Question

Question A1 Paula Chan, the Director of Montreal Construction Company, requests the Human Resources Department to find two Senior Engineering Managers through internal recruitment. To achieve this recruiting goal, the Human Resources Manager announces the job opening internally through newsletters, bulletin boards, and intranet. In addition, the human resources manager, Mary, also uses the Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) to identify potential candidates and contacts them to apply for promotion. Montreal Construction Company in the past five years has invested much money in HRIS which is a comprehensive database used for monitoring and tracking employees’ skills and abilities of the entire workforce. Answer the following question based on the above scenario. (a) Identify ONE Internal Recruitment System of Montreal Construction Company. Explain whether this system could reduce unfairness in personnel selection. (b) Name TWO recruitment sources adopted by the HR manager, Mary, to find potential candidates for the position of Senior Engineering Mangers. After interviewing the potential candidates, Paula strongly feels that all candidates do not process all the skills and abilities which are essential for the job positions of Senior Engineering Managers. She determines to use external recruitment to find the right candidates. Given the time and cost of rigorous selection procedures, the HR manager, Mary, suggests Paula to use Initial Assessment Methods for external recruitment. (c) Suggest ONE initial assessment method Mary may use for recruitment which is the best predictor of job performance. Explain ONE disadvantage of this method. (Note: If you provide than ONE method, only the FIRST method will be marked.) (d) Paula is informed by the HR managers that some initial assessment methods are highly used by recruiters for selecting applicants but with low validity. Name ONE of these assessment methods with these characteristics. (1 mark) (e) Mary considers using employment agencies and executive search firms for finding the right candidates. Suggest and explain which source is more suitable for the hiring of Senior Engineering Managers.

Answer 1

Answer (a) :

"Human Resource Information system (HRIS)" is one of the internal recruitment systems of Montreal Construction Company. This system can definitely reduce unfairness in personnel selection. It is so because it will put forward those employees who are actually capable of the job since this software uses the database of all the employees and tracks their skills and abilities. Thus, only those employees would be selected who actually deserve the job position. The use of this software would prevent the impartial and biased attitude of the recruiters.

It is often found that the recruiters turn unfair while recruiting from within the organization. They might turn biased and select a misfit employee over a deserving one due for their own benefit. But HRIS can reduce such practices as the selection would be done as per the skills and abilities of the candidate rather than as per the choice of the recruiter.

Answer (b) :

Two recruitment sources used by HR manager are as follows:

1. Internal recruitment system, i.e., HRIS (a software which tracks and monitors databases of employess skills and abilities)

2. Advertising within the organization through newsletter and bulletin board.

Answer (c) :

Mary may use biographical information or bio-data as one of the initial assessment methods for recruitment. The disadvantage of this method is falsification in the biodata. People may write false information about their past performance, achievements, and qualifications.

Answer (d) :

An unstructured interview is one of these assessment methods with the abovesaid characteristics. The questions to be asked are left up to the interviewer to decide and there are no agreed-upon standards for evaluating the candidate's performance in the interview.