BUSN9262: Advanced Recruitment and Selection Assignment B: Individual Case Study Simulation Report Task Description Length: 3,000 words The case study covers every aspect of strategic staffing. The background of the case study can be found in the Appendix of the textbook Phillips & Gully 2015, Strategic Staffing, 3rd edition, Pearson Publishers. The assignment covers ALL 13 chapters in the textbook with at least one section to be completed each week. With your completed set of recommendations from each week, you will write an executive summary that describes your overall recommendations for the entire staffing system at Chern’s. This summary should cover the entire project yet it should be concise enough to go at the front of the report to highlight the most important recommendations you have made (e.g., one to three pages long). • Students will prepare a detailed and fully referenced analysis of the case, and make recommendations based on the information provided for each chapter in the textbook. • Both the analysis and the recommendations need to be grounded in relevant theory. • In addition to the textbook, you should utilise at least 8 relevant journal articles to support your analysis. • A detailed assignment guide which included detailed assessment criteria, consistent with both the information above and University assessment policy, will be available on the topic’s FLO website and discussed in class Purpose: Through successful completion of this assignment, students will: • Develop knowledge of the issues in theory and practice in strategic staffing • Develop literature search skills • Develop skills in critical thinking and analysis, and • Develop skills in writing academic reports, including writing and referencing skills The Task Chapter 1: Strategic Staffing In this chapter, you learned that the strategic staffing process is guided by hiring goals that are clearly linked to an organization’s strategies and objectives. The goal of strategic staffing is to enable the organization to better execute its business strategy. There are two types of staffing goals: process goals and outcome goals. Process goals relate to the hiring process itself, and outcome goals apply to the product of the hiring effort. Table 1-2 gives examples of both types of staffing goals, and Table 1-3 gives you some questions to consider in setting appropriate staffing goals. Your consulting assignment for Chapter 1 is to identify realistic long-term and short-term process and outcome goals for staffing of sales associate positions at Chern’s. Be sure to relate your goals to the firm’s business strategy and explain why each is important and should be adopted by the company. Chapter 2: Business and Staffing Strategies In this chapter, you learned about how a firm’s business strategy and talent philosophy shape its HR strategy, which then influences the firm’s staffing strategy. After Ryan and Ann learned about this process, they felt that the company needed to develop a more formal talent philosophy of its own to shape its HR and staffing strategy. They have asked you for your recommendations. Chapter 2 and Tables 2-4 and 2-5 should help you identify key components of an appropriate talent philosophy, human resource strategy, and staffing philosophy for Chern’s. Be sure to consider the company’s business strategy and competitive advantage, life stage, and the company’s values and culture when making your recommendations. You should also clarify how putting the right talent in the company’s sales associate positions can create a competitive advantage for Chern’s. In addition to developing a formal talent philosophy, HR strategy, and specific staffing strategy, you also need to explain how Chern’s should address each of the nine strategic staffing decisions listed in Table 2-6 for the sales associate position, and justify your reasoning. For example, the first decision is whether Chern’s should establish a core or flexible sales associate workforce. Describe in your report if Chern’s should focus on a core or flexible workforce and to what degree. Be sure to explain why they should follow your recommendations. Do this for the other eight strategic staffing decisions as well, taking into account the chapter material as well as the information provided about Chern’s in the beginning of the appendix. Chapter 3: The Legal Context Although Ann and Ryan have always known that it is important to comply with equal employment opportunity legislation and other relevant employment laws, it has been eight years since they conducted any sort of discrimination analyses at their company. They ask you to evaluate the sales associate position for any evidence of discrimination based on gender or ethnicity. The first level of disparate impact analyses are typically done at the establishment level, which for Chern’s is a single store. Chern’s asks you to focus on its flagship store—it’s largest—which has 140 full-time and 50 part-time sales associates. Chern’s gives all department and store managers bias and diversity training, and has never been sued for disparate treatment. Because it knows that adverse impact is still a risk, the company asks you to analyze its full-time sales associate hiring data for evidence of adverse impact. Tables A-2 through A-4 summarize the data you will need to use in your analyses. The data for the sales associate flow statistics are based on the previous