Imagine you are head of the HR department and you have been asked to review five applicants for the sales clerk position at your company.

Question 1: 

Imagine you are head of the HR department and you have been asked to review five applicants for the sales clerk position at your company. During the interview process, you learn the following information about each applicant:

The Applicants

Alice

Alice has 10 years of experience in sales, but can be easily distracted. She will not work on commission and cannot work weekends. She can be a little obstinate, but has an excellent job history. She also requires ADA accommodations, due to an injury sustained during military service.

Mary

Mary has one year’s experience, but is very congenial and loves working with people. Her work schedule is very flexible, but she can become a little stressed at times and has been known for having to quietly leave and regroup for a short time. Mary also considers herself an advocate for human rights, with an emphasis on race relations, and is known to voice her opinions related to racial injustice to others.

James

James has seven years’ experience, a master’s degree in business, aspirations of owning his company in the near future, and is very religious. He is known to make biblical references often, encourages others to attend his church, and has requested 80 hours in advance to attend religious conferences within the next six months.

Sam

Sam has six years’ experience, and is willing to work all shifts. Sam is transgender, prefers gender-neutral pronouns (they/them), and is looking for a new job, due to workplace bullying at a previous place of employment.

Justin

Justin has five years’ experience, is a hard worker, flexible, and has a great job history. Justin is also someone that you met in college, dated briefly, and have not seen in a few years.

Candidate Selection

Decide which candidate would be the right fit for the sales clerk position.

• Describe the thought process that led to your decision and your reasons for not selecting one of the other candidates.
• Justify your choice, including all of the considerations or factors that influenced your selection.

Note: You must complete one original post and one follow-up or reply to a classmate.

Question 2

• Speculate on three reasons why employees leave an organization and three reasons why employees stay.
• Outline a retention strategy that HR could use to reduce the number of employees who leave an organization for the three reasons you identified.
  • Be intentional or specific with your strategy so you can measure the desire outcome. For example, an employee might leave an organization because their manager does not communicate with them about their job performance. Your retention strategy might be to implement a performance measurement process that HR could use to track monthly or quarterly performance conversations between managers and employees as a way to close the communication gap.

Note: You must complete one original post and one follow-up or reply to a classmate.