extraversion, 65- agreeableness, 25- neuroticism, and 3 on openness.  Scoring high on conscientiousness means that I set goals and people often look at me as reliable and hard-working. Extraversion and agreeableness was around the same range.  For neuroticism and openness I had very low scores which attributes to a calm personality, that is practical and simple minded.  I was a little surprised I was low on openness to experience because I love traveling and going on adventures, however, I scored high on the adventurousness section.   I scored low on the imagination and artistic interest section. 

A future employer may look at my results and break down certain strengths and weaknesses.  For example, a strength of mine may be that I ranked high on extraversion.  More specifically the  assertiveness and cheerfulness sections.  They may see that I typically see the positive things in life and is an easy person to get along with.  Another strength an employer may see is through agreeableness.  I scored highest in cooperation and trust.  This means that I have good intentions and find that helping people is rewarding.  However, having too much cooperation can be a weakness because I can tend to put others needs above myself.  If I am in a negotiation for a client I can rush to quickly into getting a deal for fear that a relationship may be ruined.   Another strength that I have is that I am achievement striving and well organized.  I like structure and having discipline in my life whether that is setting goals, or having a routine. 

Some weaknesses that potential employers may find is that my openness to experience as a whole is generally low.  I may not be a good fit if I am working for an innovative company that requires imagination.  I also scored low on sympathy.  This can be a weakness to employers if it requires more emotional intelligence over facts and reasoning.  I can tend to focus more on truth than sympathizing with someone. 

If I came across a company I liked that didn’t support my ethnicity, culture, or specific religious beliefs it would be a little bit of a shock to me.  Giving business to a company that doesn’t have the same moral foundations as me would be very difficult to support.  My emotions towards that company would change and most likely result in me not giving them any of my business.

My decision to support the company would be based on a few criteria.  Is it a company (like Nike) where I already have a lot of clothes from?  If so, I may not do anymore business with them but I still may wear the clothes that I already possess.  Is it a company that has a lot of substitutes?  Maybe it is a food company where I can substitute the brand but still have the same product.  Essentially, my decision to support the company depends on a wide arrange of questions. 

If this was a company I wanted to work for in the future it would definitely make me not want to apply there or work for the company.  Working for a company that openly discriminates against a strong value I have would be a hard culture to interact in.  It would make me focus more on the values of the company (which would be negative from my viewpoint) than make me a good employee.  I would be doing the company a disfavor working for them.  Therefore, it would be in my best interest and the company’s best interest to not work for the company, because I would be robbing them of a passionate employee that makes them money.

Claim: Recruitment and selection is a company’s most important function.

Counterpoint:  The most important function of a company is to create value to a customer;  without a paying customer there is no business.

Organizations deicide to allocate more resources towards marketing and product design rather than using the same resources to do a great job in employee recruitment and selection for many reasons.  One reason is that marketing and product design is an observable artifact that customers and managers can observe.  They can also observe sales data after marketing a new product, and they can get feedback from customers on new products.  Organizations that focus more on building a better product and developing more efficient processes will be better in the long run.

A strength of an organization not prioritizing recruitment and selection is that they can focus on the business by creating value for customers.  If a company spends all of their time recruiting and selecting employees they can lose sight of the overall goal of the business.  However, a weakness to focusing on other business activities besides recruitment and selection is cost.  The cost of hiring a person that does not do a good job can result in millions of dollars for just ten workers hired.  For example, the failed cost for a hire can be around $2 Million dollars because you have to account for paying the employee, using resources to search for the employee, and lost business because of less workers.  Also, a bad employee that creates a lot of mistakes will force managers to correct those mistakes rather than adding more value to the business.

Week 1

The last job I applied to was over one year ago. I had met with a few managers that had asked me behavioral and skill related questions regarding the position of a supply/ demand analyst intern. I was nervous for the interview because I did not know the questions they were going to ask me, however, it turned out that the manager was an alumni of OSU, a resident assistant (like me at the time), and lived in the same dorm as I did, 2o years earlier. This being said we had a strong connection in the beginning. The second manager that interviewed me focused more on hard skills that I had possessed. Some included excel, PowerPoint, SAP, and basic information regarding Solid State Drives or SSDs. Overall, I prepared for this interview by reviewing the company’s website and reaching out to my network. At my surprise they offered me the position while I was on the phone with the manager.

A few months later I started working for the company and got adjusted to work life. My experience at times were very stressful and difficult, however, I had a manager that believed in me and allowed me to learn from mistakes. If it wasn’t for the manager and peers, I wouldn’t have liked the work as much. I was there for 7 months and treated every day like an interview with the idea to get a full time job from my internship.

In the end they offered me a full time position after graduation. While I worked hard, the process of getting the job via a ‘7 month interview’ allowed me to make sure the job, people, and culture was for me. It also allowed my manager to make sure I was the right person for the job.

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