An Article Critique and Review: The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad

In Partial Fulfillment of the Course Requirements In Strategic Human Resource Management (HRM603M)

 

Summary, Critique and Opinion

The article (Fernandez-Araoz, Groysberg, & Nohria, May 2009) realizes the importance of an effective and structured hiring process of a company which can be advantageous to times of great opportunity like a recession. As observed that upon the turn of recession, there is a huge amount of potential and talented workforce that are looking for jobs. It is to the advantage of a company to filter and get the right employee that will be effective and can contribute to the realization of the goals of the company. In addition, the Article realizes the potential of recession in providing a large pool of manpower. As per Business Code of Ethics (Aquino, October 23, 1979), a company must provide an equal opportunity to applicants.

It is consistent that the recommendations of the Article highly focuses only on hiring top-executive or high ranking positions in a company because of the results of their research. The research focuses solely on 50 global companies by interviewing their CEOs and their respective HR managers. In addition, the research has surveyed executive-search consultants. From this, a majority of these CEOs does not follow a form of standard in terms of hiring a top executive position. But rather, these CEOs rely solely on their personal feel and preferences. These results can signify that HR is not effective in creating a hiring process and guidelines for the company, which could lead to a waste of time, resources and opportunity of the company. However, these can also signify that the CEO is also at fault for not realizing the needed improvement in the hiring process and for the deficiency of leading HR properly in creating a standard hiring process.

The Article, in turn has recommended a structured seven steps in hiring and keeping a top-executive position for the company.

The first step is by anticipating the need of manpower which should also be forecasted along with the projection and goal setting of the company. This step, gives HR management a huge responsibility in supporting and accomplishing the goal of the company, as in the concept of Value Chain (Robbins & Judge, 2009). In addition, HR can create strategies and properly schedule the career and skill development of the current and soon to be employees in the future. Given that the company will have an insight of the needed resources in hiring and keeping employees, HR must ensure that the future employees will perform effectively and efficiently. Hence, the first step is justifying the need for a proper hiring process of a company.

The second step is by specifying the job not only to specific job descriptions and specific skills, the job specification must also consider the management style needed in handling the current teams. In addition, the second step is considering the effect of the company culture to the job specification. By considering other factors in specifying the job, HR will hire an adaptive and job fit employees in the future. This step helps HR management in saving the company and not waste additional resources and time in training just in order for the new employees to be fit in the job and company.

The third step is by developing a pool of recommended candidates hence the company must have a diverse sources of manpower for recommendation. This step helps HR to save time in terms of looking for a set of candidates. The diverse source may come from recommendations of peers and/or employees that are a highly reliable source of nominations. Since the behavior and skill of a candidate can be confirmed easily by peers. In addition, HR can have a faster hiring process since HR can skip the background check of a candidate, saving time and resources of the company. This practice is currently being done by HR of Honda Cars Philippines, Inc.

The fourth step is by assessing the candidates properly in terms of a standard probing and questioning practices. It is highly recommended in the Article that in an interview, the best result can be gathered by asking behavioral event scenarios which will give the true personality of the candidates. Another method is by keeping a special set of interviewers that will ensure and recommend a quality set of candidates. Lastly, the involvement of stakeholders in the assessment process can eliminate the bias in every interview session. This fourth step also contributes to the company by savings in terms of additional meeting time for deliberations and recommendations. However, the company must invest in resources and especially in time in order to have the necessary capable interviewers. Hence, the full implementation of the entire Article recommendations and steps will only be ready for deployment or implementation once there are available and trained interviewers. In addition, this entire article will not be readily effective and implementable unless this fourth step is already being practiced by a Company.

The fifth step is by closing the deal to candidates while the hiring manager is present in the actual transaction and negotiation. The presence of the hiring manager gives an opportunity to further know the candidate while the step also helps the HR in terms of saving time for transition and adapting period of the new employee with the immediate superior. In addition, describing not only the opportunities of the job position but also the challenges that awaits in the company will give the candidate a set of expectations, directions and an insight of the culture of the Company. This step also makes a final screening process for the job fit of the candidate to the Company. Lastly, the Article is practicing the recommended Catholic Social Teachings (Zigarelli, 1993) by recommending the compensations being offered to the candidate be fair to other employees or the same set of compensations to the same position employees.

The sixth step is by integrating the newcomer in terms of assigning a mentor to the newcomer in order to ensure the tenure and effectively contribute to the company’s goals. The mentor will help speed up the transition process of the newcomer to the job position but also to the culture of the Company.

However, an observation to the Article is that the recommended hiring process is only applicable or biased toward large corporations and are not applicable to small or growing successful company. These bias can be clearly seen on Step4, 5 and 6 which describes that a set of top ranking officials be involved in the hiring process and transition process. These requirements can only be achieved by having a large pool of tenure employees which is likely the case in small and growing successful company. It is a fact that tenure officers have experience and knowledge of the processes in the Company. However, these tenure officers can back fire the hiring process by being threatened of their position and acquired power (Robbins & Judge, 2009). Hence, these challenges must be recognized by the HR management and make the necessary programs in order to prevent these possible scenarios.

Lastly, the seventh step is by auditing and reviewing the performance of the new hired employees. These performances can be measured and monitored by HR management by creating a control system and strategy against the job descriptions and targeted goals of the newcomer. It is recommended that a bad performing newcomer must be relieved within the first year and the recruiting process be reviewed and updated regularly in order to save the company from wasting time, resources and opportunities in the future.

The Article, however, fails to realize and mention the importance of Leadership as one of the traits needed in hiring a top-executive. As mentioned in an Organizational Behavior (Robbins & Judge, 2009), a leadership skill can be natural to an individual or can be learned through experiences. If a Company fails to measure the leadership skill of a candidate, the whole recommended hiring process can be compromised due to the required additional skills that need to be taught to the newcomer.

Aside to the equal opportunity that the Company must provide to applicants (Aquino, October 23, 1979), the Article recommends that it is better to hire top-executives than hire potential applicants which can be trained to be leaders and top-executives (Robbins & Judge, 2009). The Company can hire more employees rather than one top-executive compared to the opportunity of hiring two or more applicants of the same salary amount combined which in turn could deliver or contribute twice or  more. This way, the Company can be an ethical Company that gives more individuals the opportunity to perform their right to work as mentioned in Catholic Social Teachings (Abela, 2001).

The recommended seven steps in hiring, guides the HR management of the Company to realize the importance of having a structured and standard hiring process in order to achieve the goals of the Company and support the company in terms of saving time, resources and opportunities in the future. These factors could and should have been realized by CEOs in order to help HR in structuring a standard hiring process.

Bibliography

Abela, A. V. (2001). Profit and More: Catholic Social Teaching and the Purpose of the Firm. Journal of Business Ethics , 31: 107-116.

Aquino. (October 23, 1979). A Code of Ethis for Business. In B.-B. C. Development.

Fernandez-Araoz, C., Groysberg, B., & Nohria, N. (May 2009). The Definitive Guide to

Recruiting in Good Times and bad. Harvard Business Review , 74-84.

Robbins, & Judge. (2009). Essentials of Organizational Behaviour (13th ed.). Prentice-Hall.

Zigarelli, M. A. (1993). Catholic Social Teaching and the Employment Relationship: A Model for Managing Human Resources in Accordance with Vatican Doctrine. Journal of Business Ethics , 12: 75-82.