FINAL ASSIGNMENT TOPIC ANALYSE CASE STUDY RECRUITING FOR a MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISE IN CHINA

Due to these factors, Stingl decided the new HR team would create a new recruiting and selection system toenable the company to find the right people for the right positions in a timely

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UEH UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS – MARKETING

FINAL ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC: ANALYSE CASE STUDY

“RECRUITING FOR A MULTINATIONAL

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LECTURER’S COMMENT MARK

2

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PART 1: KEY AREAS OF A CASE STUDY 7

I CASE STUDY SUMMARY 7

1 Introduction: A brief introduction of Sinotrading Ltd Company and characters’ background 7

1.1 General information about Sinotrading Ltd 7

1.2 Human Resource Manager: Jiao Li 7

1.3 John Smith 7

1.4 Dong Chen 8

1.5 Long Peng 8

1.6 Anne Hoffmann 8

1.7 The initial condition of the HR team in Sinotrading Ltd 8

2 Story developments: Story content and problem development 9

2.1 Overview of the HR member’ perspectives on the interview 9

2.2 Procedure and working style of the company 9

2.3 The first difficulty in the progress of recruiting new employees 10

2.4 The light success of Sinotrading’s first interview round 10

2.5 The second difficulty in the progress of recruiting new employees 11

3 Final harvestment of Sinotrading Ltd: Cut the knot and final results 12

II MAIN ISSUES OF THE CASE STUDY 13

1 Strategy for recruitment 13

2 A determination about undertaking-specific job requirements 14

3 Procedures to evaluate these job demands 14

4 Procedures for personnel selection and final-decision making 16

5 The diversity within the team and cross-cultural problems in addition to the

leadership behavior of its own CEO 17

PART 2: KEY CONCLUSIONS OF THE CASE STUDY 19

Question 1 19

Question 2 20

Question 3 26

Question 4 27

PART 3: LEARNING OUTCOMES: WHAT YOU LEARN FROM THE CASE STUDY 28

I KNOWLEDGE 28

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FINAL.ASSIGNMENT.TOPIC.ANALYSE.CASE.STUDY.RECRUITING.FOR.a.MULTINATIONAL.ENTERPRISE.IN.CHINAFINAL.ASSIGNMENT.TOPIC.ANALYSE.CASE.STUDY.RECRUITING.FOR.a.MULTINATIONAL.ENTERPRISE.IN.CHINAFINAL.ASSIGNMENT.TOPIC.ANALYSE.CASE.STUDY.RECRUITING.FOR.a.MULTINATIONAL.ENTERPRISE.IN.CHINAFINAL.ASSIGNMENT.TOPIC.ANALYSE.CASE.STUDY.RECRUITING.FOR.a.MULTINATIONAL.ENTERPRISE.IN.CHINAFINAL.ASSIGNMENT.TOPIC.ANALYSE.CASE.STUDY.RECRUITING.FOR.a.MULTINATIONAL.ENTERPRISE.IN.CHINAFINAL.ASSIGNMENT.TOPIC.ANALYSE.CASE.STUDY.RECRUITING.FOR.a.MULTINATIONAL.ENTERPRISE.IN.CHINAFINAL.ASSIGNMENT.TOPIC.ANALYSE.CASE.STUDY.RECRUITING.FOR.a.MULTINATIONAL.ENTERPRISE.IN.CHINAFINAL.ASSIGNMENT.TOPIC.ANALYSE.CASE.STUDY.RECRUITING.FOR.a.MULTINATIONAL.ENTERPRISE.IN.CHINA

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1 The importance of job demands and its effect 28

2 The importance of employee engagement in an organization 30

3 The importance of the recruitment strategy 30

4 The importance of job requirements in the workplace 31

5 The importance of procedures for personnel selection 32

6 The importance of final decision-making 32

II SKILL 32

1 The importance of teamwork 32

2 The importance of language 33

III ATTITUDE WHEN WORKING IN A MULTINATIONAL COMPANY 33

PART 4: SELF-REFLECTION 35

Question 1 35

Question 2 36

Question 3 36

PART 5: CONCLUSION 38

REFERENCES 39

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LIST OF IMAGE

Image 1.1 The partial organizational chart of Sinotrading Ltd 7

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The fourth industrial revolution is currently in full swing, bringing significant changes to economies throughoutthe world and especially, HR is also an important department determining the development of an organization.Owning potential human resources easily supports the company to expand and has a stable position in themarket

