Hi Everybody!

First of all, I would like to thank everybody again for the hard work you did! Nearly all students
submitted their assignment, and nearly everybody invested an impressive amount of work in this
project.

Please note that the content of this document is the SAME for ALL students, so please do not feel
singled out; if something within it does not apply to you, just read it for good comparative
information's sake.

READING THE PAPERS

Once you download and open your corrected assignment (its name begins with the word
'CORRECTED') you will find that several words, sentences, or entire paragraphs may be highlighted
in purple or yellow. Some of these highlights merely indicate grammatical, spelling, or stylistical
mistakes, and there is no comment attached. In some of the cases, however, if you move your cursor
over these segments and leave it resting there for a few seconds, a small window will pop up with the
relevant comments I made written inside. Please read them carefully. You might also want to watch
out for highlights that are immediately next to each other - they include separate comments.

If you scroll to the end of the paper, you will find a section called "INSTRUCTOR’S COMMENTS"
in red. This is where I provide an overall summary of your work, as well as the mark you received.

I must apologize if the notes are brief, but I did not have the opportunity to dwell on the finer points as
much as I would have liked to. My priority was to hand you back these papers as soon as possible. If
you would like more detailed explanations, I will be happy to answer any questions you might have
for me. In addition, if you do not agree with my evaluation, please contact me! I am always willing to
listen to a well-reasoned argument, and I am not impervious to mistakes myself. ;^)

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS AND EVALUATION OF THE WORK

Almost all of you seem to have invested a great deal of time and effort in this project. Unfortunately, it
was not always invested in the right direction. The number one problem I have seen popping up over
and over again is... analytical reading! In fact, the majority of the mistakes, oversights, or misguided
deliverables can be traced directly to a perhaps superficial reading of the assignment's ‘Individual
Assignment 2 Instructions' or the 'Detailed Specifications & Criteria' document – or else of the sources
you were using.

One of the most frequent problems was approaching the assignment as a theoretical discussion instead
of as a practical task to accomplish. I appreciate the effort when students spend pages upon pages on
paraphrasing the textbook, but at least half of the deliverables were supposed to be practical (and
completely finished) examples and documents, and not a theoretical discussion of what these should
look like. If I were your real-life manager and assigned this project to you, I would not want a package
that states something like "I would post this ad on the Internet" or (even more frequent) "we could
choose a job board such as/like this-or-that". Where on the Internet? Which job board, and why?

Imagine if, instead of marking your paper, I had sent you back comments along the lines of "I could
mark it 70%, or 40%, or even 10%..." What would be your reaction? Please keep this in mind for the
next assignment.
ADVERTISEMENT & RECRUITMENT STRATEGY

A few students chose to post this position internally ONLY. Although I tried to treat this issue 'gently',
I would like to offer, for your consideration, the following factors:

* this is an entry-level position, and

* it requires at least 1 year of current administrative office experience.

If you are recruiting for it internally ONLY, either of two things are likely to happen. First scenario:
you get internal applicants who are currently NOT working in such a position at your organization.
This would mean having to select applicants who have NO current administrative experience. This, in
turn, means they have a gap in their KSAO/experience set that, likely, is at least 1 year or longer,
seeing as most companies do not encourage transfer or promotion before the employee has spent at
least a year in their current position. Second scenario: you get applicants who ARE currently working
in such a position - which means you simply postponed or even transferred your 'needs' from one area
of the organization to another. In either case, chances are you are not getting the best.

Another issue that kept popping up is the applicant pool. Setting target numbers, even if they are
merely estimated, is one of the most important aspects of the process. When you are developing an
R&S strategy, you must have an approximate applicant pool in mind, otherwise you will not be able to
focus your efforts and it will make evaluation (auditing) of the entire process very hard in the end.
Unfortunately, a few students also missed this issue. Moreover, keep in mind that ‘ideal’ is not the
same as ‘expected’. The question was to make an estimate on the expected size based on the nature of
your strategy (which is different for every paper), and not to guess an ‘ideal’ number (which would be
really the same for all papers, in theory) especially without any explanation or justification for it.

As to the ad itself: some students completely failed to indicate an application closing date, contact
information, or indeed the medium (and even the venue?) for which their ad was designed. I am fully
aware that some job boards automatically attach deadline and contact information to the ads, but if you
do not indicate specifically that your ad was designed only for e.g. Workopolis, I cannot accept it as a
finished product based on just my personal presumptions.

In general, it is always a good idea to include an application closing date anyway. Without it, chances
are you will keep receiving applications long after the process has closed, which usually results in
three problems: first, if you ignore them, it creates a bad impression in the applicants and thus in the
community about your organization; second, if you respond to them, you end up with a truckload of
administrative headache that offers no profit whatsoever to the organization; and third, it can open
your R&S process up to a legal challenge.

Finally, quite a few students developed an ad that had absolutely nothing in common with the
formatting and content requirements of its intended venue, which I found nothing short of puzzling:
why would you do that? Why would you set a target as (say) The Toronto Sun, and then optimize your
ad for the requirements of (say) Indeed.ca...?

RESUME SECTION

First of all, I have to mention the issue of vague and generic qualifiers/adjectives. Quite a few of you
made statements such as 'the resume must be visually appealing' or 'the candidate has to use
professional fonts' etc. etc. etc., without ever expanding upon what is actually meant by such
statements. Again, to go back to my previous example: imagine if, as a criteria for this paper, I had
stated only something like 'the paper must be good' or 'the paper has to have the right sections', but
without ever informing you as to what constitutes a 'good paper' or 'the right sections'! Would you
have found it informative - or even remotely useful...? ;^)

Second: as you recall, I did emphasize that I wanted to read a little bit about the warning signs of
fudged/falsified resumes, yet a few students missed this point entirely. This, believe it or not, is one of
the most important aspects of the recruitment process, and one that is easy to miss! Conversely, some
students addressed nothing but fraud, which is - again - merely one side of resume screening.