five years of staffing at Chern’s flagship store. Evaluate the stock and concentration statistics, and use the four-fifths rule to analyze the flow statistics. In addition to your disparate impact analyses, be sure to recommend strategies that Chern’s can use to alleviate any discrimination you find. Table A-2 Sales Associate Statistics Compared to the Relevant Population Job Category: Sales Associates Current Sales Associates (%) Availability of Sales Associates in Relevant Population (%) Females 55 60 Males 45 40 Whites 20 25 Blacks 20 25 Asians 32 25 Hispanics 28 25 Table A-3 Sales Associate Flow Statistics # Applicants # Hired Men 1,000 80 Women 1,400 160 Whites 600 55 Blacks 600 48 Asians 600 67 Hispanics 600 50 Table A-4 Sales Associate Concentration Statistics Sales Associates (%) Department Managers (%) Store Managers (%) Female 55 30 40 Male 45 70 60 White 20 20 24 Black 20 15 40 Asian 32 30 16 Hispanic 28 35 20 Chapter 4: Strategic Job Analysis and Competency Modeling Referring to the information presented in the chapter and case, by researching the “retail salesperson” position on O*Net (http://online.onetcenter.org), and by interviewing a sales associate in a similar company if possible (for example, an associate at Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and so forth), create a job requirements matrix for the sales associate position at Chern’s. Be sure to consider the company’s business strategy and corporate culture in creating job duties and identifying competencies, or KSAOs. For each competency or KSAO, decide if Chern’s should hire people who already possess the characteristic, or if the firm should train them to develop it. Also, estimate to the best of your ability how important each characteristic is relative to the others, as well as the relative time associates spend on each job duty. You may have to use some judgment to come up with the answers to these questions. You will use this information later to determine how to weight the assessment information obtained on each job candidate. Given the information contained in the Chern’s case description and your own knowledge of this type of position, create a job rewards matrix for the sales associate position. If possible, interview a sales associate in a similar company can provide additional job rewards information. Chapter 5: Forecasting and Planning Chern’s has never examined its internal labor market. The company asks you to perform a transition analysis for full-time sales associates. It asks you to conduct relevant analyses to describe the internal labor market for its flagship store. Summarize the flagship store’s internal labor market and highlight any trends or forecasted gaps based on the transition probability matrix in Table A-5. The probabilities are based on annual rates that are averaged over a span of three years. In other words, they are the average rate per year. If Chern’s wants to keep its flagship store staffed with 140 full-time sales associates, how many full-time sales associates should it expect to have to hire from outside the company annually? Traditionally, 30 percent of the store’s job applicants for sales associate positions become job candidates, and 15 percent of them receive job offers, 75 percent of which are accepted. Chern’s asks you how many applicants it will need to generate each year to acquire the number of new hires you forecasted. Table A-5 The Transition Probability Matrix for Chern’s Flagship Store Transition Probabilities Based on the Past 3 Years Job Category FTSA (%) PTSA (%) DEP (%) BUY (%) MER (%) Exit (%) Current # of Employees Full-Time Sales Associates (FTSA) 50 15 5 5 5 20 140 Part-Time Sales Associates (PTSA) 30 50 0 5 0 15 30 Department Manager (DEP) 5 0 75 0 0 20 16 Buyers (BUY) 0 0 0 65 5 30 5 Merchandising Managers (MER) 0 0 0 0 80 20 8 Chern’s asks you to research the external labor market for sales associates because the company is concerned about their availability in the future. Using O*Net, choose a state in the United States and research the expected demand for sales associates in that state over the next 10 years. To do this: 1. Go to www.online.onetcenter.org. 2. Search for job 41-2031.00—Retail Salespersons. 3. Scroll to the bottom and find “Wages and Employment Trends”. 4. Select a state from the “State and National” drop-down menu and hit “go”. 5. Compare the forecasted employment trends in your chosen state with those of the entire United States for the retail salesperson position. 6. Print out the results of your state search and include it with your report. 7. There is also a “Career Video” available on the state results page of your search that you can view for additional information about the work sales associates do. Now research the employment trends of retail sales workers using the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site at www.bls.gov and other resources you identify. Consider this information when forecasting future gaps or surpluses. You might also consider targeted skill sets or demographics, and determine if you can obtain information about skill or demographic trends in your targeted area. If you forecast a gap between the anticipated supply of qualified sales associates and Chern’s anticipated demand for them, determine whether the gap is temporary or permanent. Then, make some recommendations about how Chern’s can best address the gap. Be sure to reread the relevant