International Human Resources subject is a foundation for International Business students who are studying atthe university It assists them to have a deep foundation about humans and all the characteristics, activitiessurrounding them This subject covers a wide range of HR topics, functional examples, applications and thecrucial role of HR in an organization It builds its core around the talent management process which the authordefines as the goal-oriented and integrated process of planning, recruiting, developing, managing, andcompensating employees

About the following case study: “Recruiting for a multinational enterprise in China” which displays all aspects

of Human Resource for students to understand through main issues in the recruitment process and solutionsshown logically From that, students can realize and learn new knowledge that is really necessary for futurejobs

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PART 1 KEY AREAS OF A CASE STUDY

I Case study summary.

1 Introduction: A brief introduction of Sinotrading Ltd Company and characters’

background.

1.1 General information about Sinotrading Ltd.

Sinotrading Ltd.’s offices in the middle of the financial district with thousands of Chinese people in the streets

of Guangzhou Sinotrading Ltd was a listed trading company It was headquartered in Hong Kong and hadseveral offices in Zurich, Vienna, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Tianjin The company traded children’s toys andproduced toys made of wood in factories owned by the company in Shanghai, Tianjin and Nanhai, nearGuangzhou The company achieved a Cdn$4,000,000 revenue last year and employed 2,500 employees

Image 1.1 The partial organizational chart of Sinotrading Ltd.

PARTIAL ORGANIZATIONAL CHART

Source: File forwarded by lecturer.

1.2 Human Resource Manager: Jiao Li.

The HR manager, Jiao Li had held this position for three years and Li’s current position was her first job aftergraduation After her bachelor’s degree, she had studied abroad in Australia and received her master’s degree inthe field of human resource management and organizational behavior

1.3 John Smith.

Smith “was a 35-year-old Canadian with a young Chinese girlfriend He had moved to China nearly 10 yearsago and he had been working for the company for two years Before moving to the human resource (HR)

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department, Smith had worked in the marketing department and was responsible for public relations andinternational affairs His main responsibility was to act as a consultant in communication matters Due torestructuring activities in the company, Smith’s job in the marketing department was cut and the CEO of thecompany, Robert Stingl, shifted Smith to the HR team The new HR team’s task was to create and establish anew system for recruiting and selecting managers and factory workers for different positions throughout thecompany in China.”

1.4 Dong Chen

Chen “was a new Chinese colleague, a married 42-year-old father of two boys Chen had grown up andstudied in the northern part of China He lived in Guangzhou with his wife, children, parents and brother.After completing his master’s in law and general business administration he worked for several companies andgained lots of experience in finance, accounting and public law He was a leading member in one of severaltable tennis clubs in Guangzhou and more of a team-player than someone who wanted to sit alone in his officeall day and work on a task individually assigned to him.”

1.5 Long Peng.

The “opposite was true for the other new colleague, Peng, a single 22-year-old young man who had finishedhis studies at the Guangzhou University with a bachelor’s degree in German He was the only son in hisfamily and had grown up in the countryside Next to his new job at Sinotrading Ltd., Peng also gave languagecourses for foreigners and worked in a nightclub as a barkeeper.”

1.6 Anne Hoffmann.

The “third new member in the HR department was Hoffmann, a very smart 27-year-old German who wasextremely glad to get the chance to do her internship at Sinotrading Ltd Hoffmann was in Asia for the firsttime Her new position was the assistant of the HR manager, a paid internship position Hoffmann hadreceived her master’s degree from a German university known for its excellent reputation in teaching andresearch on HR management, especially personnel selection, leadership, and evaluating the effectiveness of

HR methods.”

1.7 The initial condition of the HR team in Sinotrading Ltd.

The current structure and the existing formal procedures in the HR department were developed by Li and theCEO The new HR team’s task was to create and establish a new system for recruiting and selecting managersand factory workers for different positions throughout the company in China and the target positions for the 85individuals

Due to these factors, Stingl decided the new HR team would create a new recruiting and selection system toenable the company to find the right people for the right positions in a timely fashion

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2 Story developments: Story content and problem development.

