Recruiting creative workforce Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Recruiting creative workforce - Essay Example To improve quality and effectiveness, the organisations realized that something would have to change. Now the recruiting departments measure how well its recruits subsequently do' Did they turn out well, or did they need remedial help' Increasingly, recruiting is an essential tool; our competitors recognize that it is a competitive weapon. To land a production job at Toyota, for instance, takes at least 18 hours. Once prospective employees complete a general knowledge exam and they are tested in their attitude toward work, the company then takes the top 30 percent and scrutinizes them the way American organisations do their managers. (Leopold, 2002) These promising candidates go in groups of 12 to interpersonal skills assessment centres run by Kentucky State University for a session on problem solving. Prospects are then given a hypothetical problem and told, for example, "that a lawn mower manufacturer has production problems. The winners ask the right questions and work together to find solutions" (Sparrow, 2004). Candidates also go through a manufacturing exercise and are asked to improve on the method they were taught. Less than 10 percent of applicants survive the final probing interviews. Most UK firms do not go through such an extensive recruiting process as Toyota, but they are getting more serious about it. It may be just in time. It is estimated that since most of the baby boomers now hold jobs, the work force will slow way down from 2.4 percent in the 1990s to 1.2 percent in the 2000s. The Bureau of Labour Statistics estimates the number of jobs will grow faster than the labour force (Bernstein, 2002). Organisations will have to appeal to different groups, notably women and minorities, who will make up two-thirds of the new work force. Finding and keeping quality employees are the battle cry of the 1990s. The senior vice president of corporate relations at K-mart UK, says, "For UK corporations, tomorrow' s competitive battle will be won or lost on the strength of their ability to build and retain a skilled work force" (Gilley, 2000). Everyone is talking about the labour shortage, but it seems to be a matter not of shortage but of finding and keeping the right people. There are always people, but not necessarily ones that meet our needs. Once they are found, it is a matter of being able to keep them. One company that has a good track record on both of these accounts is a medical organization that is one of the best managed in the world: Merck & Co. Arthur F. Strohmer, executive director of Staffing and Developments, emphasizes that Merck places heavy emphasis on meeting very high standards in its recruiting activities, for example, targeting certain schools as being the "best" for the disciplines it needs. Merck, like Motorola, bases much of its campus recruiting on the past performance of employees who have come from certain schools. Many organisations try to do the same thing. Either consciously or unconsciously, organisations keep returning to the same source for personnel. Whether they are truly successful or at the mercy of random selection depend on how organized they are. Many managers make choices based