When writing this section, some students also failed to realize that they are writing a project from a
Human Resources Management point of view, and not that of a candidate. This is not supposed to have
been the summary of a 'resume writing workshop' (so to speak) but a guide to a hiring manager as to
how to spot quality and separate the 'chaff from the wheat'. In addition, quite a few of you seemed
unclear about the difference between the screening vs. the selection phase of the R&S process, or
between poor versus fraudulent resumes, which misguided many efforts.

GRAMMAR

Please note that a certain mastery of English competencies is an essential requirement of any written
work. It is especially true to Human Resource work, which often takes a written form and carries
implications that sometimes go far beyond their intended range. Even in high school, mistakes such as
'there' vs. 'their', 'it's' (which, to begin with, is not acceptable in ANY official business correspondence)
vs. 'its', 'where' vs. 'were', etc. are enough to lose a full 10% of your mark - and we are supposed to be
college-educated professionals. Nearly all the papers had some (or all) of the above mistakes, so this
remark is addressed to everybody. Imagine what kind of image or PR it creates when a company issues
an HR manual or set of guidelines that, no matter how great, are full of spelling mistakes…

Also, just a personal observation: I noticed how so many students placed great emphasis on the
importance of good grammar and spelling in their resume screening section - and oftentimes did so
while making the exact same type of mistakes in the very narrative which was warning about them!
Beyond the obvious irony inherent in such situations, it also begs the question: if getting an entry-level
job requires linguistic accuracy, why would keeping the same job not require the same? AND, if this is
important for getting a job, why would it become insignificant in a post-secondary educational course
that is leading to industry-standard certification in human resources management…?

In the ‘olden days’ when assignments had to be written by hand or with a typewriter at best, errors of
grammar and spelling in an individual’s work could be more understandable, even though they were
less acceptable. Today, when most such mistakes can easily be found and corrected by pushing a single
key on your keyboard (say, F7 in MSWord for Windows) and spending 10 minutes on the process, the
presence of such errors shows not a lack of ability or resources, but a lack of attention to detail – and
disrespect to your audience. Leadership by example. How can you, as a human resources manager,
expect others to adhere to your directives and standards if you are unable to hold even yourself to
those…? Please, keep this in mind the next time you submit written work to anybody, whether it is for
school or work purposes.

FORMATTING

Would you buy a chocolate bar that tastes great, but is wrapped in a torn, dirty foil? I would not. The
looks, formatting, etc. of your work oftentimes weighs as much as its content. As an HR professional,
you are primarily a salesperson: you are selling the employees’ ideas to management, management’s
ideas to employees, and industry concepts to all. You must make them presentable, even enticing (no
small feat, I know!) or few people will buy them.

The above applies even more so to papers that incorporate references and quotations. No matter which
college you attend, you have a style-guide freely available to students (try your library or resource
center as the first step). The truth of the matter is, most dictionaries (e.g. The Random House College
Dictionary) also incorporate at the end a detailed guide to properly formatting quotes, citations, and
references - not to mention that I also provided direct links to several excellent guides on this issue.
This is not just a matter of cosmetics. An improper quote can open your work up to charges of
plagiarism or even defamation of character, which I would strongly urge you to avoid. In addition, it
makes your analysis unclear, which deducts from the values of even the most brilliant ideas.

Also: why would anyone ever reference the Table of Contents (or even the Cover page!) in the Table
of Contents...?

RESEARCH

I have to mention here the problem with "copy’n’paste" writing. As you know, your task was not
simply to copy the textbook (or other sources) verbatim, but to analyze (or at least paraphrase) it,
which means original input. Just typing in whatever you are reading from the chapters is not only in
poor taste, it also gives a very poor impression of your capabilities. In addition, research means not
only reading external sources, but reading them with a critical, analytical mindset. If a source
discusses resumes from a candidate's perspective, the minimum I expect is that you recognize the
difference between the perspective of the source versus the perspective you are expected to assume,
and reformulate the information accordingly.

By the same token, I want to commend those who did a bit of market research (e.g. average
salary of administrative assistants in Canada, current unemployment rates in Ontario, etc.)
before they jumped into the project. Your approach demonstrated not only exceptional
professionalism, but also the kind of attention to detail and analytical thinking that are often
sorely missed in this profession, but which in reality make all the difference between an amateur
and a true master. AWESOME job!

One more thing: it is absolutely CRITICAL to keep in mind that just because something is
written on the Internet on a professional-looking website, it does not make it true or correct.
Quite a lot of students fell for poor and unverified sources, or this-or-that web page’s marketing
materials when formulating their strategy. The reason I stressed the importance of gathering real life
data to base your decisions on was precisely because of this; just because a venue looks cheap and
awesome (based on its own claims…) it does not make it optimal, nor does this render such claims
actually true!

I hope this helps. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me! I am here to help - 
not to mention that I happen to enjoy it as well. And if you got a mark that is less than you expected,
DO NOT LOSE HEART! We tend to learn only from our mistakes, as we usually take our successes
for granted...;^)

Best of luck, and thank you all again for your conscientious effort,

- Robert