Reference no: EM133156878

In Search of a Communications Director at ABC Glass, Inc.: A Case Study

ABC Glass, a Canadian-based manufacturer of glass with a dominant share of the international market, seeks to fill a newly created position of "director of communications." This person will be responsible for both internal and external communications of the company, including writing corporate newsletters, communicating with the press in a public relations function, coaching senior officers on ways to improve their presentation skills, communicating orally and in writing the corporate directions (mission statements) and policies to employees, and soliciting news from employees for reporting in corporate newsletters to enhance cohesiveness and morale following the merger of French- and English-speaking companies. The president of the merged company has hired you to recruit and screen for this position, referring to him the top three candidates. He, along with the HR director, will select their top candidate from among these three, using one or more focused assessments. The position requirements for this appointment, developed from the job analysis workshop, include:

• Fluency in both written and spoken French and English;
• Excellent oral and written communication skills;
• Ability to manage interpersonal conflict;
• Ability to work under tight timelines, with multiple conflicting demands;
• Ability to plan and organize;
• Ability to remain calm when demands considered unreasonable are being made by one's boss;
• Ability to solicit information and cooperation from others and overcome personal obstacles;
• Ability to extract relevant information from an abundance of reports and summarize it;
• Ability to present difficult material in an easily understandable way;
• Ability to provide effective coaching to senior officers for improving their presentation skills;
• Ability to motivate others to embrace and execute corporate policies; and
• Willingness to "go above and beyond the call of duty."

The president has contracted you to (1) establish a recruitment plan, specifying the specific recruitment outlets; (2) propose a screening strategy, outlining each stage of screening and the tools to be used; (3) describe a post-screening selection assessment; and (4) speak to the merits of your proposal. Finally, develop biodata items that are likely to be useful for screening for this position and provide your rationale for each. (Of course, before using such items, you will need to determine empirically whether they are appropriate.)

Questions

1. Should background checks be mandatory for all jobs or only for certain jobs? Explain your reasoning.
2. Describe a procedure that could be used for doing background checks in a tight labour market.
3. Should background checks be made before a candidate receives a job offer? If so, how do you avoid obtaining information that may be used to discriminate against the candidates (see Table 3.1).
4. How can the Internet be used to do background checks and to speed up the process? Are there any risks in this process?
5. Explain why background checks may be an invasion of a job applicant's right to privacy.
6. If you discover that a job applicant has a criminal record, can you disqualify the candidate solely on that group and without fear of violating the candidate's human rights?
7. What is the value of a degree from a prestigious university on a resume? Would such a degree influence your hiring decision if everything else were equal among candidates? Should it? Why or why not?
8. What should you do if you discover someone has fudged her application form information or resume or lied during the screening interview? Does it matter how big the lie is? Explain and argue your case.