section of Chapter 5 before you do. Chapter 6: Sourcing: Identifying Recruits Chern’s currently uses six different sources for sales associate applicants: colleges, employee referrals, Chern’s.com, a search firm, walk-ins, and local newspaper ads. The company just finished analyzing the effectiveness of each of these sources, and the results are summarized in Table A-6. Table A-6 The Effectiveness of the Sources Used to Recruit Chern’s Sales Associates Hiring Speed Cost per Hire Culture Fit Average First Year Financial Return First Year Turnover Rate College Hiring 5 months $4,000 Good $30,000 20% Employee Referrals 2 months $2,600 Very good $38,000 10% Chern’s.com 2 months $1,500 Good $38,000 20% Search Firm 3 months $5,200 Average $20,000 15% Walk-ins 1 month $1,500 Poor $5,000 30% Newspaper Ads 2 months $2,000 Poor $4,000 25% Chern’s asks you to prioritize its recruiting sources to maximize the effectiveness of the company’s future hiring initiatives. Based on what you have read in this case, prioritize the staffing outcomes and rank order the recruiting sources based on their ability to maximize the company’s staffing goals for the sales associate position. Ryan and Ann have heard a lot lately about using the Internet to source passive job candidates. The two are wondering how well this technique would work for its sales associate positions. Referring to the Develop Your Skills feature in Chapter 6, choose an area of the country. First, provide some suggestions on how the Internet might be more effectively used to source and recruit applicants. Second, conduct a Boolean search to source two promising sales associate applicants using the Internet. You may need to try different search engines and different syntax, as highlighted in the chapter. You can also try x-raying and flipping. For example, on Yahoo.com you could try “linkdomain:ffany.org shoes blog” to pull up blogs linked to the Fashion Footwear Association of New York with the word “shoes” in the blog. You should experiment with searches based on your own ideas. Include the various search engines and search terms you used for your final search and provide information about your two leads in an appendix to your final report. Justify each recommendation. To best serve its diverse clientele and to establish the most positive employer image possible, Chern’s wants to hire diverse sales associates. The company also asks you how it can improve the diversity of its applicant pool. Chapter 7: Recruiting Develop an outline for a recruiting guide for the sales associate position based on the material you read in this case and what you learned in Chapter 7. The outline should include the company’s policies and procedures, budgets, activities, timelines, responsible staff, legal issues, and steps to be taken in recruiting for the position. You do not have time to write an entire recruiting guide. However, Chern’s has asked for your help in identifying what it should include in one. Chern’s also asks you to make recommendations about what the company can do to increase applicants’ fairness perceptions of the process and reduce any negative spillover effects related to it. Chern’s would also like to reinforce its employer brand among potential applicants. Ryan and Ann would like to create a stronger employer brand, and ask you for advice on what the company’s employer brand should be and how to effectively and consistently market and reinforce it throughout the staffing process. Make some recommendations and explain why your approach would be effective for Chern’s. Chapter 8: Measurement, and Chapter 9: Assessing 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 important 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 eighty 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 are able to 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. 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 11 and review the eight candidates’ résumés at the end of the appendix. You then need to develop an assessment plan 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 Table A-7 summarizes the possible assessment methods you can use and their costs. Table A-7 Potential Assessment Methods and Their Costs Assessment Method Scale of Assessment Cost Cognitive Ability Test (measures a candidate’s ability to learn, process, and apply information rapidly; verbal, spatial, and mathematical abilities) Typical scores range from 85 to 130 (mean and standard deviation for this sample are 112.5 and 8.02, respectively). $70 per candidate Conscientiousness (measures a candidate’s persistence, dutifulness, order, attention to detail, and achievement motivation) Possible scores range from 1 to 6 (mean = 4.38, std. dev. = 1.06). $100 per candidate Openness (measures a candidate’s openness to new ideas and situations and intellectual curiosity) Possible scores range from 0 to 60 (mean = 42.50, std. dev. = 7.07). $30 per candidate Sales Interest (measures a candidate’s interest in sales as a career; vocational interest inventory) Possible scores range from 1 to 5 (mean = 3.63, std. dev. = .92). $50 per candidate Desire to Avoid Failure (measures a candidate’s need to avoid failure and desire to avoid taking risk) Possible scores range from 1 to 4 (mean = 2.88, std. dev. = .83). $30 per candidate Technology Skills Test (measures a candidate’s ability to become proficient with the company’s various technology