A Recruitment Plan and Strategy
An emerging company that desires to serve and survive in the business world would always require an effective plan for attracting, hiring, and retaining employees (Sayce, Weststar, & Verma, 2014). The progress of the coffee will be a great determinant in the subsequent employee recruitment plans that the company would probably seek to adopt. In the first year of the operations of the coffee shop, the management will avoid offering permanent employment, as it shall rely on contractual agreements. Contracts would give the enterprise an opportunity to scrutinize trustworthy and competent employees (Branine, 2008). The recruitment plan would be in two distinct plans since the coffee shop has only the store managers and servers.
In selecting store managers, the company shall use external employment techniques, including outsourcing approaches. This would give the shop owner an opportunity to assess candidates with varied expertise in store management. Merit-based selection would be the strategy of choosing store managers, as it would allow the shop owner to assess candidates through a definite selection criterion (Sayce, Weststar, & Verma, 2014). Merit-based selection involves assessing work qualities of the candidates. These work qualities would involve abilities, skills, educational qualifications, work performance standards, level of training, and personality (Tabassum, 2011). Signing a one-year contractual agreement would be necessary to allow the company to assess the manager for a year.
Selection of coffee servers would involve internal selection approaches and external outsourcing plans. Coffee servers would be employable on a three-month basis with renewable contracts. The coffee shop shall depend mostly on the recruited store managers to assess the present servers, perform appraisal reports, and recommend for any appropriate replacements. The owner shall select two reliable scouts among the store managers, who will be responsible for undertaking field excursions to find replacements, analyze the job market, and engage directly in the recruitment of the coffee servers. To enhance competency selection, the scouts will liaise with outsourcing companies such as private recruitment agencies and bureaus that would offer the employees or give reliable referrals.
A Communication Message
Being a new business that has no effective links to the labor market, the coffee shop would seek to advertise its vacant positions, especially those related to the employment of the store managers, who require an external recruitment plan. Branine (2008) asserts that the outsourcing of servers would also require a recruitment plan and an employee selection strategy that would ensure suitable selection. The coffee shop would need a communication message that would describe the organization, its main activities, its brand, and its service provision details in the desired job advertisement platforms. For external recruitment, the company will have the following communication message to attract suitably qualified candidates to any open vacancies.
For all candidates seeking an employment opportunity, here is a perfect chance to work for a young enterprise that values individual abilities and skills. A newly launched coffee shop that offers restaurant related services such as cafeteria food services and takeaway food services in a university premises with a good working environment is seeking to fill various working positions. The newly opened coffee gourmet aims at offering coffee as the foremost refreshing beverage with two forms of working positions sought to be available for competent and determined workers to occupy. The coffee gourmet shall also offer snacks and other food products suitable for use with coffee.
Located in a metropolitan center where traffic and transport system is efficient, travelling to the workplace is affordable and reliable. The coffee shop currently has six open positions: two for the store managers and four for coffee servers. In commuting to the workplace, the coffee gourmet will consider the hardship encountered by newly recruited workers and is willing to offer transport to its workers for the first three months. The enterprise offers its employees a lucrative payment package with flexible working hours that allow employees to engage in other activities after job. The enterprise values individual abilities, skills, and competencies, and thus, it is highly observing employment ethics.
The Communication Medium for Recruitment
Due to its low job market reputation, the management of the newly opened coffee shop understands the need to communicate its vacant positions through reliable advertisement media (Sayce, Weststar, & Verma, 2014). Being a new enterprise with constraint finances, selecting an easy and cost effective way to advertise shall help to make savings of the business (Tabassum, 2011). The Coffee shop has located three social media platforms that would help in passing the recruitment message across the large pool of vibrant youths, who are currently seeking employment. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter shall be the main job advertisement social media platforms to attract suitably qualified and determined youths to work at the coffee gourmet.
With the advanced mobile and computer technologies, the youth seem more impressed to use phones and computers to seek information, including any available job opportunities through the Internet (Sayce, Weststar, & Verma, 2014). Televisions, daily newspapers, and news magazines have become rarely preferred means of communication for the youth and getting information quickly from their phone gadgets has been a priority for many youths. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter have a million subscribers in which most of them are youths with varied professional skills, abilities, and capacities to offer exemplary services to any promising organization (Branine, 2008). The majority of the social media youths are also unemployed and seeking opportunities to explore their talents and work skills.
Apparently, newspapers, televisions, and magazines are increasingly becoming expensive in delivering corporate information such as adverts. It actually costs thousands of dollars for companies to acquire space and opportunity for commercial adverts on these traditional platforms that are also losing fame among the youth (Sayce, Weststar, & Verma, 2014). Unlike these traditional platforms, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace offer unrestricted advertisement opportunities to companies in a very cost effective manner. It only requires a website, hosting server, and the Internet to allow companies to post virtually anything regarding their products on the online platforms (Branine, 2008). More importantly, the old platforms themselves have found ways to remain incorporated into the social media platforms to improve their corporate images.