2.1 Overview of the HR members’ perspectives on the interview.

Li knew recruiting in Sinotrading conducted at the last-minute and without any consistent method Forselection decisions, there was no formal procedure and for many months, Smith reminded Li to incorporateselection tools like other companies However, Li declined Smith’s suggestion because of its cost-intensity

There is a different thought of choosing new employees between Smith and Li: Smith worried because the

time was limited but there were not any particular methods to choose new employees Li argued that “Smith,all of that is not needed in China These things might be appropriate in Canada For China, these proceduresare useless and a waste of time and money.” Li supposed Smith’s opinion - that is to set up a detailed process

of recruiting was unnecessary in China and these methods would be a waste of time

The new procedures mentioned by:

 About Anne Hoffmann: “This should be based on objective criteria And they need to know the jobrequirements for every position and conduct a job analysis Hiring someone should be based onperformance because it must be a fair, transparent and objective process After having found thecandidates they want to hire, they have to work on their contracts They also have to evaluate theirdecisions based on the performance of the newly hired persons at Sinotrading Ltd.”

 About Long Peng: He stated: “Oh Anne, this sounds too academic and this is far from the reality For

our purposes, we need something practical I know who I should hire just by looking into that person’sface”

 About Dong Chen: He thought that they should choose employees based on contract.

2.2 Procedure and working style of the company.

Attitude of Hoff towards the interview procedure of Sinotrading Ltd.: At first, Hoffmann was really

confused He knew the current selection process depending on prior performance or prior experience in similar

jobs or on prior degrees collected And hiring decisions were made by a four eye principle using an interview

approach This means that the company doesn’t care about the experience of the employees, mainly based onthe interview

The working style in China: Similarly, promotion decisions at Sinotrading were not based on a worker’s

performance and just based on the employee’s loyalty to the boss Consequently, Sinotrading kept thesecriteria covert and arbitrary power was a major source of a supervisor’s authority Moreover, at this company,arbitrary power allowed one to not only ignore established rules, but also annul them

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Hoffmann’s example of abnormal working style in China: We can take Hoffmann’s own contract provided

as an example A contract was written in English, whereas an email was in Germany After two weeks inGuangzhou, she received a new contract in Chinese with the request to sign it This new contract specifiedmore obligations and tasks which were not included in the previous English contract Under somecircumstances and in case of non-fulfillment of the commitments, the contract stated 50 per cent of a salarycutback would be applied and Hoffmann would have to pay 50 per cent of the salary she had already receivedback to the company

Arbitrary power’s example: The CEO Stingl said to Anne Hoffmann: “You are my “voice,” the “voice” of

the CEO in Guangzhou I cannot be there all the time I want to spend most of my time in my office in Zurich.During your time in China, you will receive all of my instructions via phone, Skype and email”

2.3 The first difficulty in the progress of recruiting new employees

There were few CVs sent to the company

Some methods of testing that the HR department uses and mention how a decision is made by Jiao Li:

In the past, “the HR department had never used personnel selection methods But after reading previouspersonnel records, Hoffmann discovered Li was very quick to jump to conclusions when she thought shefound the right employee — possibly due to the pressure from Stingl.”

After there are no CVs left, all the members come up with many different opinions to gain more CVs:

After observing the current situation, Hoffmann asked Smith, Chen, and Peng for ideas to change theprocedure

 About Peng: he suggested posting employment ads in the universities and in the city center to findcandidates

 About Li: she suggested asking a nearby restaurant to post ads as a solution to reach more workers.And Li and Peng agreed and stated they would ask family members as well

 About Chen: he remarked that he could ask family members to work for Sinotrading

2.4 The light success of Sinotrading’s first interview round

A few days later, the HR department was flooded with applications Some were handwritten, some weretyped

Some ways of arranging the day for interviewing and finding out good participants after the 1st round Interviews: On the next day, the team came together to discuss and select the possible candidates for face-to-

face interviews The company conducted all interviews for the interns from Europe via Skype using Englishand Smith suggested choosing systematically

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Applications: Hoffmann advised arranging the applications in piles for each position

Method: Subsequently, the piles were divided into two groups — the first for candidates to be invited and the

second for candidates not to be invited Li suggested keeping her method of choosing new candidates andmaking it as simple as possible “Pick those who look friendly and it is simply not possible to readeverything”

