1 Discussion and 1 Case Study and weekly Summary

Case Study1: Homegrown Talent: Mary Barra Rises to

GM’s Top Post

When Mary Barra was a kid, she used to hang out in the garage with her dad tinkering on cars. Little did

her father, a lifelong die-maker for GM’s Pontiac division, know that his daughter would one day

become the CEO of the company and the first woman ever to lead a major U.S. car manufacturer. But

that’s what happened in 2013. Barra was unanimously chosen by the board members of General Motors

to lead the company—a decision employees cheered when they heard about it over the loud- speakers

at corporate headquarters. Maybe they cheered because unlike GM’s previous two CEOs, Barra was one

of them. Having worked in multiple departments at GM since she was 18, she knows the car business

through and through. “There’s nobody with more years of honest ‘car guy’ credentials than she has,”

says Ross Gordon in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Barra, who grew up in a Detroit suburb, initially began working for GM in the 1980s as part of a work–

study program. In a work–study program, which is also referred to as a co-op program, stu- dents

alternate working full time (for pay) and going to college. She earned an undergraduate degree in

electrical engineering and GM later sent her to Stan- ford, where she got an MBA. During her career she

has rotated through various positions at GM. Besides working in engineering and design, she managed

one GM’s manufacturing plants and most recently was the senior vice president for global product

development and quality control. Under her watch, the company has rolled out successful models that

have helped bring the company back out of bankruptcy.

Barra has a reputation for getting results. Not only does she know cars, she knows people and how to

manage them. When an updated version of the Chevy Malibu floundered in 2012 because of design and

other problems, she mobilized a team of employees and found a way to fix the Malibu in record time.

Her great people management skills might ex- plain why when GM was going through bankruptcy; she

was put in charge of human resources for GM, an area she had never worked in before. GM hoped put-

ting her in job would prevent key talent from heading for the exits during the bankruptcy process. It did

Sue Meisinger, formerly the president and CEO of the Society of Human Resources Management, says

that Barras being named CEO underscores the importance of HR personnel working in and

understanding different areas of their firms. “If you’re interested in a career path that extends beyond

HR, you need to have experience in multiple facets of the business,” Meisinger says. She notes that for

many HR professionals, their crowning achievement is to be the head of HR. Barra’s rise to CEO,

however, will have many of these professionals shifting their career goals.

Questions

1. Because Mary Barra’s father also worked at General Motors, was her hiring an example of nepotism? If you were a business owner, would you want to hire relatives of your employees? What would the pros and cons of doing so be?

2. What role did Mary Barra play in advancing her career? What role did GM play in “growing” her career?

HRM Experience: Designing Selection Criteria

and Methods Making hiring decisions is important but difficult. Without good information, managers have almost

no chance of making the right choice. They might as well be using an Ouija board. The process

begins with a sound understanding of the job: the tasks, duties, and responsibilities associated with

it and the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to do it. A job analysis should be done to make

certain that all managers have assembled all of the information they need to ensure a good person–

job fit. However, this information may not be enough. Other information about the company’s

values and philosophy are likely to be required to ensure that a good person–organization fit results.

Assignment

1. Choose a job with which you are familiar and identify the KSAOs needed to do it well.

2. Next, identify how you would evaluate candidates with these qualities. What tools would you use (applications, interviews, cognitive or ability tests, work samples, etc.) and why? Justify the cost and time required to conduct each.

3. After you have identified your selection criteria and methods, do a “reality check” in a real

organization. Interview a manager who employs someone in that job. For example, if the job you selected is salesperson, go to a local business to learn how they select individuals for sales jobs. Compare what you thought would be a good selection approach with what you learned from the company you visited.

4. Identify the reasons for any discrepancies between your approach and theirs. Which approach

do you think is better?

Case Study 1: Job Candidate Assessment Tests Go

Virtual A growing number of preemployment tests simulate a job’s functions and are being conducted via

computer or on the web. You can liken them to video games but within a work setting. Toyota,

Starbucks, the paint maker Sherwin Williams, and numerous financial firms such as SunTrust Bank,

KeyBank, and National City Bank have successfully used virtual job simulations to assess applicants.

At Toyota, applicants participating in simulations read dials and gauges, spot safety problems, and use

their ability to solve problems as well as their general ability to learn as assessed. The candidates can see

and hear about the job they’re applying for from cur- rent Toyota employees. National City Bank has

used virtual assessments to test call-center candidates and branch manager candidates. Call center

candidates are given customer-service problems to solve, and branch manager candidates go through a

simulation that assesses their ability to foster relationships with clients and make personnel decision.

