[MBA] Case Study The New Job (In full template)

After graduating from school, you are fortunate to receive an offer as an assistant manager of a marketing department in a company located in New York City, working for a fast-growing company that provides marketing support for companies. Your department specializes in marketing strategies for the Internet and currently consists of 10 people -you, your direct supervisor (the manager of the department), and 8 marketing associates. Your job is to help the manager lead the unit to develop long-term strategies for your unit, to maintain excellent customer service with your clients, and to strive to build future business opportunities. The marketing associates in your department work a very flexible schedule and are often offsite, working with the clients at their location to help develop marketing campaigns to improve their business presence, and performance, via the Internet.

After being on the job a short while, you realize that you really need to create another position to help make sure all the necessary work gets completed on time. Essentially, while you and your manager are focusing on the long-term interests of the department and the associates are working very hard to help the clients, many of the administrative aspects of the work are falling by the wayside. For example, no one is currently tracking accounts payable from clients or handling accounts payable to your service providers. As a result, you are spending time on these tasks that are beyond your job expectations. In addition, you are spending an increasing amount of time making travel arrangements such as booking hotels and arranging transportation for your staff. After you talk with the manager of your unit, she agrees that something needs to change to allow you to devote your time to more of the strategic issues in the unit, and she permits you to create a new position to help out in your department. Your challenge now is to determine what this position will be.

Answer the following questions by applying the concepts learned in Chapter 1. Also, conduct literature reviews on the subject of discussion and use to support your case study answers:

What job would you create? Why?
What are the employee competencies this position needs to be successful? Why?
What are your ideas for how you might design performance management, compensation and incentives for this new position? Why?
Are there any particular challenges you would expect to encounter that would make successfully filling this position difficult? How would you overcome these challenges?

Case – The New Job

In the given case, a company located in New York growing fast enough providing marketing support for companies is urge of recruiting new employees. Currently there are 10 employees viz. The Assistant Manager, Department Manager and 8 marketing associates. Since the marketing associates spend their time on customer premises and rarely can help Assistant manager, he had been surrounded by other tasks more than his core tasks. So he and the manager came under an understanding of hiring new employee that bridge between assistant manager and the marketing associates. Basically, the new post they create should help tracking accounts, billing, and ticketing as well as customer responsibilities. So, let’s discuss what more details can be available for:

Operation Manager as new job created

Based on the literature review and given case the new position that bridge between Assistant manager and ordinates is Operation Manager. The main administrative tasks are currently handled by Assistant manager who is just under the department manager, so the assistant manager cannot focus on his tasks. When department manager to be agree to create new job assistant manager is free to think about hiring new employee who can better enhance company operation. So the new created job is considered as Operation Manager because the department manager is doing his job well being assisted by assistant manager. But assistant manager is hanged on responding marketing associates and cannot see enough time on handling account payables. Assistant manager is spending time on travelling manager viz. ticket booking, hotel booking and other facilities so why not create a job that can cover these operations. Then assistant manager is free to work for enhance of core business function. The Operation manager is a post that can administer properly with marketing associates and do required clerical works.

We can enlist the job description of Assistant manager for the company as:

Handling accounts by managing payable and receivables
Arranging travel arrangement such as booking hotel and tickets
Deal with marketing associates
Help assistant manager for reporting and filing
Competencies need for the new job

In previous section we discussed the post to be create as Operation Manager that helps Assistant manager handling tasks that are currently handled by assistant manager. So, the operation manager being need performing accounting tasks, reporting and filing too we can say he should have sound knowledge of accounting Computer literate as well as good communication/interpersonal skills. So let’s point out the job specifications as:

Good accounting knowledge, concept of accounting standards and accounting software
Proficient on Office applications like Word Processor, Spreadsheet and Presentation makers
Good spoken as well as written English along with interpersonal communication skill
Sound knowledge of report preparation and filing system
Team working and risk taking ability

Performance management, Compensation and Incentives

Operation manger plays roles discussed in above section, Assistant manager is responsible for monitoring the performance and reporting the same for department manager. There are certain factors that delineates performance measurement and compensate the both. The compensation and facilities provided depends on market availability of skilled manpower matching the job specifications, performance of newly recruited employee as per the job specification and organizational ability to facilitate him. So for the post like Operation Manager we compensate he a basic level of Salary and depending upon the effectiveness of his performance incentives are provided. Assistant manager is able to benchmark his competences by reviewing the payable dues, effectiveness of accounting kept, standard matching of filing system and moreover crashing of meetings for mangers. If his performance is satisfying and company is able to raise his salary then assistant manager can recommend the department head for his continuity as well as revisions. As stated in the case given the marketing associates are dealing with assistant manager directly now the level of customer satisfaction and marketing effective ness is directly related with operation manger so we can provide incentives.

Challenges Encountered on filling the position

Recruiting an employee takestime and requires high level of decision making/differentiating skill and knowledge of candidates. In the time of competition a failing recruitment will not only hinder company progress but also long term burden for organization, customer dis-satisfaction too. So there are some challenges probably occur that make filling the position difficult which we can enlist as:

Market availability of skilled manpower
If found best matching candidate(s) now next worry is organizational ability to fulfil the expectation of candidate
When interviewing candidates the challenge be to find inherent capability of the candidates whether that matches job specification or not
Interviewer can easily distinguish academic qualification matching or not but the interpersonal skill as well as his morale that matters team work cannot be clear on a single seat
So we have to take care while delineating Job description, specification and candidate selection, the ways to overcome those challenges be:

Run proper discussion within the organization for Job description and specification preparation
Provide enough time for vacancy application and give time for interviewing candidates enough
Get proper idea about organizational ability to compensate the new post
Define performance appraisal and incentive clearly in the early stage of recruitment.

Conclusions

When the company is in need of new employee who can bridge the gap created in between Assistant Manager and the marketing associates, new post of Operation Manager will help Assistant Manager so that assistant manager can concern on core business tasks rather than covering the clerical tasks. We in this case study named the new job title, discussed about job description and job specifications along with the compensation and incentives for the new post. Furthermore we discussed possible challenges on choosing new employee from market.

References

Lepak, D., & Gowan, M. (2010). Human resource management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Supportingadvancement.com. (2015).Sample Job Descriptions – Operations Manager. Retrieved 6 September 2015, from http://www.supportingadvancement.com/employment/job_descriptions/advancement_services/operations_manager.htm

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