2.5 The second difficulty in the progress of recruiting new employees.

There are too many contestants but with limited time In the end, there were two piles for every position —the one for candidates to be invited was always the higher of the two Smith said, “We have chosen too manyapplications and will have too many interviews We will not have enough time to complete them all nextmonth I cannot interview more than eight individuals per day”

The CEO’s methods: Because the procedures of interviewing are still not on the right track, the CEO lost his

belief in Hoffmann that she was capable of leading a meeting They should do all interviews in one monthwithout any external consultancy help Stingl insisted that they had to prepare half-structured interview sheetswithin the next day And Smith was told to urgently explain to the team the exact job that each member wasexpected to do However, Stingl still insisted on using half-structured: “Work in teams again for the first round

of selection and could work together in a full group for the single interviews later”

Hoff gives her own opinion to address this urgent problem, it is really logical: She suggested creating a

mind map of all the team’s suggestions with a view to creating a system with criteria for the hiring process.Besides, she also used position-specific criteria because different positions required different skills, abilitiesand knowledge And different personnel selection methods differed in terms of their predictive validity

Peng was in a hurry because he thought they had extreme time-pressure and Smith agreed with the Hoff’s idea: Smith supposed that Peng’s opinion was not correct because Hoffmann knows no company today

is able to use ineffective and inefficient personnel selection methods And Hoffmann was absolutely rightwhen selection methods differed regarding their predictable information

Differences in judgement biases:

 About Peng: “he stated the most important things in an application were personal appeal, creativedesign, and a nice photo of the applicant — grades were not that important.”

 About Li: “she did not agree and dismissed Peng’s criteria as irrelevant mainly because she believedthe main factor was the applicants’ suitability for the position.”

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 About Chen: “he supposed that the university, the photo and the first impression were the importantfactors And Chen added “Political attitudes, hobbies, grades and the knowledge of language are alsoimportant”.”

The refutation of Hoffmann: She was highly irritated, then she thought loyalty was the crucial issue and

politics came into play None of this had anything to do with what she had learned about personnel selection

There was no final method for recruiting due to diverse suggestions: All the members in the HR team

didn’t live up to Stingl’s wishes and he did appointed himself as the leader of the HR team in China

3 Final harvestment of Sinotrading Ltd: Cut the knot and final result.

At first, they discussed all appointments for the coming weeks and made a detailed plan, conducted interviewsinto two different groups, brainstormed appropriate interview questions and an effective procedure for theinterviews But the CEO wasn't satisfied with the questionnaires After that, they received an email fromStingl and they only had 3 weeks left to continue the 2nd round

Some steps prepared for the second round: The HR team met and started a mind-map to create solutions

for practical assessment tasks for the second round of production manager interviews The HR team alsodesigned a questionnaire for the interview to expose professional experiences and knowledge in the field andfind out how the participants would behave in certain situations With no experience amongst its members, theteam searched online for questions and tasks For the practical assessment, the team decided to walk throughthe factory with the candidates Smith claimed this was the only way to find out how communicative and openminded the candidates were

A meeting with participants again after the tour to ask the candidates about their opinion on the factory, theteam, occupational safety and whether the candidate saw any need for improvement within the company.After that, 56 job applicants were invited to interview and group interviews in the factory were scheduled.Hoffmann and Smith welcomed the 10 best candidates of last week at the factory entrance and started theinterview in one of the meeting rooms After the completion of the questionnaire, the practical assessment wasdue to begin

The 10 candidates were encouraged to chat with the team leader, to speak about areas where improvementcould be made and to ask questions The recruitment standards from all members were very different but thegeneral goal when chosen was the respect to the company The five most communicative, best dressed, seriousand motivated candidates were picked by the HR team and the final ending was very questionable becauseHoffmann still didn’t receive her salary although she finally did the task

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II Main issues of the case study.