tools) Possible scores for this test range from 0 to 80 (mean = 58.13, std. dev. = 7.99). $70 per candidate Job Knowledge Test (measures a candidate’s knowledge of sales techniques, understanding of effective customer service practices, and awareness of related issues in the retail industry) Possible scores for this test range from 0 to 50 (mean = 36.88, std. dev. = 7.04). $150 per candidate Simulation (measures a candidate’s leadership, sales, judgment, and customer service skills using a work simulation) Possible scores for the simulation range from 0 to 70 (mean = 43.75, std. dev. = 10.61). $250 per candidate Integrity Test (measures a candidate’s trustworthiness, integrity, and honesty) Possible scores for this test range from 1 to 5 (mean = 3.50, std. dev. = 0.93). $70 per candidate Fashion Knowledge Test (measures a candidate’s knowledge of fashion trends, styles, and fabrics as they apply to a variety of customers) Possible scores for this test range from 0 to 60 (mean = 38.75, std. dev. = 8.76). $50 per candidate Handwriting Analysis (measures a candidate’s trustworthiness, personal Possible scores for this analysis range from 0 to 10 (mean = 5.38, std. dev. = 3.38). $150 per candidate drive, dependability, sociability, and desire to achieve)   Next is an overview of the steps you will need to take in completing the next parts of the assignment and the chapter in which each part is assigned. The work will be spread out over the next few chapters. 1. Develop a sales associate assessment and selection plan that does not exceed the remaining $4,000 budget. Justify your proposed selection system using the determinants of the effectiveness of an assessment method identified in Chapter 8. These determinants include: a. Validity—how well the assessment method predicts relevant components of a person’s job performance. Table 9-3 describes typical validities for various assessment tools across many different occupations. You can look at Table 9-3 and consider the results of your job analysis/competency model to determine which assessment is most likely to predict job performance at Chern’s. b. Return on investment—the extent to which the assessment method generates a financial return that exceeds the cost associated with using it. c. Applicant reactions—the extent to which applicants perceive the assessment methods to be job related and fair. d. Selection ratio— the extent to which the selection ratio is low. A low ratio means hiring only a few applicants, which allows an assessment method to have maximal impact in terms of improving the performance of the people hired. e. Usability— the extent to which people in the organization are willing and able to use the method consistently and correctly. f. Adverse impact—the extent to which an assessment method predicts job performance and other important hiring outcomes without discriminating against members of a protected class. 2. Before viewing the interviews for the next part of the selection process, develop a scoring key for each structured interview question and create a formula to combine the three scores into an overall structured interview score (Chapter 8). The three structured interview questions are as follows: a. A disgruntled customer is returning a damaged suit jacket he bought the previous week that he needed for an event that night. He is extremely upset. What do you do? b. A person walks into your store and mentions that she has just moved into the area and that this is the first time she has visited your store. What would you do to make her a customer now and a loyal customer in the future? c. You’re working alone because two people called in sick. Suddenly, five customers walk into your department at once. What do you do? Additionally, create a scoring key for the unstructured interview based on your expected determinants of success at Chern’s. The scoring keys for both types of interviews should reflect the KSAOs or competencies assessed by the questions or interview, not the answers to the questions themselves. Chapter 9 Then view the eight structured and eight unstructured interviews available on the book’s Web site or if your instructor prefers, view them as a part of the class. (Chapter 9) 3. Before or during your next class, submit your assessment plan to your instructor. Your instructor will then give you the candidates’ scores on the assessments you choose to utilize (Chapter 9). If your instructor agrees, you can use a multiple hurdles, compensatory, or combined approach for your assessment plan. 4. Using your interview score results, candidate résumés, and scores on the assessment methods you included in your assessment plan, determine which two candidates should receive an offer and submit this information along with the rationale for your choice to your instructor. Write a job offer letter to your top chosen candidate, who is currently considering two other job offers from competitors. (Chapter 11) At the end of the case, your instructor will give you feedback on the job success of your two new hires. The eight structured and eight unstructured interview videos will be shown in class in week 19. You should have created a scoring key in advance of viewing the interviews so that you can score them during class. For now you will work on step 1. Submit your assessment plan to the instructor by the deadline the instructor gives you to receive candidates’ scores on the assessments