James Lowe's Online Journal

The HR Annual Report

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 13:53:43 EST

On November 30th my HR Simulation group met and began discussing how we were going to create our company's final report. Most of the final report was just a continuation of our first annual report, so it didn't take too long to create. Once again I had the job of describing our goals and how our company went about achieving those goals. Our annual report was finally completed on Wednesday. With the completion of this report the HR simulation is finally over. Our team made the decisions that we thought were best for our company and hopefully we will do well on our final grade for the project. The last thing that must be done are the peer evalutions and the assigning of executive bonuses. In the end the HR simulation was a good project for our management class.

HR Simulation Comes to a Close

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 20:13:47 EST

On November 30th my HR simulation team got together and completed the last budget and incedent for quater 8 in the HR game. Overall this game has been enjoyable to see what happens with certain decisions but it is very inconsistent and weak after the first couple quaters. I believe this because once a group starts a program the group can't undo the program or make it better. The only thing that can change is the amouont of money that a team puts into their safety, quality, and management training programs. And the only other thing that can change other than those three programs is wages and fringe benefits. I just think that this simulation is very weak at showing what would really happen in a real business environment. The only part of the simulation that seems to be true is the incident reports, but again they are not very strong. They make the team think about what actions to take in order to not make people anger with them and thats basically it. Overall the simulation is a good idea because it makes the students work in teams to make an organization prosperous.

Performance Appraisals

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 20:02:57 EST

On November 17th the class continued our discussion on the different forms of performance apprasials. A few of the apprasial types arer the graphic rating scale, paired comparison, and the 360 performance apprasial. I thought that the 360 apprasial was the best option because as the name suggests it is more thorough than the other options. Later that day the class had a special session with a guest speaker on performance management. The speaker was pretty good and he was very enthusiastic. In order to describe performance apprasials he used three students in a test, to teach the ABCs to the class and we had to rate them. This was a pretty funny exercise. Overall the speaker was great but I got to say the best part of the session was the pizza and pop.

Another Disappointment

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 17:51:08 EST

When I completed part II of my Learning Plan I was pretty confident that I had done everything in order to how it was suppose to have been done. But unexpectedly, after getting my part II back from Tracey Messer, there were comments everywhere. See basically tore apart everything I wrote trying to question every uncertainty that she somehow formulated. This is weird seeing that the goals are not hers, so she really needs to grade impartially, but it is evident that she didn't. She even wrote on the top of my paper that my goals don't apply to the SMART criteria. This is pretty funny to me seeing that when I wrote part II, I had the SMART goals paper and the grading criteria for part II in front of me, writing the goals to correspond with them. Then later in class, Prof. Powley tells the class that the Learning Plans can only be 15-16 pages maximum in length. This was frustrating but I laughed knowing that every person that I know had finished papers at about 20 pages. I am actually starting to wonder whether or not the professor and the TAs really know what they want out of these Learning Plans.

Learning Plan Part II

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 19:43:44 EST

Today I started and finished writing the second part of the Learning Plan. The topic seemed much easier for me to handle because I really didn't have to think about goals that I wanted to talk about seeing that I had previously formulated them for myself. My four goals were getting a summer internship at GM, going to graduate school, learning more about investing, and starting a personal work out program. I applied these topics to the SMART criteria that was required by Prof. Powley, which wasn't too difficult. During our next class we are suppose to have peer evaluations and then if requested the teaching assistant could grade look at it. I was pretty happy with what I wrote, and I hope that this part turns out to be better than my last part.

Learning Plan Disappointment

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 17:50:00 EST

Yesterday after discussing the Jonah Creighton Case Study, Professor Powley handed back the Learning Plan part I to us. Most everyone in the class got a bad grade. This makes no sense. The paper is about ourselve and we have someone grading our writing about ourself and telling us that its not good enough. Tracy Messer tried to tell the class that the bad grades were because of a lack of creativity. That doesn't even make sense for this paper. The items and topics that were to be discussed in the paper don't require creativity, they are factual topics and opinions about ourselves. Another thing is that both the professor and Tracey were trying to say that its ok because this part is not worth that many points. This is clearly not the issue to me. This paper, like the professor and Tracey stated over and over, was to be a ROUGH DRAFT for the final paper due at the end of the semester. They clearly did not grade this paper as a rough draft. Most everyone got that I have talked with are extremely mad about their grade. Getting a 5's and 6's out of 8 on a paper about ourselves is going to make anyone mad. Overall I am extremely disappointed with the grading of this paper and I hope, for the sack of next semester, that more information about this paper is given to the students so that they can actually write a paper that may be satisfactory to these graders.

Jonah Creighton Case Study

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:38:40 EST

Yesterday our class discussed the Jonah Creighton case. Following my grading contract, I had to write a four to six page analysis of this case study. After reading Jonah's case I was in complete agreement with Jonah. I thought that what the overseas units of Coulding-Henson were doing was extremely wrong. Discrimination is a very serious issue both for minorities and for social classes. I believe that everyone should have an equaly opportunity when it comes to getting a job, going to college, or even just doing something as simple as playing a sport. Personally I believe that the minority discrimination is begining to be fazed out but I think that social/economic discrimination is an even larger problem. In Jonah Creighton's Case it was all about racial discrimination, which for a company could be very devistating legally. I think that Jonah was right for pursueing the issue but I think that he should have gone to Craig Andrews, the Executive VP and creator of CHAMP, instead of going to people he knew did care about the issue like Dan Newell and Gordon Harris.