The team had to deal with a series of challenges to ensure the project's success And there are 5 main issuesthat appeared in this case study

1 Strategy for recruitment.

The first and most important problem which is seen in the case is that the company is a multinationaloperating in different countries, but it didn’t have any pre-planned and effective recruitment and hiringprocess Especially, Sinotrading Ltd is a multinational company, it has to have a detailed plan for recruitment.This is the worst thing about this company in the hiring process If they still remain this way of working in thefuture, the company will definitely become a loser and go bankrupt in the near future This behavior towardsworking also shows the unprofessional style and can trigger bad images for future applicants When peoplesee and know this bad issue, they don’t want to apply for this company For a long time later, Sinotrading Ltddoesn’t have enough talented employees since they don’t want to work for a company that has an unkind andimproper working style

The employees were not hired and promoted on the basis of job requirements and their performance but on thebasis of his or her relations with his boss Normally, if one company wants to do a hiring process, there will be

a detailed plan step by step to make sure that the quality of employees will be the highest For example, thereare many different ways for a company to hire new employees through mass media and recruitment websitessuch as Facebook, Twitter or Linkedln, Top CV… These places will have a big approach and influencebecause they are familiar with young people who are seeking jobs New applicants can inbox the one postingthe post of recruitment immediately and ask for their difficulties conveniently From that, this will attractmore contestants for the company than ever

Job advertisements were not being advertised on the basis of job requirements Job descriptions and jobspecifications were not being used for the hiring process In this case study, the members in Sinotrading Ltdsuggested posting ads in a nearby restaurant to reach more workers or asking family members But the CEOdidn’t think they were sustainable solutions He thought that they should make the ads more creative and eye-catching to draw more interest This means that they just focus on the outward without caring about thecontents inside like how the job positions are, which characteristics an employee needs, some workingbenefits employees can get… But one thing we have to recognize is that job descriptions and jobspecifications are always required in every hiring process However, they ignore them and just focus on theoutward side with a view to attracting more and more people to know about the recruitment without informingthem of the detailed work This is a big minus for Sinotrading Ltd in terms of recruitment process

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2 A determination about undertaking-specific job requirements.

The shortage of distribution undertaking-specific job requirements is shown in 2 aspects Firstly, it is seen inthe HR team In that team, there are 5 members including Jiao Li - HR Manager, John Smith, Long Peng,Anne Hoffmann and Dong Chen To boost the productivity of each team or group, there is a distributionpointed tasks among members From that, each member can have their own time to do research detailedly andfind out good solutions to their working tasks Then the tasks are finished well and in time if they follow well-organized job demands internally And the HR team at Sinotrading Ltd is not the exception However, therewas not any distribution among them All of them were guided to conduct the recruitment for the company butnot their own tasks This shows that they didn’t have a clear method of working

The second shortage of distribution is also shown in the “Strategy recruitment” part Looking at therecruitment posts in some hiring platforms of other companies, there are many job descriptions for everyworking position for employees to know and apply for these positions However, at Sinotrading Ltd, they didnot appear The company didn’t design a full version of the job requirement of positions that they want to hire.Based on that, they would have a clear path to adjust their recruitment process easily If the job requirementswere not needed or not transparent, no one could justify the degree to which they were fulfilled when it came

to a certain employee And the undertaking-job specific demands play an important role in determining thefuture growth of the employees Everyone wants to have a job that they can pursue and live with it Therefore,when people apply for their desired positions, they always look at the job requirements firstly so that they canfeel how suitable they are for these jobs A clear job requirement will create many advantages and the mostremarkable is that people and the company can know each other well and don’t waste time in the future

3 Procedures to evaluate these job demands.

When it comes to the recruitment process, members in the HR team had different thoughts Smith interruptedthe discussion about the article and suggested: “We are under pressure to hire so many people for such diversepositions We do not have the appropriate recruitment strategies We did not do a single task analysis Wedidn’t do job analyses for the heterogeneous target positions In fact, we do not know the various jobrequirements” Through Smith’s opinion, we can see clearly that the company doesn’t build a well-structuredrecruitment strategy All the members lack experience that results in so many urgent problems, the biggestmistake is still from the CEO-the person must be responsible for giving them the right instructions In thiscase, they have many problems related to the recruitment such as having task analysis, job analyses The root

of these issues comes from the heterogeneous target positions which were made sure to finish in a short time

A large number of positions but there were no standard procedures applied The scope of recruitment in amultinational company is really sophisticated and takes a long time to conduct it And the company shouldhave prepared for this early instead of this hiring season

