CHAPTER 8: MEASUREMENT AND CHAPTER 9: ASESING EXTERNAL CANDIDATES

Remember to write your report so that the various measurements you learned about in these chapters will be understandable to the firm's store managers and department managers. These employees do not have a staffing or statistics background. Consequently, many of the concepts you discuss in the report will be unfamiliar to them. Be sure you thoroughly explain the concepts and their importance. This will be particularly import- ant when completing the next part of the assignment, which spans Chapters 8 through 11.

Chern's is in the middle of hiring two sales associates for its flagship store and has reduced the initial applicant pool to eight candidates. Because it is the company's flagship store, it is important that all sales associates who work at the store excel at customer service and embody the company's values, and they need the new people to get up to speed quickly. Although Chern's often invests in the training and development of new employees, in this case, they would like the two new hires to arrive with the knowledge, skills, abilities, competencies, and other characteristics required to be immediately successful. They also would like the newly hired sales associates to be strong candidates for future management positions.

Ryan and Ann ask you to become involved in the assessment and hiring process. Nearly 70 percent of Chern's sales associates are considered successful. However, Chern's would like the percentage to be at least 85 percent. Ryan and Ann feel that improving the company's assessment and selection system will help it accomplish this goal. Use this opportunity to help Chern's develop a new sales associate assessment and selection system. This is a pilot project to determine how well you can improve Chern's staffing process.

All eight candidates are already scheduled to participate in one structured and one unstructured interview that you are asked to view and score (you may or may not choose to score and use the unstructured interviews). After deducting the costs of the initial applicant screening and the two scheduled interviews for each candidate from the initial budget, the store has $4,000 left to apply to this staffing initiative. It's up to you to decide how to spend the money. What other assessment methods should you use? (The costs of the two interviews are not to be included in your $4,000 budget.)

The assignment for Chapter 8 is to read the case assignment spanning Chapters 8 through 1 and review the eight candidates' rsums at the end of the appendix. You then need to develop an assessment plan similar to the one in Table 9-10 that does not exceed your $4,000 budget.

Your goals in developing your sales associate assessment system are threefold:

1. Maximize the return on investment of your assessment system. 2. Maximize the job success of the new sales associates hired (in terms of their sales, turnover, and levels of customer service). 3. Maximize the fit of the new sales associates hired (including their customer service orientation and leadership skills) with the company's culture.