HR a difficult position to fill

Recruiting supports an organization’s short-, mid-, and long-term human capital needs. It can be a very easy and straightforward process, depending on the region, market, and the field of work. In some fields, prospective employees are readily accessible, and the organization will have the ability to select from a broad group of well-qualified candidates. In other fields, generating potential applicants will be very hard as they are not present, or if they are present, the competition among businesses in the market will be a challenge.

The nature of work is so very different from job to job and organizational role to organizational role. Each is important and makes valuable but very different organizational contributions. The field of HR studies the nature of work to attract and select the best applicants, and HR professionals follow SHRM’s behavioral competencies to support their decision-making. In this assessment scenario, to find a successful resolution to a hiring challenge, you will discuss the application of any SHRM behavioral competencies to the process of solving the HR challenge and determine which competencies are most directly applicable and why.

Scenario

For this assessment, assume you are an HR professional working as an HR business partner for one of the most prestigious nonprofit scientific research centers in the United States. The center is large enough to have its own office of general counsel. The general counsel contains two paralegals and nine attorneys and several of these attorneys are litigators. Recently, one of the assistant general counsels departed for a job at the White House. The general counsel wants the finest and most talented attorney candidates who are practicing in the field of research in a nonprofit setting. You have announced the open position and have had 807 applicants. You chose a group of 12 candidates, all of whom were turned down by the supervisor (hiring manager). The general counsel’s office demanded to see all applicant resumes, and your HR director agreed. After they reviewed all the resumes, they said none were good enough. However, they provided no additional information to you about their preferred applicant qualifications.

Your Challenge

While you are the HR business partner to the general counsel, you have many other organizational clients, each with their own needs and expectations, and therefore a limited amount of time to give to this particular client. Given that you have failed to select appropriate candidates, you consider spending some money from your very tight budget to hire a recruiting firm, but that is not a guarantee of success. You are considering the following options:

1. Recommending to the hiring manager that she reconsider the 12 candidates you selected.
2. Asking her to allow you to repost the position with some changes to the announcement.
3. Going to an outside recruiting firm (an expensive option) in spite of your budget constraints.
4. Considering that something has gone wrong with the entire process, and you need to take a deep look at all the events and actions that have taken place in this recruiting effort by all involved.

It is important that the option you recommend should offer the greatest return to the organization and its employees.

Prepare a 34 page plan that states your recommended course of action. Along with your recommendation, include the following:

• Analyze how your proposed HR solution to an HR challenge contributes to organizational goals and strategies.
• Weigh the barriers the business partner will face with each of the options.
• What are the internal implications, if any, to reconsider the 12 candidates and how could that be done?
• In your response, consider the passage of time against the need for another attorney in the office as well as the impact of cost if you choose to go to an external organization.
• Describe key factors you considered in the formulation of a proposed HR solution.
• What ethical considerations are there for recruiting and hiring in this scenario?
• Integrate material from your references that offer a theory-based relationship to inform ethical considerations.
• Explain the role of the HR practitioner in advancing a proposed HR solution.
• Explain briefly your role in influencing the eventual outcome. Consider aspects of leadership, negotiation, and consultation.
• Discuss the application of any SHRM behavioral competency(ies) to the process of solving an HR challenge.
• Which competency(ies) is most directly applicable to a successful resolution of this challenge and why?