Ref # HRM/CH/05/CA-010203
Safdar Nazeer
Name: ______________________________________________________________________
Class: ________________Section: _____________Semester:________________
Getting Better Applicants
If Jennifer and Pierre were asked what the main problem was in
running their business, their answer would be quick and short: hiring
good people. They were simply astonished at how hard it was to
attract and hire good candidates. After much debate, they decided to
post openings for seven positions: two salespeople, a Web designer,
two content management people, an office manager, and a Web
surfer. Their first approach was to design and place a large display
ad in two local newspapers. The display ad listed all the positions
available; Jennifer and Pierre assumed that by placing a large ad with
the name of the company prominently displayed and a bold border
around the ad, it would draw attention and therefore generate
applicants. For two consecutive weekends, the ad cost the fledgling
company close to $1000. It produced a handful of applicants. After
speaking with them by phone, Jennifer and Pierre rejected three
outright; two said they weren't interested; and two scheduled
interviews but never showed up.
The owners therefore decided to change their approach. They used
different recruiting methods for each position. In the paper, they
placed ads for the salespeople under "Sales" and for the office
manager under "Administrative." They advertised for a Web
designer by placing an ad on monster.ca. And for the content
managers and Web surfer, they placed neatly typed help wanted ads
in the career placement offices of a technical college and a
community college about 10 minutes away from their offices. They
also used this job posting approach to find independent contractors
they could use to deliver courses physically to users' homes or
offices. The results were disappointing. Over a typical weekend,
literally dozens of want ads for experienced salespeople appear, as
well as almost as many for office managers. The ad for salespeople
generated about three calls, one of whom Jennifer and Pierre felt
might be a viable candidate, although the person wanted a much
higher salary than they had planned to pay. One possible candidate
Human Resource Management
Assistant Professor
CIIT Wah
emerged for the office manager position. They decided to change the
positioning of the sales ad (since the job involved entirely inside
phone sales) in the newspaper from "Salespersons Wanted" to
"Phone Sales," which is a separate category. Many of the calls they
got (not all of them, but many) were from salespeople who were used
to working in what some people called "boiler-room" operations. In
other words, they sit at the phone all day making cold calls from lists
provided by their employers, selling anything from burglar alarms to
homeowners, to investments to doctors, all under very high-pressure
conditions. They weren't interested in LearnInMotion, nor was
LearnInMotion interested in them.
They fared a little better with the Web designer ad, which produced
four possible applicants. They got no phone calls from the local
college job postings; when they called to ask the placement offices
why, they were told that their posted salary of $8 per hour was "way
too low." They went back and replaced the job postings with $10
hourly rates.
"I just don't understand it" is the way Jennifer put it. Especially for
the sales job, Jennifer and Pierre felt that they were offering perfectly
acceptable compensation packages, so the lack of applicants
surprised them. "Maybe a lot of people just don't want to work for
dot-coms anymore," said Pierre, thinking out loud. "Since the bottom
fell out of the dot-com market in March 2000, a lot of good people
have gotten burned by working for a series of two or three failed dot-
coms, so maybe they've just had enough of the wired world."
1. Tell Jennifer and Pierre what they're doing wrong.
2. Provide a detailed list of recommendations concerning
how they should go about increasing their pool of
acceptable job applicants, so they no longer have to hire
almost anyone who walks in the door. (Recommendations
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regarding the latter should include completely worded advertisements and recommendations regarding any
other recruiting strategies you would suggest they use.)

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 Employment Opportunity
Dorthy Bryant, recruiting supervisor for international Manufacturing
Company in Salt Lake City, Utah had been promoted to her position
after several years as a group leader in the production
DEPARTMENT; one of the Dorothy’s first ASSIGNMENTS was to
recruit two software design engineers for international. After
considering various recruitment alternatives, Dorothy placed the
following ad in a local newspaper with a circulation in excess of
1,000,000:

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY
FOR SOFTWARE DESIGN ENGINEER
2 positions available for software design engineers desiring career
in growth industry
Prefer recent college graduate with good appearance.
Apply today! Send your resume,
In confidence, to: D.A. Bryant
International Manufacturing Co. P.O. Box 1515
Salt Lake City, UT 84115

More than 300 applications arrived in the first week, and Dorothy
was elated. When she reviewed the applicants, however, it appeared
that few people possessed the desired qualification for the job.

Q.1 Dorothy overlooked some of the proper recruiting practices,

which resulted in an
Excessive number of unqualified people applying. What are
they?
Q.2 Change this ad and make it up to the standard so that errors
can be omitted?

3
 Midwest Corporation
Midwest Corporation is a medium-sized conglomerate with 14
divisions: 3 in the hotel/restaurant business, 5 in furniture
manufacturing, and 6 in the financial sector. In collaboration with a
consultant, the HR department at corporate headquarters has
developed a procedure to evaluate the health of each division's HR
system. This procedure consists of three steps:
1. Using computerized record files, generate information on
each division's turnover rate, absenteeism rate, number of
grievances, accident rate, and number of equal opportunity
complaints.
2. Compute an overall index of HR effectiveness for each
division that summarizes all the information generated in Step 1.
3. Compute the difference between each division's overall HR
effectiveness index (generated in Step 2) and the average overall
HR effectiveness for all of Midwest's similar businesses. Thus,
for example, the furniture manufacturing plant in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, would be compared to all of Midwest's other
furniture manufacturing plants.
The HR director at Midwest's corporate headquarters has been able
to persuade top executives that the appraisal and compensation of
division executives should be based in part on the comparative
computations done in Step 3. The goal, as the HR director sees it, is
to hold division managers accountable for the effective use of human
resources in each plant.
Questions
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Midwest's
proposed three-step HR evaluation procedure? Explain.
2. Do you agree with the method being proposed at
Midwest? If not, what alternatives would you suggest?
3. Is linking the HRM effectiveness score to division
managers' performance appraisal and pay likely to have
a positive or negative effect on these managers'
behavior? Why or why not?