Workforce Planning and Employment Tanglewood Case 7

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Management 364 A,

Workforce Planning and Employment

Case 7

Personnel selection and assessment activities are integral parts of this organizational life. Tanglewood's economic climate has seen an ever increasing level of staff turnover and personnel reorganization, and the abolition of the traditional view keeping a 'a job for life. Consequently, there is now more pressure on this organizations and HR managers to fill vacant positions quickly and with the most appropriate individuals. Decisions about hiring applicants have to be based on predictions about future work behaviors. Tanglewood needs to recruit new staff and start making promotion decisions about employees, there are various methods of assessment that are available, such as: interview, psychological tests, assessment centers and biodata.

PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST are somewhat standardized a method of gaining a set of responses from a candidate. Candidates are required to answer a carefully derived set of questions, which may focus on specific aspects of ability or facets of personality. Cognitive tests may be divided into tests of achievement and of aptitude. I would go with a test of aptitude it is focusing on what an individual is capable of achieving in the future. Cost is a major factor for psychometric testing they are expensive to design and develop, although they are sufficiently inexpensive to purchase the cost is in they usually require a trained consultant for their interpretation. A well designed test can be an extremely valid and inexpensive selection tool.

ASSESSMENT CENTERS have become increasingly popular over the recent years to obtain the best possible indication of an individual's actual or potential competence to perform at a target job. Assessment Centers have been consistently successful in making valid and reliable predictions of candidate success. Assessment centers involve a combination of selection methods which are given to a group of candidates over the course of a day, or several days. Assessment Centers will consist of a series of simulations and exercises aimed to reflect the tasks involved in the target job. Candidates are assessed, either in a group or individually, on a series of job-relevant dimensions such as interpersonal skills, analytic skills, leadership, sensitivity, tolerance of ambiguity, and decisiveness. When correctly used, Assessment Centers can give a highly accurate indication of an individual's potential at a job.

BIODATA are far more objective alternative to the traditional paper sift approach to pre-selection. Biodata permits a candidate to describe themselves in a demographic, or demonstrated their personality structure, or success in social, educational or occupational pursuits. Biodata is used in a pre-screening base on their previous job information or examination results, serving to provide a minimum standard for the applicant. The use of biodata assumes that the way an individual has responded in particular situations in the past is a promising source of information on how that individual will respond to similar situations in the future.

STRUCTURED INTERVIEW usually involves questions which have been developed through a form of job analysis, thereby limiting the traditional subjectivity of assessment. Responses are rated by the interviewer using an objective, behaviorally anchored scoring system like 1-5 or 10. The structured interviews have a much higher degree of job relatedness and validity. The drawback structured interviews, is that they often remove from the interview situation those interpersonal aspects which are often valued by interviewers and interviewees alike. But if you balance it right to that of a traditional interview, which typically follows no particular pattern, the interviews can take on a variety of forms like essentially a conversation between a candidate and one or more interviewers with a specific purpose. Both employer and applicant can have a casual and unrestrained...
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