The virtual assessments tools, which are produced by companies such as Shaker Consulting Group,

Profiles International, and others do not come cheap. But although they can cost tens of thousands of

dollars, larger companies that can afford them are saying they are worth it. The benefits? Better

qualified candidates, faster recruiting, and lower turnover among employees hired. KeyBank says that by

using virtual testing tools, it realized savings of more than $1.75 million per year due to lower turnover.

Candidates also seem to like the assessments because they provide a more realistic job preview and

make them feel like they are being chosen for jobs on more than just their personalities or how they

performed during an interview. “It was a very insightful experience that made you think about what

exactly you like and dislike in the workplace and if you really enjoy helping customers and have patience

to do so,” says one candidate tested for a customer service job.

It is not just Gen X or Y candidates who have played a lot of video games who like the tests. “We haven’t

seen any adverse impact,” says Ken Troyan, SunTrust Bank’s chief staffing officer. “There’s some

mythology—if you will—about older people not being computer-savvy, and that’s just not so.” One

study found that the simulations also tend to result in less of a gap between minority and white

candidates than when paper-and-pencil tests are used.

HR experts warn that companies need to be sure they are not simply buying glitzy simulations that do

not translate well to the jobs for which they are hiring. Also, the screening tools could potentially

eliminate candidates who have trouble with simulations or computers but might make good employees.

You should still use the U.S. Department of Labor’s “whole person approach” to hiring, says one HR

professional. The whole person approach factors in the results of a variety of accepted tests along with

prior actual performance and interview results to get the most complete picture of an employee or

candidate.

Questions

1. What do you think are the prime advantages and disadvantages of “virtual tryouts”?

2. Do you think there would be any EEO concerns regarding this system?

3. Do you think virtual job tryouts might be better suited for some jobs than others? If so, which ones?

Case Study 2: Pros and Cons of Cleaning Up the “Resu-

mess”

Electronic job-application submission systems can leave HR and hiring managers drowning in a sea of

résumés and applications. Some large retailers can get a million or more résumés a year. Even small

businesses can find themselves flooded with them. For example, when Raising Cain, a Louisiana-based

fast-food chain, opened an office in Dallas, the firm needed to hire 35 people. It received 10,000

résumés and had to hire an outside firm to help sort through them.

It’s not surprising harried HR personnel, managers, and business owners are increasingly using ap-

plication tracking systems and other types of résumé screening software. Ayax Systems and Kenexa are

two firms that offer close to a thousand online assessments, with prices ranging from a couple of bucks

to $50 a test. Many job boards now feature prescreening questions as well and have algorithms to the

recommend candidates similar to the way Amazon.com recommends products based on what a person

has purchased in the past.

Not all HR professionals are fans of résumé screening software, however. Managers tend to pile on huge

numbers of key words so that very few applicants can make it past the screen, says Peter Cappelli, a

University of Pennsylvania professor who has written a book called Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs.

Different kinds of software also have different kinds of glitches. Many of them don’t read serif type

styles such as Times Roman well, and those résumés get rejected. Some systems ignore headers and

footers. So, if an applicant puts his or her contact information in the header, it may end up being

deleted. In other cases, unqualified applicants have learned to “pep- per” their résumés with a job’s

keywords to get past résumé-screening software.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Cappelli relates an incident in which an HR manager put his

own résumé through his company's screening process and got rejected. In another instance, an

engineering firm received more than 25,000 résumés for a job but none of the candidates made it past

electronic screening.

There is also a lack of the human touch and judgment in the process. Managers don’t end up seeing

interesting résumés—résumés from people who have different skills or life experiences that would

trans- late well to the job. Consequently, a lot of people who would make excellent employees never get

a glance.

Some recruiters have found ways to avoid the “resu-mess” and downsides of automatic résumé

screening altogether. Instead of posting job ads, they use social networking sites to get the word out for

the types of employees they are looking to hire. Kevin Mercuri, president of Propheta Communications,

a public relations firm in New York City is one of them. Mercuri got tired of being swamped by ré-

sumés. Now when he needs to recruit personnel, he posts a message about job openings on his LinkedIn

page. “I get people vouching for each applicant, so I don’t have to spend hours sorting through

résumés,” he says.

Questions

1. What impact do you think résumé screen- ing tools are having on HR departments? What about line

managers? Would you use the software to screen résumés?

2. How might the drawbacks associated with résumé screening software be addressed?