Selection of Managers. The Recruitment Process.

When outside personnel are sought it may be for several reasons. In most cases, college graduates are recruited for their technical abilities, with little attention given to their managerial potential, although with hope that somehow enough of the recruits will eventually succeed as managers. On the other hand, some firms recruit college men in the hope that their broad educational background will serve them in becoming good managers. In either case, enterprises assign such recruits to non-managerial positions from which they may eventually become candidates for front line supervision.

A second reason for recruiting outsiders is to fill an immediate need for a supervisor or superintendent, a department, division, or a functional manager, or, indeed, to fill the presidency of a firm.

There are three steps in this activity. First, the discovery for potential candidates involves initial screening for intelligence, age, and maturity. Every enterprise has certain minimum requirements in these areas, and it saves money to find out, as early as possible, whether the prospects can meet them. Secondly, persuading the potential managers to become candidates sometimes involves selling (рекламирование) the firm to them. Thirdly, each candidate receives an extended guided interview.

Screening.

Since the need for men with fairly high intelligence is pressing, the candidate is usually given a standard intelligence test by the personnel department. If he is a college graduate, he may perhaps skip this on the assumption that he would qualify. Candidates should be informed by the company representative that acceptance will depend on either superior grades or a proportionally good test score.

Age is of general importance for managerial candidates. Good training programs emphasize the importance of an early start. They contemplate one or two years to be spent on non-managerial tasks; another two to five years in front-line supervision; and some fifteen years beyond this point for the development of full managerial potential. Since the “typical” executive of a successful enterprise is selected in his early twenties by the firm in which his career is built, it is advantageous to place an upper-age limit for inexperience managerial candidates at roughly twenty-seven years.

Maturity is an elusive quality that defies quantitative measurement. It is certainly not highly correlated with age or experience. The managerial candidate may reflect his maturity by the scope of his past experience and what he has learned from it, by his present general knowledge and breadth of view, by the common sense of his objectives and the means by which he proposes to achieve them, and by his sense of personal responsibility. The detection of such things is a heavy, but crucial, burden to place upon the recruiting officer.

Selling the firm (продвижение фирмы).

Men found eligible in terms of intelligence, age, and maturity may need to be sold on the firm, and the recruiting officer should pursue the objective with the same vigor and imagination that the salesman employs in selling the firm’s products to customers. He is the key salesman; his product is the enterprise, its location, size, prestige, prospects, incentives, and morale. His success depends on persuading qualified but hesitant men to want to work for the enterprise. The candidates are then requested to complete an application form, at their leisure, and to appear for an extended interview on a given date.

Interviewing.

Candidates who qualify on the basis of the screening process and the information carried on the application form are ready to be interviewed preferably at the plant site, both intensively and extensively. The candidate is passed along from one manager to another on a prearranged schedule, the smooth operation of which reflects good planning and respect for the value of time to all concerned.

Topic #6

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