Question

You are an HR practitioner trying to improve selection procedures in your organization. Under the current system, application forms are screened by relevant department managers to determine who should be interviewed. References are also collected. The managers do their own interviewing using individual, unstructured interviews and base their selection decisions almost exclusively on these interviews. They tend to have a lot a confidence in their in their gut feelings about candidates and believe they have been doing a pretty good job of selecting the right applicants.

1. How would you go about trying to convince them they should adopt a more structured, objective (i.e, statistical) decision-making system?
2. What objectives to your suggestion do you anticipate would be raised by the managers?
3. How would you address these objections?

Answer 1

Answer a:

I would compare the decisions of hiring being made in an unstructured system and that in a highly structured formal system. I would explain them how the formal structure helps in maintaining the decorum of the organisation and how it helps in overcoming the future risks. I would enlist several examples of successful organisations who have achieved benchmark position as far as human resources are concerned through the application of formal structured hiring system in an organisation. Finally, I would explain them how they would get benefitted from the implementation of formal hiring system.

Answer b:

Managers may raise objections to the suggestions by claiming that they are practising this system from a long back and that they have gained sufficient experience in hiring the candidates and handling the portfolio. They may also claim that implementation of the system will incur time and cost for the organisation which may turn to be an inefficient move.

Answer c:

I would tackle their objections by explaining them how change would make the process more streamline and would explain them that for the implementation of the system, the company will only incur initial cost and time and once the stakeholders for the hiring process gets adapted to the system, then there will be no requirement of the extra time and cost to be incurred for the system.