With your new found business savvy you have decided to take on the challenges of becoming an entrepreneur and have opened a Marketing and Communications firm call ‘Rev Communications’. The Rev Business model involves creating marketing plans and consulting businesses on what their advertisements, promotions and marketing messages should be to optimize their marketing expenditures. You have surveyed the local market, secured the funding, leased a building and have the foundation in place to start your company and make big dollars. Now you must take on Human Resource activities.
You will require a staff of six people;
Two business development officers to find, meet and communicate with clients. Business development employees should have in-depth experience in networking with private businesses and governments and must be very strong with communication skills; one to one conversations, group meetings, presentations, interacting with government officials, etc. BD officers must also be well-organized, be clean cut and presentable and must also be willing to travel extensively. One BD officer will be the senior development boss with the second person serving as supporting staff.
Three graphic designers to develop concepts, sketch ideas, develop marketing slogans, etc. Graphic Designers must be well schooled and experienced in all the latest IT programs and technologies (‘photoshop’, adobe PDF readers, publisher, etc) and industry experience is a huge advantage. Designers must be reachable 24-7 as customers requiring communications are usually demanding and make requests at the ‘last minute’. The designers should know how to design logos, be creative with slogans, be highly skilled with printers and scanners and should also be frugal in using company resources (paper, colored ink, etc.). Rev communications will have a senior graphic designer in charge of all concept development, followed by a junior designer. The third designer will be a young student, preferably directly from school with little experience and lots of energy (who can be paid a very modest wage to save company costs).
An office assistant to manage calls, emails, pay bills, monitor spending and budgets, etc. There is no requirement for this person to have communications/marketing experience as they will deal with generic office administration matters. This person should be experienced in an office setting and comfortable with managing and flagging budget lines. The office assistant must also be efficient and effective in letter drafting, file management, email correspondence, preparing mail-outs and invoices, handling logistics for meetings and conferences, etc.
Given the positions above, answer the following questions;
A. What would your recruiting strategy be for the Business Development, Graphic Design and Office Manager positions? Where would you post the job offerings? Would your recruiting be internal or external?
B. How would you select your human resources – using interviews, tests (online or paper)? Explain.
C. An important HR consideration is evaluating your Rev employees. Would you choose the simple ranking, forced distribution, graphic rating scale or critical incident method as means of evaluating your people? Could you use the same option for all six employees or would one be preferred over another depending on the job?
D. Everyone loves payday. Explain how you would pay your six employees using one or a combination of the following; salary based on industry standard, merit pay, skill-based pay, knowledge-based pay, sales commission, gain-sharing program, profit-sharing plan.
E. In many cases potential employees are as attracted to the benefits package as they are the salary level. For Rev Communications would you see the value in establishing a wellness program and/or a cafeteria-style benefit plan? (Keep in mind these programs can get to be very expensive, especially for a start-up company such as Rev).
F. Employee turnover is a fact of life in the private sector business world. What would Rev’s Replacement chart look like?