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Evaluating job demands plays a pivotal part in the development of the company However, Sinotrading Ltddidn’t have particular procedures to address these Assessing job demands can be conducted to deal withunwanted issues related to the employees in the company soon so as not to cause any interruption for theworkflow

Another problem in Sinotrading Ltd is that there were no job analyses while these job analyses are considered

to be the crucial method of evaluating job demands “A job analysis is an in-depth description of a particularjob It breaks down the job’s specific tasks as well as the expectations of and demands on the employee whodoes it This can include detailed information about the job’s tasks, working conditions and requirementsincluding aptitudes, attitudes, skills, temperaments, as well as physical, psychological and cognitive demands.Job analyses are often created to help recruiting, training, as well as return to work and human resourcesplanning In the case of returning to work following disability or illness such as cancer, a job analysis is auseful tool to provide information about a job in order to assess whether someone is ready to return to work orwhat parts of the job need to be changed to enable someone to work again.”

As we can see, there are so many things that the company should do for their employees simply because abetter and bigger advantage will be gained by the company in the future It is likely the missions thatSinotrading Ltd or all the companies in the world have to have for their owed ones Assessing the job demandcannot be neglected under any circumstances and no matter how small or big the size of the company is.Moreover, the influence of job demands in the working place is really huge The interaction between them andthe employees is always supplementary In the working place, the stressness that all employees can get is higherand higher than ever and if the company doesn’t take any actions in time, it definitely causes some seriousproblems like striking, quitting jobs That leads to the bad consequences affecting the development of thecompany and it accidently labels itself as a bad image in front of the employees and the working market This is

an issue related to the benefits that all employees deserve to receive When they feel this working place doesn’tensure their benefits, they will not apply for the company or quit immediately if they already have officialemployees However, in Sinotrading Ltd, it hardly appeared and this is a serious problem that the companymust have to fix and justify urgently

Moreover, Jiao Li-the Human Resource Manager argued: “Smith, all of that is not needed in China Thesethings might be appropriate in Canada, these procedures are useless and a waste of time and money” From that,

it shows Li’s thought is quite backward In fact, she is the HR Manager, so it can affect her colleagues’ mindset

in the hiring process

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4 Procedures for personnel selection and final decision - making.

Moreover, there were no personnel selection methods in practice There are different selection methods thatcould be used by any company for its recruitment and hiring process which include work sample tests,integrity tests, assessment centers, biographical and educational questionnaires and employee referrals orcognitive ability tests None of the mentioned techniques were being used in the organization The HRmembers’ opinions are very one-sided like Peng and Jiao Li Ann recommended that personnel selectionshould be based on objective criteria which is fair, transparent and process She thought the company shouldhire according to the contracts, have to evaluate decisions based on the performance of the newly hiredpersons at Sinotrading Ltd, conduct these evaluation processes so as to find out the predictive validity andconstruct validity of their selection procedures used However, on the contrary, Peng supposed it to be tooacademic, far from reality He felt that for their purposes, they needed something practical or just hired bylooking into that person’s face Another example is about Jiao Li, Hoffmann discovered Jiao Li was veryquick to jump to conclusions when she thought she found the right employees Li’s decisions were not based

on any exact tools and it was supposed to be the feeling of her Her decisions were not accepted in theworking place, especially, she was the Human Resource Manager of a multinational company

Moreover, the HR manager - Jiao Li’s recruitment method was last-minute It meant the final decisions ofchoosing new employees would be in the interview It is so questionable when this company doesn’t use anymethods in recruitment, particularly this is a multinational company Though Smith reminded Li toincorporate selection tools which were similar to those at other companies, Li declined his suggestion because

of its cost-intensity This shows that the hiring process in Sinotrading Ltd is really simple and is not cared somuch and most of the mistakes come from Jiao Li’s opinion of the recruitment process

The final decision-making is also a serious problem in the recruitment process and Hoffmann was reallyconfused about that The current selection process at Sinotrading Ltd meant no one would be hired depending

on prior performance or prior experience in similar jobs or on prior degrees collected Hiring decisions weremade by a four eye principle using an interview approach The four eye principle meant that the interviewerand the interviewee talked about a couple of working-related issues and at the end of this talk, the team leader

or the CEO made the overall judgement about the candidate That means the hiring process in this companydoesn’t care so much about the participants’ experience before but depends totally on the whole interview.The quality of selected employees is still questionable because normally at other companies, the interviewerwill consider the contestant by looking at his prior experience The more knowledge you got in the past, themore possible you can be an official employee However, at Sinotrading Ltd, a different method is applied forthe hiring process that results in the employees’ ability can not be ensured well

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5 The diversity within the team and cross-cultural problems in addition to the leadership behavior of its own CEO.