Harrah's Casino Case Study

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:23:56 EST

Today our management class discussed the Harrah's Casino Case Study. Professor Powley was not in class today so Professor Piderit took over the discussion of the case. Having read the case the night before I was able to help the discussion move along. Personally I thought that Harrah's incentive system needed revision. It should have had some type of combination of a gain-sharing program and a profit-sharing program, as well as a type of employee stock ownership plan. I think that a combination of these three plans would create great incentive for productivity and a feeling of ownership in the company. In class we got into groups, discussion what tpye of actions Harrah's casino could have taken in order to make the best of their incentive plan. Professor Piderit even had two groups do a small skit in front of the class in order to convey their ideas of improvement. In the end I thought it was a interesting class.

Learning Plan Part I

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 12:52:15 EST

Yesterday our class turned in the first part of the learning plan. At first I thought this paper was going to be disfficult to write and take a long time knowing that it had to be eight to ten pages. After reviewing the criteria for the paper I realized that the paper was completely about myself, my values, my personality, and my future. I then thought this paper would be easy to write because who knows myself better than I do? The only difficult part of the paper was the career interview part. At first I didn't know what I was going to do, but then I remember that I had applied for a summer intership with General Motors in their business department. I figured that I could just contact a manager from that department that I had previously met. After finishing my interviews I was able to complete my paper in no time. Overall I think that I did a satisfactory job on part I of the learning plan.

HR Simulation Update

Sat, 15 Oct 2005 12:03:41 EST

After having a rough start, my HR simulation group is really getting the hang of creating the budget and making decisions that will benefit out company. At first we were a little confused on the entire process, but now we understand what needs to be done and what choices will help us in improving our goals. So far every one has participated in our group meetings, which is a good sign of team work. Team members are showing up on time to meetings prepared and ready to discuss the entries for the budget and the inncident report. Our team leader is doing well,although there really seems to be no actual "team leader" in our team because everyone is working together to make the decisions. Even if there is a difficult decision to make it is usually done on majority vote. Our group is working well and we hope it continues.

The HR Simulation

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 15:44:41 EST

Today we turned in the first part of the Hr Simulation including the team plan, the 1st decision sheet, the first budget, and incident d form. So far this project has been a bit confusing. Not much instructions were given to the students by the "CEO" about how to actually start this project. I don't think we had enough time to actually look at the material of the simulation before actually having to make decisions. I know from talking to other people that I am not alone on this. After actually doing the first part I am now beginning to get a handle on the entire project but I am still not 100% comfortable yet. On the other hand our group worked fairly well together in putting the team plan and other aspects of the turn in together, which hopefully shows good results. After the results come back hopefully it will give me even more of a grasp on the project.

The MBTI Personality Preferences

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 14:55:12 EST

Today in class we got back the MBTI profile for our personality preferences. At first I thought that this test would kind of be a joke. I didn't think that it would accurately predict what my personality. Basically I was skeptical of the entire system. After receiving my results of the MBTI I noticed that it matched exactly to the results that I predicted for myself on the self-assessment we did just before hand. Both my self test and the real test claimed I was type ISTP (introversion, sensing, thinking, perceiving). I was pretty surprised that it was the same. Then after looking at the clarity index, I noticed that all the bars on the graph were over the 10 mark and into the "clear" portion of the graph that the career center speaker said would show accuracy. Next after reading the assessment of the personality index ISTP, I realized that almost 98% of the portrait of my index was correct. It was extremely weird to me that everything that I was reading I could heavily relate to. After taking this test, I am convinced that it is fairly accurate, as long as the one taking it is true to their answers on the actual test. In order to do the test right, one should think about the answers too much. They should just choose the answer that makes sense at first because that will show your true preferences.

After the Mock Interview

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 18:55:18 EST

Like I thought, my mock interview was a success. It went very well as far as I know. I don't really know how my interviewer felt about it since I didn't receive an evaluation form, but by her actions and comments during the interview I think that she would agree with me. One thing that was weird about my interview was that the person who interviewed me was not an actual employer; she just worked for the career center. I believe she was a career councilor. Being an employee of the career center she gave me a lot of tips on how to revise my resume and she talked a lot about my future plans, like if I was looking for an internship position and if so what kind of industries was I looking into. Overall she was very helpful on pointing out what things I could have done a little differently in order to make a better presentation of myself and my information. I think the mock interview was a great experience.

The day before my mock interview

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 19:44:14 EST

So tomorrow is my mock interview. I really don't know what to expect because the career center just assigns your interview to some random person from a business. Hopefully I get an interviewer who is a little laid back and not too intimidating because it would make the interview go a lot smoother. I did prepare for the interview by looking over the general questions in the career center booklet that was handed out to the class at the beginning of the semester. I hope my preparation will help me answer the interview questions more accurately and clearly since I have thought about them prior to the actual process. I think I'm fairly prepared for this interview and I just got my suit from home, so hopefully tomorrow will be a good day.

First blog entry

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 22:31:46 EST

So far management 250 has been a good class. All the instructors in the class are nice and seem to have a general want to be in the class room. The best thing that I like about the class is that it is helping us to become ready to go out into the job market. The resume/ cover letter writing evaluation was great. It pointed out a few things that I needed to change. Also I like the fact that the class helps us to become more familiar with the career center. If it wasn't for this class I am not sure I would have been able to use the career center to its full potential. So far the class has been great and I'm looking forward to the rest of the semester.