INTRODUCTION: In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage is largely derived from intangible assets: human, social, and intellectual capital. Intangible assets are produced by skilled, capable workers. Human resource professionals enable current and future organizational competitiveness by maintaining an adequate supply of people with the skills, knowledge, and abilities needed to produce these resources. Human resource professionals accomplish this through workforce planning, recruitment and selection of top-quality talent, and effective employee-relations management. As a human resource professional, your ability to effectively identify your organization’s need for employees, plan and implement employee recruitment and selection strategies, and manage employee relations will directly contribute to your organization’s success.

SCENARIO You are the newly appointed director of human resource management for the police department of a city in the northeastern United States. Your organization has struggled to hire new police officers for some time. Your predecessor attempted to increase recruitment and selection of new officers by implementing an employee referral plan. However, the number of new officers hired through referrals has fallen short of hiring goals. The need for police officers intensified when your city’s newly elected mayor promised to lower crime by increasing the number of police patrols in high-crime areas. The police department has met the need for increased patrols by assigning existing police officers additional hours and paying overtime wages. As the number of hours worked and overtime payments increased over time, this practice—originally intended to be a short-term remedy—attracted unwanted attention. A front-page article in your city’s newspaper has revealed that three police officers earned higher annual salaries than the mayor, due to excessive overtime. Stung and embarrassed by this disclosure, the mayor fired your predecessor and put you in his place. Both the mayor and your boss have given orders to “reduce overtime by hiring new police officers immediately!” This mandate requires you to plan and implement new strategies to hire 25 new police officers. Fortunately, the former director of human resources left behind several documents that will help you perform these tasks. Refer to the following documents as directed when you perform the requirements below: (1) “Memo on Proposed Employee Referral Plan,” (2) “Job Description of City Police Officers,” and (3) “Data on Recruitment Sources and Methods.” REQUIREMENTS Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. An originality report is provided when you submit your task that can be used as a guide. You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course. Create a report (suggested length of 4–6 pages) in which you address the following: A. Analyze factors in the internal and external labor market that influence the supply of and demand for police officers by doing the following (refer to the scenario above and the attached “Memo on Proposed Employee Referral Plan” to complete these tasks): 1. Discuss three factors that are influencing labor demand. 2. Discuss three factors that are influencing labor supply. B. Design a recruitment plan for police officers by doing the following (refer to the task attachments and your knowledge of best practices to complete these tasks): 1. Identify three recruitment objectives for your organization. 2. Develop a recruitment strategy for attracting job applicants by doing the following: a. Determine the size of the applicant pool needed to produce 25 viable candidates (job offer-ready) using yield ratios and the recruitment data in the attached “Data on Recruitment Sources and Methods.” b. Recommend two types of individuals who should be targeted for recruitment (i.e., the target groups listed in the attached “Data on Recruitment Sources and Methods”). i. Justify your recommendation. c. Describe two effective methods for reaching each target group. C. Design a selection plan for police officers by doing the following: 1. Recommend three appropriate selection methods for all target candidates. a. Justify each of your three recommendations. 2. Describe two selection tests you will use to assess a candidate’s suitability for the job of police officer. 3. Identify two background verification checks that should be used in the selection process including the following: • type of check • when the check should be conducted in the selection process 4. Discuss four methods of evaluating the overall effectiveness of your recruitment and selection plans. D. When you use sources to support ideas and elements in a paper or project, provide acknowledgement of source information for any content that is quoted, paraphrased or summarized. Acknowledgement of source information includes: • Author • Date • Title • Location of information (e.g., publisher, journal, or website URL)