The time frame of four weeks to hire 85 personnel was very less It was simply impossible to recruit and select

85 managers and workers within a short period of time and without expert knowledge on selection Some ofthe positions were executive in nature and needed proper time and planning to do recruitment It can be seenthat nowadays the hiring process in most of the companies in the world lasts longer than 4 weeks, especiallyhiring a large number of employees like Sinotrading Ltd It requires a detailed plan and the HR team can takeadvantage of this period to find out the excellent employees If they finish in only 4 weeks, it can’t ensure thequality of contestants Later in the future, the company can’t reach the development as the source ofemployees cannot be made sure

Moreover, “there were cultural barriers between the team members which was a big hindrance in their work.They belonged to different countries with different cultural backgrounds and values For example, whenHoffman took a file from the shelf by standing on a chair wearing her shoes, it was considered a negative act

by her team members because this was not considered ethical in China In addition to this, there werelanguage barriers between the members Hoffman was not able to understand Chinese because she hadproblem in understanding it and she requested her team members to communicate in English When theycommunicated in Chinese, she was not able to understand what they were saying and so was not able to takepart in the group discussions more actively When she received her joining letter via mail in Chinese and wasasked to sign it, she didn’t because she couldn’t understand many parts of it and in addition to this they addedsome more clauses which were not written in the previous letter which was in English.”

Another “problem was the ineffective leadership style of the CEO, Robert Stingl He delegated his authority

to the team members by making a team leader and himself spent most of his time in Zurich and used tocommunicate via Skype As a CEO and a team leader, it was his duty to take his team along and should givethem suggestions to improve the recruitment process Instead he only gave orders to complete the tasks withinfour weeks Moreover, the expectations of the CEO were unrealistic He asked the HR team to recruit 85Personnel within four weeks including some executive positions and that too without any pre-defined or usedprocess The team had to develop a process, interview them and then hire the candidates all in four weekswhich is completely unrealistic Furthermore the CEO directed his team to not take help from any outsiderecruitment firm in this process when he told Hoffmann to have to survive day by day If they would havetaken some help, it would have made their tasks easier From that, it can be seen that the CEO is anirresponsible person because he didn’t join hands in his company He gave other members in the HR team allthe tasks without helping them to give the direct guides A good CEO is a person who always helps andappears in time in all steps of making important decisions like recruiting new employees for his company The

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CEO is an all-rounder who can foresee and have right decision-making If he wants his company to develop inthe future and has a good source of excellent employees, he has to change his working style immediately.”

Another problem was the lack of experience in the members of the team Most of the members were notqualified enough and didn’t have the required knowledge to do effective recruitment For example, Peng, asingle 22-year old young man had just graduated his studies at the university and didn’t have any experience

in the recruitment process They were giving suggestions to recruit on the basis of looks and appearances andhow well the candidates have arranged their resumes etc And they were not instructed how to recruit newemployees detailedly Due to this, there was no effective team leading during the process that caused so manyunwanted problems later

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PART 2 KEY CONCLUSIONS OF THE CASE STUDY Question 1: What shortcomings do you see in the personnel selection system used in this company? Justify your answer.

Before we start to discuss our questions of this case study, we have to get to know what personnel selection is.The easiest meaning to understand is that personnel selection is the methodical process used to hire individuals.This term can also apply to all aspects of the process such as: recruitment, selection, hiring, onboarding,acculturation, etc The process of selection follows a system to collect information about an individual in order

to determine if that individual should be employed Now let's move to the response to the questions

PERSONNEL SELECTION SYSTEM ISSUES:

First of all, according to the case study The HR manager knew that personnel selection in Sinotrading Ltd

had to be improved Because recruitment is conducted at the last-minute and without any consistent method.