The Selection Process for Staffing
Employee selection that follows the right process is normally cost-effective and appropriate for any business organization. Tabassum (2011) argues that, “an effective approach to recruitment and selection can help an organization to maximize the competitive advantages by choosing the best pool of candidates quickly and cost efficiently” (p. 57). The coffee shop will definitely have a specific selection process as envisaged by both the internal and external employment techniques.
The Shop Website and the Recruitment Agencies
Since the Shop values the use of modern technology and internet for reliable communication with its market, the company shall have a website that shall always appear on the three social media platforms (Branine, 2008). After receiving vacancy advertisements on the three social media platforms, the candidates shall present their academic credentials via the given website. The management shall review and screen their testimonials before considering the qualified candidates.
The Assessment Center
Tabassum (2011) recommends that the shop will always have an assessment center located within the shop stores where the shop owner will engage with the selected candidates directly for the interview purposes. An inclusion of the two managers as trained workplace assessors is part of the plan that the shop will enforce in its management since the shop owner may require decision-making support. Profiling of potential candidates basing on their competencies occur in this instance.
Selection Criteria and Competency Profiling
As aforementioned, the coffee shop shall consider merit-based selection where applicants shall undergo assessment based on a defined selection criterion. The defined criteria that the shop intends to use include work related qualities that may deem effective in business performance (Branine, 2008). For competency profiling using merit-based selection, the shop will assess abilities, skills, educational qualifications, level of training, and standards of personal work performance.
Advantages and Disadvantages
The criterion is based on the principles of external recruitment methods that normally present several benefits. Advantageously, the shop management will be able to attract candidates with varied skills, screen the suitably qualified individuals, and will have a pool of employees to contact when the need arises (Branine, 2008). Disadvantageously, the process requires a costly budget, consume a great deal of time, and damage morale of employees, who wishes to work for the shop.
Initial and Substantive Assessment Methods for External Candidates
While using the external recruitment method, there is a possibility that the shop owner may be incapable of verifying the information of candidates, and therefore, an efficient assessment method is crucial (Tabassum, 2011). For the initial recruitment phase, the shop will have assessment methods for the store managers and coffee servers. The initial recruitment process will involve actualized merit-based assessment that would involve analyzing, screening, interviewing, and placing workers based on their work skills and competencies (Branine, 2008). In this phase of recruitment for the store managers, the shop owner shall consider a variety of qualifications to ensure effective selection.
The initial work related qualities of the store managers would include basic knowledge about computer office applications, ability to coordinate duties with minimal supervision, ability to collaborate well with workmates, good public relations with excellent communication skills, and abilities to make personal informed decisions (Branine, 2008). These would be the initial requirements for the store managers, who will then undergo proper store management training. For the coffee servers in the initial phase of recruitment, the coffee shop owner will consider their skills in restaurant related services, their proficiency in English communication, and their abilities to make decisions when required.
As the shop advances, the shop management shall develop substantive assessment criteria. Branine (2008) recommends that substantive assessment methods for the store managers will involve analyzing the abilities of the applicants in scheduling multiple work teams, developing business strategies for expansion, expanding knowledge in database management, planning and managing budgets for projects, promoting work experience and skills in quality improvement systems, and improving stock control knowledge. For the servers, the management will consider their abilities to organize activities efficiently, effective time management skills, abilities to minimize workplace risks, problem-solving techniques, a willingness to multitask in a workplace, and abilities to initiate improvement strategies.
The predictors for assessing KSAO’s
Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Others (KSAO’s) are traits that applicants must fulfill to remain considered in a vacant job position. The KSAO model is generally a performance appraisal approach of assessing the competency of individuals in a workplace (Sayce, Weststar, & Verma, 2014).
For the purposes of screening the hired employees, the shop owner will assess through certain predictors. Workflow is the first predictor that would determine the proficiency of workers at the coffee gourmet. The coffee shop owner will maintain a strict assessment of workflow in each of the employees while on duty. Steady workflow while on duty will be a predictor of the abilities and knowledge of individuals.
Customer feedbacks will be a predictor of the abilities, skills, and knowledge of workers, especially the servers. Within a reasonable operation period, the shop owner should receive customer feedback regarding the services, customer care, and image of the shop attendants. Positive customer feedback will mean high proficiency (Sayce, Weststar, & Verma, 2014). Store financial audits will determine the accounting skills of store managers. The financial audits that may involve engaging external auditors will determine the abilities and knowledge of store managers to calculate profit margins, keep financial records, make effective accounting, and maintain financial stability. The growth rate of the shop will determine the overall KSAO of the workers in effective business performance.
References
Branine, M. (2008). Graduate recruitment and selection in the UK: A study of the recent changes in methods and expectations. Career Development International, 13(6), 497-513. Web.
Sayce, S., Weststar, J., & Verma, A. (2014). The recruitment and selection of pension trustees: an integrative approach. Human Resource Management Journal, 24(3), 307-322. Web.
Tabassum, A. (2011). The process of recruitment and selection in a developing country: case study of a bank in Bangladesh. ABAC Journal, 31(1), 55-67. Web.