Typical vs. Maximal Performance

If I’m an owner of the shoes business, I’d like to hire Jaime. In my opinion, consistency is a very important quality to be a good employee. It’s true Avery can show high-performance, but when? Avery’s inconsistency or the random high performance can not build the trust between me and him. Jaime, on the other hand, can gain the trust from the employer. If the grade is from 1-10 of the job, the ceiling of Jamie might be 7 or 8, Avery can be 9 or 10. But  I believe the Jamie’s average is higher than Avery’s. Any in most work situation, the employers is OK with 7/8 grade work, 9/10 grade involves more with employee’s forward thinking. However, people like Jaime may be hard to get the promotion.

I think Avery is better at the work which involved with creativity or design. For example, the product or a fashion designer. Where the consistency is not that important; but the random inspiration or creativity is much more important. Once Avery gets the idea, the work process is about 80%. For the daily work, it doesn’t require him to be consistent.  In work position like designer, the potential is much more important than consistency.

In my opinion, Jaime is a potential good engineer or programmer. This job doesn’t need much creativity or high potential, but the good and consistency coding is more important. In this job, Jaime needs to follow supervisor’s coding guide and mission, and give the good feedback. The consistency is very important in this situation.

Recruitment Ad

As a potential employee, I think my greatest strengths are high efficiency, active and responsible. As an employee, I can always complete the work assigned by the leader in a faster time than expected and ensure the quality of the work. I think high efficiency is a very important quality as an employee; not only because more work can be completed in a certain period, but also because more time can be spent on thinking about work in advance. I think that positivity and efficiency are closely related. For example, the working time is 8 hours a day, 6 hours to complete today’s work, the remaining two hours can do some work in advance, rather than waiting for the leadership to give other works. Positivity is usually stimulated by some reward mechanism, but it can also be achieved through your own motivation for achievement. Responsibility is a very important quality. A person ’s ability to work can be inferior to others, but he/she must not lack a sense of responsibility. Anyone who pushes the responsibilities to others instead of finding the own problem will lose the trust of the leader. If I make myself an advertisement, I will use some innovative methods instead of simple resumes. I will use some attractive and professional picture to get attention first. Also, I will highlight my strengths and don’t put the weakness in the resume/ad. If I get the opportunity to get the face to face interview, I will talk about my weakness if the HR ask me about it. In the ad of myself, I use the simple words and refined language in the ad instead of the long sentence or descriptive words. Also, the color is important. Black and white is pretty boring while the contrast color can get more attention like blue and yellow, which can be used in the background.

Job Description

When I apply a job, the job description is the top factor that I will consider. Besides the salary, location and the company itself, job description may be the most important factor.  A job description can give me a self-testing to see if I’m qualified for the job. The JD may list that this position needs the ability of R language, so I can know it may be not appropriate for me. JD can also tell the future promotion opportunity sometimes. Some JD will clarify that this position needs to report to someone, I can know this person may be my manager and next step in the career. Think about my last job, I think the relative to the actual job to JD is about 70% related and included. 30% of the work is not mentioned or related to the JD. My last job as a product specialist in China describes this position focus on the project or product design (focus on educational product like course design and  summer camp design, most about British summer camp). After getting in the position, I found myself doing a lot translating stuff like translate the information about British summer school, so the Chinese potential client can understand it better. I understand that there are some unpredictable or random jobs, which are not supposed to put in the JD. But if one job is regular like weekly, it’s better to put it in the JD. Based on my experience and my communication with friends, I guess if there are too much details put in JD, the candidate may expect the salary to be higher since it seems like a lot to do in the job position.

Experiences with Discrimination

The news of my favorite company faces the discrimination lawsuit effects my way about the company. I may consider the company with bad company culture. And it definitely affects my decision to support that company. If the company is a food company or any business to customers modes company, I may consider not to buy the products, at least not as much as before. I may find an alternative.  I will not apply to work in the future even it was my favorite company. For me, the company’s culture is very important. The discrimination is a crucial factor, it can represent the company’s core value, work environment and even the promotion opportunity. The discrimination almost effects every decision making in one company. In the hiring process, the HR and managers may have the preference gender or race, which is a serious bias and unfair to everyone. Bias is something not in the job description but on decision maker’s mind. Also, when there is promotion opportunity, bias decide who get the promotion. In the daily working, the bias is also everywhere. So, if my favorite company faces the discrimination lawsuit, I will reconsider this company. And I will follow the case to see the details about discrimination and the result about the case. A company’s value is not only about it’s products, but also the company culture. The company with discrimination normally won’t last long success since it will eventually turn into the products. Now publics are much more sensitive to company’s culture or bad news than before. A company with right core value can really get connection with customer and its employees.

Job Application Experiences

With the popularity of the Internet and the promotion of telecommuting, internet companies are more and more popular among young people, and so am I. By chance, I saw the news of NetEase’s recruitment of daily interns and applied for the position of musician operation management assistant with the mentality of trying. To my surprise, I received a call from HR that night. The call lasted about 10 minutes and he asked me about my resume and my understanding of the position and how long I could stay. At the end of the conversation, I asked him if I had a chance to get a job. Although his answer was not a promise, I still felt that my confused life had a turnaround. Netease was very efficient. The next day, I received a phone interview from their competent department. They dug deeper into my resume, including the role played in the management project, data sources, project background and results. They also asked me to evaluate what I had learned. Besides, the supervisor asked me some operational questions, such as asking me to analyze the reasons for the global popularity of short video software. At last, I met with the supervisor himself. Based on the feedback from the previous interview, he learned that I had no intention to work in this position for a long time, it was not good for the company, so they didn’t decide to hire me because I didn’t change my mind and plan and gave them a definite answer. After these rewarding conversations, I felt that I performed well at that time. I was able to adapt to unfamiliar questions and also exposed my lack of ability to output documents. 

The Case for Recruitment & Selection

After reviewing the week one mini-lecture, staffing is one of the important factors for the long-term development of an enterprise. From my perspectives, European and American enterprises all emphasize human resource management, the reason is that their regular staff dismission costs are high, enterprises tend to encourage employees to continue to stay in the enterprise, to continue to add more values for employees rather than simply dismiss and recruit in the society. However, in some Asian countries, such as China, the cost of recruiting and leaving is very low, and companies are more inclined, or more simple, to find the people they want directly in the labor market. In addition, human resource management is a long-term investment. The problem is that many companies do not know if there is a tomorrow, and there are many uncertain factors. Generally, company management does not want their investment to be in vain through investing in staffing. Therefore The organization decided to allocate more resources to marketing or product design rather than use them to recruit and select employees.

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

  • Organizations can allocate resources to product quality, packaging to increase sales and attract the market.
  • Develop the corporate culture and improve the welfare of new and old employees

Weaknesses

  • It is not conducive to the discovery and acquisition of talent for various jobs and thus reduces the efficiency of the enterprise
  • It is not conducive to the sustainable development of the enterprise once there is a vacancy ( dismission).