you choose to utilize. This request should be sent as your instructor prefers. One possible approach is to format it in the way shown in Table A-8. Use as many columns as necessary to provide a space for your instructor to record each candidate’s scores. Table A-8 Format for Requesting Candidates’ Assessment Scores Candidate Name of Assessment 1 Name of Assessment 2 Name of Assessment 3 Name of Assessment 4 Maria Cruz Sharon Simmons Alex Turing Parvathi Naryan Vera Levitt Chris Prender Julia McKnight Ben Hirsch Chapter 10: Assessing Internal Candidates As explained earlier, 75 percent of the department managers and assistant department managers at Chern’s have been promoted from the company’s sales associate staff based on their supervisors’ recommendations and structured interviews. Unfortunately, Chern’s recently analyzed its turnover data and found that a disproportionate number of good sales associates who would have been potentially strong candidates for department manager and assistant department manager positions have left the organization. The exit interviews with these people revealed that the firm’s efforts to communicate its promotional opportunities and succession planning intentions to the highpotential sales associates have been insufficient. Many of the sales associates said that they were leaving because they had poor career planning visibility to the managerial positions they sought. The company currently does not tell its high-potential sales associates that they have been flagged for future promotion opportunities, believing that this would demoralize those not on the list. Because the company’s talent philosophy is to promote from within, it feels that it could improve its internal promotion practices. The company asks you to recommend ways that it can identify and develop sales associates who have the potential to become department managers. Chapter 11: Choosing and Hiring Candidates You will now continue your assessment and selection process for the two new hires. Develop a rational way of combining the scores on the assessment methods you recommended in your report for Chapter 9. How should Chern’s choose which candidates to hire? Do you recommend a multiple hurdles, compensatory, or combined approach? What weights should each assessment score receive when calculating each candidate’s overall score? Your job requirements matrix should help you make this judgment. Using your interview score results, candidate résumés, and scores on the assessment methods you included in your assessment plan, identify which two candidates should receive an offer and submit this information, along with the rationale for your choice, to your instructor. Also, explain what additional information you would like to have had before making a hiring decision. Ann and Ryan believe that in addition to the promotional opportunities Chern’s has to offer, the non-financial rewards of the job, including the extensive training and development new hires receive and the supportive work climate they experience, have not been sufficiently communicated to candidates. Not only does this explain why good sales associates are leaving the firm, it could explain why its sales associate job offer acceptance rates have been trending slightly downward. Write a job offer letter to your top chosen candidate, who is currently considering two other job offers. You would very much like to hire your top choice, but she or he has to decide on the other offers within one week. Be sure to use any relevant information from the job rewards analysis you conducted in Chapter 4 as well as the information contained in the initial case description. You can also use the information about Chern’s presented in the appendix. Your instructor will give you feedback on the outcomes for the two candidates you chose. Each candidate’s profile was evaluated by staffing experts and given a job success score of 1 to 10. The scores correspond with the individual financial returns to the company presented in Table A-9 (which were based on a combination of sales performance and a new hire’s fit with the company’s culture). Table A-9 The First Year Financial Value of Different Job-Success Levels Candidate’s Job Success Score First Year Financial Return to Chern’s 10 $50,000 9 $40,000 8 $30,000 7 $20,000 6 $10,000 5 0 4 ($10,000) 3 ($20,000) 2 ($30,000) 1 ($40,000) Calculate the ROI of your staffing investment in the new hires’ first year based on the financial return realized by your chosen hires and the cost of your assessment system. In addition to the assessment costs you incurred, assume that recruitment and the initial applicant screening cost the company $20,000, and the 16 interviews cost the company an additional $14,800. You can either calculate a net return or an ROI ratio. To compute the net return you will sum the financial return realized by your two hires and subtract the total cost of the selection system. To compute the ROI ratio, you will sum the financial return and divide it by the total cost of the selection system. Interpret either or both of these values. Chapter 12: Managing Workforce Flow Chern’s asks you to develop an onboarding and socialization strategy for its newly hired sales associates. Using Table 12-1 as a guide, write a report recommending appropriate onboarding and socialization strategies, and explain why you are making each recommendation. Chern’s recently