December 11, 2006
Wrap Up
Everyone gets something out of the classes they take each semester. Therefore, this entry will be dedicated to talking about one of the lessons I learned because I took MGMT 250. Out of the several points I took away from the course, I feel that one of them is extremely important and can be used in the course of my daily life as well as my future career. This point is that there is no set way to do something or achieve a desired result. What works for one person will not necessarily work for another nor will what works under one set of circumstances necessarily work under a different set of circumstances. Just like there was no set formula in the HR Simulation that said doing “A” will cause “B”, reality is not based on a formula. This situation is why there are several ways to motivate people, to appraise their performance, and to train people. It is also why we had several different forms of classes ranging from lectures to small group discussions. In my opinion, the ability to recognize this and act accordingly is a very important part of decision making and problem solving.
December 10, 2006
The HR Simulation: Evaluating Performance
There are many ways to measure a company’s performance, and many of them are dependant on what one is looking for. For example, investors look at a company’s profitability and how risky the investment would be while creditors look at how capable the company is of paying off its debts. Different departments within a company look at different things; the HR department looks at different ways of measuring the performance of employees whereas the finance department looks at the state of the company’s finances and how to best use the available funds. However, there is one common way of measuring a company’s performance, and all concerned parties look at it. This measure is the bottom line.
Unfortunately, during the course of the HR simulation, we were never given our company’s bottom line or any other measures of how well our company as a whole was doing, such as sales or operating income. Instead we were mainly given HR-related measures with a few other measures mixed in. These measures were how many units were produced at overtime, the quality index, the productivity level, the accident rate, fringe benefits, the turnover rate, the morale level, the number of grievances, the absenteeism rate, and some industry averages. It is conceivable that many, if not all, of these measures affect more than just HR. In fact many of them probably have an impact on the bottom line. It could have been extremely helpful to see how the HR measures affected the overall performance of the company. If the company was able to be extremely competitive despite some low HR results, then some of the pressure to be better than everyone else in terms of the HR measures would be removed. Conversely, if the bottom line was extremely hurt by low HR performance, more pressure would be applied to the HR manager because the company needed to remain competitive in order to survive. I also think it is unrealistic that the HR department would not have access to this information.
December 07, 2006
Recruiting
The other day in class we discussed recruiting from an employer’s perspective. I could not help but wonder if the discussion could be useful in applying for jobs. In my own personal experiences, I have always found that it is easier to do well when I knew what was expected of me and what to look for. While I realize that every employer is going to be looking for something different, I believe that having a general understanding of how employers view and approach the process of recruitment can be extremely helpful. The knowledge of how many recruitment resources they have at their fingertips could be especially helpful. Keeping this fact in mind should ensure that an applicant works hard to leave the best impression because he or she will realize how easily the employer can just move on to the next applicant. It also gives people a better idea of how to apply for a job. Being able to get a job after college is an extremely important part of career development, and I believe that because we have discussed recruitment from both an employer’s and an applicant’s perspectives, we will be in a better position when that time comes.
November 30, 2006
The Right Internship?
In writing the second portion of the Learning Plan, we had to come up with several goals for ourselves. One of my goals was to get a good job immediately after college. This job had to be representative of my desired career path. In the Learning Plan, I stated that one step I would take towards achieving this goal was through summer internships.
Not only are summer internships an important part of getting a job after college, but they are a good way to make sure that one’s desired career path fits with one’s personality and interests. However, can one really be sure that the internship he or she accepts is actually related to what he or she wants to do? I ask this because this is exactly what happened to me this past summer. I accepted an internship that I thought was similar to the Wall Street-type jobs that I think I would like to pursue such as financial analysis. I made this assumption based on the job description I was given which while it did not actually lie about the job, was extremely misleading and left many of the details open to interpretation. I suppose you could say that I saw what I wanted to see. It turned out that the job was nothing more than mindless grunt work that helped the company’s clients perform financial analysis and/or make investment decisions. My job was to compile the information as opposed to actually doing anything with it, and not once did I actually come into contact with someone whose job was even remotely similar to what I was looking for. It was extremely disappointing and left me no closer to knowing if I was making the right choice for a career.
Fortunately for me this internship was after my freshman year of college; I have two more summers to get it right and really test the waters, but what about someone who did not have this luxury? Some people wait until the summer before their senior year to intern and others decide their planned career is not the right one after performing an internship and change paths. These people need this chance to make sure that they are choosing the right career. If they choose the wrong internship because of a misleading job description, they will be denied this chance, and I do not think that is fair. Unfortunately, I am not really sure anything can be done about it.
November 28, 2006
Conscious in the Business World
Yesterday in class we discussed the Tom Mendola case. This case involved a worker whose family desperately needed his income, but he was unproductive and had already been given chances to improve his work ethic. In my opinion, the obvious choice for the company is to fire him. His lack of work ethic negatively affects the bottom line and could negatively affect the performance of his colleagues, especially if he is given unlimited chances. Therefore, from the company’s standpoint there really is no choice but to fire him.
However, my conscious kept nagging at me about the decision to fire him. Even after talking about offering Tom a generous severance package and help finding a new job, my conscious kept bothering me. All I could think was that his family really needed the money. If this situation was real, I do not know if I could have lived with myself for firing someone is such dire circumstances.
Obviously this is the type of choice that businesses and all other institutions that employ people have to make all the time. I would imagine that more often than not employers make the choice that is best for the company, but does their conscious ever interfere? This situation was not even real and my conscious was giving me a hard time which I doubt bodes well for reality. It left me wondering how one reconciles their conscious with corporate needs. Is it possible? Does one just abandon their conscious or do they let it guide their decision? Is their even room for a conscious in the business world? We put so much emphasis on ethics these days, and I cannot help but wonder what role that should play here.
November 08, 2006
No Feedback is Good Feedback?
Whether positive or negative, feedback is almost always a good thing. It tells people what they are doing well and what they need to work on. So what happens when a person is not given feedback? I was placed in this situation this past summer when my boss never gave me any indication of how well I was doing until my last day. As a result, I was only able to guess what my boss thought of my work. While I realized that a monkey could have done my job, I needed feedback to make sure everything really was fine. For all I knew my job could have seemed so easy because I was oversimplifying it. If this were the case, I could have been making mistakes without even knowing it. Normally, this situation would definitely lead to feedback, but I was not even sure my boss was examining my work because I imagined that if he was, he would have said something. At the same time, I remembered the saying “no news is good news” and wondered if this could apply to feedback as well. It was a very confusing situation, and I do not think it was a good situation.
November 06, 2006
My Goals
Today in class we talked about goals, and one thing we had to do was come up with a list of our dreams. It made me realize just how few goals I have in life. It’s not that I do not want to accomplish a lot, but rather all my goals are broad. For example, I want a successful career in finance, but I have no goals about how I am going to get there or what I am going to do when I do get there. It also made me realize just how focused I am on my professional life.
Coming up with ideas about my personal life was extremely difficult. Aside from the fact that I think it might be nice to have a family one day and that I want to spend several months in Europe between college and starting my first job, I did not know what else to say. As a result, my dreams became somewhat repetitive. I am someone who has always been extremely future-oriented, but I never realized how much of my future I had devoted to a career. While coming up with a list of dreams seemed obnoxious at the time, it made me realize what areas of my life I need to focus on more in order to be happy.