Assignment 2 – Recruitment Exercise
Maximum Points = 25
You work in HR for a medium-sized city of approximately 1 million people. Approximately 30% of the city’s residents are racial of ethnic minorities, with a significant proportion of African-American and Hispanic residents.
There has been a hiring freeze for several years. But now the city has some money to expand hiring. It is going to hire more fire fighters.
The city wants to recruit approximately 1,000 additional fire fighters. At the present time, the fire department is overwhelmingly white (and male). Many of the current fire fighters are the sons and nephews of former or current fire fighters. Many are of Irish or Italian descent; their relatives had taken jobs as fire fighters at a time when the working conditions were considered dangerous and unattractive. However, over the years, the fire fighters’ union had achieved more and more benefits and greater safety standards. The jobs are now considered quite attractive, well paid and flexible.
In the past, potential recruits to the first department learned of the civil service exams through word of mouth from relatives who worked for the fire department; some of them had access to a ‘bank’ of former exam questions that had been collected and stored at fire stations.
The entry exam for the fire department in the past consisted of a series of essay questions, posing hypothetical questions that a fire fighter might encounter in a fire. They were designed by officers of the fire department one afternoon when they got together and thought up essay questions to put on the exams. In the past, minorities (many of whom were educated in under-resourced schools in the economically-deprived neighbourhoods in which minorities tended to be concentrated) did very poorly on these essay-based exams.
Generally speaking, while approximately 25% of white candidates scored well enough to be placed on a civil service list from which appointments would be made for several years, and had a good chance of being appointed, only approximately 10% of minority candidates scored well enough to ‘pass’ the exam, and were not placed on the hiring list.
The Fire Commission would like to increase minority representation in the ranks of the Fire Department, if possible. The Commission has asked the city HR department for which you work to design a recruitment campaign and suggest an entrance exam that might achieve its goals of increasing minority representation in the fire department.
Your assignment is to write a memorandum to the Fire Commission about recruitment practices of the Fire Department and to suggest ways that might achieve the Commission’s desired goals.
In your memorandum, you should cover the following points:
You can use the above points to structure your memorandum, but be sure to consider and address the following issues, which are implicit in the exercise:
You may wish to “read ahead” and consider the Supreme Court Ricci decision.
The format for this assignment should be a memorandum to the Fire Commission, using paragraphs and complete sentences. Your paper will be graded according to the following rubric.
Your assignment will be graded according to the following rubric:
RUBRIC CATEGORIES |
Excellent |
Good |
Fair |
Poor |
Points & Comments |
ADDRESSES ALL ASSIGNMENT REQUIREMENTS (0-5 points) |
Follows directions to the letter, and addresses all four parts. |
Shows command of the facts and law, but does not follow directions. |
Fails to address one or more of the required topics. |
Ignores directions as to requested form. |
|
SKILL IN WRITING AND ANALYSIS Degree of sophistication or depth of thought (0-15 points) |
Carefully delineates and analyses all of the relevant law and facts. |
Lists all the most relevant facts and law, but treats them in a cursory manner |
Omits relevant facts/law or places emphasis on less relevant items. |
Covers only a portion of the important laws and/or facts in reaching a conclusion. |
|
MECHANICS AND GRAMMAR Mechanics of memorandum (0-5 points) |
No errors of spelling or grammar; well-presented structure. |
A few spelling or grammatical errors |
Sloppy structure and/or spelling or grammar errors |
Many spelling or grammar errors and poor structure. |
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