Human resource management sample essay

In this assignment, I am going to address the employment applicant testing for a company specialized in sales and marketing. Sales and marketing is a very vibrant sector in the economy and has a very big clientele and employee base. The companies’ recruitment exercises have large turnouts and require very many considerations to make in the tests. Customers are to be addressed in polite, communicative methods. In addition, personal interests like interaction and socializing are crucial.

Cognitive abilities, personality and interests of the person and work sampling are the best methods of choosing a candidate (Mathis & Jackson, 2008). Sales and marketing requires a range of mental abilities. Although people may have the required academic qualification, a wide variance exists psychologically in each one of them. Good information reception, application of knowledge acquired in studies and in life situations and experiences helps very much in this line of work.

The company therefore needs to develop a method that puts the mental ability of the interviewee at test. Lowering the self-worth should be avoided to give the test an ethical background. I would recommend that the company use application questions to see how well the person can integrate their abilities in situations encountered. Legally the test should not discriminate basis of age, race, country of origin and disability (S I O P Inc. , 2003). Interaction takes the largest time in the job.

Conflicts of interests and social skills can cause loss to the company. In this regard, the company should evaluate the personality of the person and his or her interests to make sure that there is room for retention and good customer service. Traits that help in socializing and persuasion are an added advantage since the goal of the company is to make profit. From an ethical point of view, though there will be bias in selection the treatment the employee gives depends on the traits he has.

Bias should be limited to the goal but not to the race. That is the mistake frequently made. Stating some of the traits desired in the job vacancy advertisement alerts the applicants in advance. An interactive interview suits the test (Mathis & Jackson, 2008). Moreover, the specification of the company in sales and marketing will need a very active and promising employee who will not let them down after recruitment. Time and resources are wasted in frequent interviews caused by firing of unproductive employees.

Avoiding such wastes is done through real application of the skills. Sampling of sales is a sure method of determining this. Narrowed down candidates should be subjected to tasks that tests this ability. Ethically, the method removes all bias and subjects the short listed candidates to the job they are applying. Legally the process will be wrong if the company does not stipulate terms of the exercise. Compensation of the sales made when the applicant is not hired should feature in the exercise (Berman, Bowman, West & Van Wart, 2009).

Previously, we mentioned the large number of applicants that frequent such vacancies. Human resources required to conduct such activities are large. Apart from that, time also is another factor to consider. Technology like computerizing some of the tests to be undertaken by the applicants will not only reduce the resources used, save a lot of time but also standardize the process such it eliminates the bias frequented in the manual method. For example, the cognitive test using computers at the interview yields results immediately.

Later, automated ranking with the marks determines the qualifiers (Berman, Bowman, West & Van Wart, 2009). Conclusion In comparison to some of the other methods that could be used to test employment applicants, the selected methods have little legal implications and regulation. Unlike examining of motor and physical test may have adverse legal and ethical consequences that may include considerations on disabilities of the applicants, cognitive ability, personality, interest and sampling do not have direct implications in ethics and law (S I O P Inc. , 2003).