completed a turnover analysis for sales associates at different performance levels and found that functional turnover begins at a performance level that currently covers the lowest-performing 15 percent of its sales associates. It also discovered that the top-performing 10 percent of its sales associates are responsible for 20 percent of the company’s sales. Unfortunately, the turnover rate of its top performers is almost twice the turnover rate of its low performers. Ann and Ryan ask you to develop a retention plan for the company’s top performers. Because they have developed good relationships with customers, sales associates who have been with the store more than 18 months tend to be the highest performers. Recall that in their exit interviews, many sales associates who resigned say they are leaving Chern’s because they believed they lacked promotional opportunities. Quite a few other top performers would have liked to continue working for Chern’s but could not adequately balance their school and family demands because their work hours as sales associates were fixed. The third most common reason top performers gave for leaving Chern’s was the lack of training and development opportunities. The company recently conducted an employee engagement survey, which reinforced the fact that employees found these three issues the most pressing. However, the company’s sales associates also reported being satisfied with their pay and benefits and very satisfied with the company culture and the support they receive from their department managers. Chern’s has been growing steadily, but its conservative financial goals also create a need to be prepared for unexpected changes in its environment. Chern’s believes that the economy is likely to stay strong, fueling its expansion strategy. However, the company wants to be prepared in the event that the economy cools and the demand for its products declines. Although Chern’s tries to protect its employees, it recognizes that in the event of an economic downturn, it will need to downsize its sales force to control costs. Chern’s asks you to recommend a downsizing strategy in the event that it needs to quickly reduce its number of sales associates by 15 percent. Chapter 13: Staffing System Evaluation and Technology Chern’s wants a way to find out whether or not your recommendations helped it reach the following goals: 1. Attracting a more diverse set of qualified applicants 2. Complying with equal employment opportunity and affirmative action guidelines 3. Hiring sales associates who: a. Are better able to execute its business strategy b. Sell more merchandise c. Develop higher-quality relationships with the firm’s customers d. Stay with the company longer e. Are more promotable to department manager positions f. Reinforce the company’s customer service–oriented culture and make every employee and customer feel valued and cared for 4. Realizing a meaningful positive return on its investment in your recommendations To help it track its staffing performance, Chern’s asks you to create a digital staffing dashboard that contains the five most important staffing indicators to which its store managers need to pay attention in terms of the salesassociate hiring and evaluation process. Chern’s has always been willing to invest in technologies and tools that improve its performance. It asks you to recommend various staffing technologies it should consider adopting to enhance the performance and efficiency of its staffing system. Because the company is financially conservative and is willing to invest in compelling technologies but does not want to waste its money, be sure to thoroughly explain your recommendations and persuade the company to consider adopting them. Executive Summary With your completed set of recommendations, write an executive summary that describes your overall recommendations for the entire staffing system at Chern’s (covering Chapters 1 through 13). This summary should cover the entire project yet it should be concise enough to go at the front of the report to highlight the most important recommendations you have made (e.g., one to three pages long)   Chapters Summary of Tasks 1 a. Identify realistic long-term and short-term process and outcome goals. b. Ensure goals are related to business strategy and explain why each is important. 2 a. Develop a formal talent philosophy, HR strategy, and specific staffing strategy. b. Address each of the nine strategic staffing decisions. c. Explain each of your recommendations for the nine decisions 3 a. Use stock, flow, and concentration statistics to determine if any evidence of discrimination exists. b. Recommend strategies to alleviate any discrimination you find. 4 . Using O*Net and other sources of data, create a job requirements matrix. b. For each competency or KSAO, decide if it should be used to hire or plan to develop. c. Estimate how important each characteristic is relative to the others as well as the relative time spent on each job duty. d. Create a job rewards matrix. 