Also for the personnel selection decisions, there was no formal procedure and only a few team-members in thecompany knew which issues had to be considered More obviously, the hiring decisions count on the four eyeprinciple which means that these decisions are all judged by the team leader or the CEO no matter howexcellent you are in your performance in the last company or the degree you collected

Another shortcoming is the purpose of recruitment The aggressive attitude and insane speaking of the CEO

truly made the team members were under the pressure to hire so many people for such diverse positions Sosome of them just tried to hire as many people as they could to satisfy the CEO’s demands For instance,according to this case study, the manager was very quick to jump to conclusions when she thought she foundthe right employee - possibly due to the pressure from the CEO And the manager at first usually argued ordeclined Smith or Hoffman’s ideas and she suggested keeping it as simple as possible, without the appropriaterecruitment strategies Personnel selection methods was planned in a perfunctory manner, that we can seeclearly when Hoffmann suggested her idea in creating a mind map of all the team’s suggestions to help create asystem with criteria for the hiring process, Peng interrupted her and ignore it because he had time-pressure ofhiring 85 individuals That means he just wants to hire enough people without a methodical process So do therest except Smith

The final shortcoming is hiring new people with subjective factors We can know this through the HR

manager, Chen and Peng First with the HR manager, when everyone selects the possible candidates for to-face interviews, she wanted to choose those who look friendly and not mention other factors When theymake the final hiring decision, the manager still wants to hire the candidates who did not give much inputduring the practical assessment About Chen, he stated he would not employ candidates with long hair and he

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mentioned the quality of the products being produced cuz he thinks that it shows a total lack of respect of thecompany Peng stated that he would hire the one who often visits nightclubs All of them have no evaluationcriteria based on candidates’ performance which must be a fair, transparent and objective process.

INTERPERSONAL ISSUES:

Firstly, cultural differences is one of the most significant shortcoming which leads to the inconsistency in

creating a new selecting tool You can see that Smith and Hoffmann have the same thought and proposal forpersonnel decisions such as conducting job analyses or evaluation processes based on the performance of thenewly hired persons On the other hand, the HR manager, Chen and Peng argued and suggested doing theselection procedure easily cuz they think that those procedures that Smith and Hoffmann proposed are uselessand a waste of time and money in China

Come to the second flaw, hiring new employees that are unskillful and unsuitable for the HR team is the

primary shortcoming According to the case study, Cheng, Peng and Hoffmann are the newly hired persons Butonly Hoffmann could suggest constructive proposals based on what she had learned about personnel selection,cuz she takes a master’s degree from a university which is well known for HR management Peng and Chengwas incompetent to give helpful suggestion and solve HR issues

Moreover, there is a mistake in personnel selection for the HR department In this case, Hoffman had theexperiences and knowledge in HR while others were just working based on the sensibility It causes conflictand misunderstanding in team members

Question 2: Which methods of personnel selection would you use to select managers and workers considering the validity of the specific personnel selection methods?

- Main task: 85 new middle managers and workers

- The target positions for the 85 individuals included three finance managers, 10 production managers, twosecurity guides, 40 workers for the factories, 15 secretaries for administrative positions and 10 interns fromEurope

- Analyse the personnel selection method of the HR team:

o Selection methods that the HR team used:

 There was no formal procedure

 Recruitment conducted at the last-minute and without any consistent method

 Using ads in universities and in city centers to find candidates; post ads for workers.Asking family

 Promotion criteria were not transparent (based on the employee’s loyalty)

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Tiêu đề	Analyse Case Study “Recruiting For A Multinational Enterprise In China”
Tác giả	Ho Duy Thai
Người hướng dẫn	Nguyen Thi Huyen Trang
Trường học	Ueh University College Of Business
Chuyên ngành	International Human Resource Management
Thể loại	Final Assignment
Năm xuất bản	November
Thành phố	Ho Chi Minh City

Định dạng
Số trang	77
Dung lượng	362,85 KB

Tài liệu tham khảo	Loại	Chi tiết
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7. Kendra Cherry, 2020. Autocratic Leadership Key Characteristics, Strengths, and Weaknesses of Autocratic Leadership, verywellmind.com, [online] Available at:<https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-autocratic-leadership-2795314>[Access on 05/11/2021]	Khác
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10. Joe Caccavale, 2020. What is contrast effect? And how it impacts recruitment, beapplied.com, [online]Available at	Khác