5 a. Conduct a transition analysis. b. Summarize the internal labor market and highlight any trends or forecasted gaps. c. Based on the transition probability matrix, calculate how many new full-time sales associates should be hired externally. d. Calculate the number of applicants needed to acquire the number of new hires you forecasted. e. Use multiple sources of data to describe the current and future labor market for retail salespeople. If you forecast a gap, determine whether the gap is temporary or permanent. Make some recommendations to address the gap. 6 a. Rank order the recruiting sources based on their ability to maximize the company’s staffing goals. b. Provide recommendations on how the Internet might be more effectively used to source and recruit applicants. c. Conduct a Boolean search to source two promising applicants using the Internet. Include the search engines and exact Boolean commands used. Provide information about your two leads in an appendix. Justify each recommendation. d. Determine how Chern’s can improve the diversity of its applicant pool 7 . Develop an outline for a recruiting guide. b. Determine how to increase fairness perceptions of the recruiting process and reduce any negative spillover effects. c. Determine what the employer brand should be. d. Make recommendations for how the brand can be marketed and reinforced throughout the staffing process. e. Explain why your approach would be effective. 8 a. Read the next few parts then evaluate the eight candidates’ résumés. b. Create a scoring key for the interviews. 9 a. Develop an assessment and selection plan that does not exceed the remaining $4,000 budget. b. Justify your proposed selection system c. Submit your assessment plan to your instructor. Receive scores from your instructor. d. Use the scoring key you developed for the structured interviews to view and score the eight structured interviews. Also, view and score the eight unstructured interviews. 10 a. Improve internal promotion practices. b. Recommend ways to identify and develop sales associates who have the potential to become department managers. 11 a. Develop a rational way of combining the scores on the assessment methods you recommended. Recommend either a multiple hurdles, compensatory, or combined approach and explain. b. Describe the weights for each assessment method when calculating the overall score. c. Using your interview score results, candidate résumés, and scores on the assessment methods you included in your assessment plan, identify which two candidates should receive an offer. d. Submit this information along with the rationale for your choices. e. Explain what additional information you would like to have had before making a hiring decision. f. Write a job offer letter to the top candidate of your two selections. g. Receive feedback from your instructor on the outcomes for the candidates you chose. h. Calculate the ROI or net return of your staffing investment for the two people you selected. Interpret the ROI or net return. 12 a. Write a report recommending appropriate onboarding and socialization strategies, and explain why you are making each recommendation. b. Develop a retention plan for the company’s top performers. c. Identify a downsizing strategy to reduce the number of sales associates by 15 percent. 13 a. Create a digital staffing dashboard with the five most important indicators of the overall staffing process. b. Recommend various staffing technologies to enhance the performance and efficiency of the staffing system. c. Thoroughly explain your recommendations and persuade the company to consider adopting them. d. Write an executive summary of the entire set of recommendations and place it at the front of the report. ASSIGNMENT B: Marking Criteria for Individual Case Study Simulation Report. Please provide a rating between 1 and 5 for the criterion in each section, where 1 = requires significant development 2 = Needs some improvement 3 = Adequately meets expectations 4 = Performs above expectations 5 = Exceeds expectations and appropriate for professional standards Content Criteria 1 2 3 4 5 Comments Executive Summary (20 points) Summary should cover the entire project yet it should be concise enough to go at the front of the report to highlight the most important recommendations you have made (e.g., one to three pages long). Introduction (15 points) The introduction outlines the main proposition of the section The argument is incisive and includes a concise, relevant treatment of the issues. Literature (20 points) Analysis shows knowledge of relevant theory. There is a balance between descriptive and analytical content, with a strong emphasis of critical analysis. The topic is discussed using theoretical frames, and these are supported by the use of at least eight primary sources overall (e.g. refereed journal articles) that are directly relevant to the topic Paraphrasing is not too similar to the original source, or an over reliance on quotations. ie. No plagiarism Recommendations (15 points) The recommendations demonstrate a plausible, insightful, and rationally persuasive point at which to end the answer. Quality and appropriateness of references and referencing (15 points) Referenced at least 8 peer- reviewed journals Makes limited use of textbook (or other text books), relying on primary sources to support their answer. References are cited within text and citations are included in the reference list Reference list is alphabetised and consistently and formatted using the Harvard referencing system. Quality of writing style, grammar, punctuation and other considerations (15 points) Care has been taken to ensure spelling, grammatical or punctuation errors are minimised Well-structured The content of the paper is arranged logically Easy to read Total 17