Recommendations For Recruiting Entry Level Sales Specialists And Software Developers At Best Buy Company

The Best Buy Company is one of the largest retail companies in the world that engages in the manufacture and sale of consumer electronics and audio products. It has an employer brand of high value and is committed to recruiting passion and driven professionals to its team of employees, who are capable of performing a thorough job of helping the company to proceed in forward direction.

This report outlines a few recommendations that can be taken into account by HR professionals of the Best Buy Company at the time of recruiting and selecting entry level blue shirt sales specialists and software developers to work for the company. The report also assesses the overall employer brand value of the company when describing and making such justified recommendations.

Recommendations for Recruiting Entry Level Blue Shirt Sales Specialists

The Best Buy Company is a multinational consumer electronics retail company that is based in Minnesota, USA. The company was established in as early as 1966 by James Wheeler and Richard Schulze as a store that specialized in the manufacture in the audio and audio based products. In 1983, the company re-branded its image by focusing more on the production of consumer electronics, reaching out to a wide customer base upon doing so. Best Buy is a company that has a presence in countries such as Canada and Mexico, although its primary operations are carried out in America and even had a base in Europe until the year 2012 and in China until 2011 (corporate.bestbuy.com, 2018). Some of the well-known subsidiaries of the Best Buy Company include Pacific Sales, Magnolia Audio Video and Geek Squad. Best Buy is also known to operate the Insignia and Best Buy Mobile brands in USA and the Five Star Company in China. Cellular phones from Sprint Corporation, Boost Mobile, AT&T Mobile and Verizon Wireless, are bought by Best Buy in the USA, while some of the company’s carriers in Canada include Telus Mobility, Roger Wireless and Bell Mobility (corporate.bestbuy.com, 2018). This report describes and justifies two recommendations that can improve the recruitment of entry-level blue shirt specialists in retail stores, two recommendations that can improve the recruitment of software developers by the company and describes the overall employer brand of Best Buy. The report also describes and justifies two recommendations improving the selection of entry level blue shirt sales specialists in all of the company’s retail stores and for improving the selection of software developers in the head office of the company.

Recommendations for recruiting Entry Level Blue Shirt Sales Specialists 

At the time of recruiting entry level blue shirt sales specialists, the Best Buy Company needs to take care to hire youngsters who are optimistic and who are likely to be fully committed to what they do. Most of the entry-level professionals who have been employed by the company until date, are people who are characterized by high degrees of conscientiousness and optimism and always want to do their best for the company (Belisarioet al., 2015). One way by which by this recruitment process can be improved upon, is to ask candidates to fill out self-assessment questionnaires prior to appearing for an interview. The answers that they provide in these questionnaires, will give recruiters a fair idea of how positive or negative they are likely to be, when faced with adverse and normal business situations (Wood et al., 2014). The self-assessment questionnaires can divulge a lot of valuable information about a candidate’s frame of mind and can help a recruiter to understand whether a candidate is likely to respond with optimism and integrity in specific business situations or not. The personal interview process should be scheduled right after the self-assessment questionnaires are filled out, so that the recruiters can tally the answers that are mentioned in the self-assessment questionnaire with those provided during the personal interviews (Panadero & Romero, 2014).

Recommendations for Recruiting Software Developers

The entry-level blue shirt sales specialists who have been working for the Best Buy Company until date are individuals who are fiercely competitive, who are fully capable of surviving well enough in the existing job ambience and who are also individuals who are extremely sociable. The Best Buy Company recruiters therefore need to pay attention to all these attributes when hiring new entry level blue shirt sales specialists to work for the company, so that the new arrivals fit into the job profile easily and are capable of carrying out their professional duties in an efficient manner. One of the ways for the Best Buy Company to make sure that it is indeed hiring competitive entry-level specialists into its employee base is to make them interact with one another at the time of recruitment. Candidates need to be made to speak to one another, to communicate effectively and take part in group activities as a part of the recruitment process (Chaudhri, 2016). By doing so, they can give recruiters of the company a fairly good idea of whether or not they are sociable and whether or not they possess the competitive drive that is needed to do well for the company in the long run.

When it comes to recruiting the best software developers for the Best Buy Company, the recruitment professionals need to focus on hiring people who possess all the skills and the academic credentials that are needed in order to do a successful job of being IT professionals for the Best Buy Company. Ideally, any and every software developer that is recruited by the Best Buy Company is someone who needs to be well experienced and who should have all the expertise that is required in order to carry out IT duties for the company in the most professional and skilled of ways. For this purpose the recruiters should make sure to hire candidates who have an MSC at least if not a PhD in software developed (Wickboldt et al., 2015). Such individuals should also be those who have worked at well-known IT firms for over a period of six or seven years. Recruiters can only rely on the most experienced of software professionals to do a thorough job for the company and look into the company’s IT requirements and needs in the best possible way (Mäder & Egyed, 2015).

Recruiters should also pay careful attention to a number of skills and personal attributes that software developers need to have to do well for the Best Buy Company in the long run. The software developers who are hired should be those who are driven and competitive by nature but who also carry out their professional duties with a high degree of integrity (Heikkilä et al., 2015). The software developers who are hired should be people who are already familiar with the business goals and aspirations of the company, so that they can help the company to accomplish its professional objectives in a smooth and hassle free manner. The integrity and the competitive spirit of software developers is something that recruiters can assess rather easily when they invite them from a personal interview (Clarke & O’Connor, 2015). A personal interview process amounting to about twenty or thirty minutes will reveal a lot about a person’s focus, aim and character. Just like it is the case for entry level blue shirt sales specialists, the recruiters of the Best Buy Company need to focus on asking the right questions during in-depth personal interviews and get the software developer candidates to reveal as much about themselves as possible in the course of the interview. By doing so, the recruiters will get a fair idea of whether or not they are recruiting the right people for the job. Software developers who lack drive and determination and who do not possess the integrity and moral value that is needed to do work in as ethical, a way as possible, will not be able to motivate themselves to do well for the Best Buy Company in the long run (Salleh et al., 2018). Such individuals are likely to get bored very easily and they will want to quit their jobs sooner rather than later. Thus, every effort needs to be made on the part of recruiters to hire software developers who are not only well skilled and experienced, and who have all the academic and vocational credentials to do a thorough IT job for the company, but who also have the drive and determination to go far in life (Omar et al., 2015). It is only the competitive and driven software developers with a high sense of integrity who can be expected to perform to potential when working for a company like Best Buy, which already has such a prominent and competitive presence in the global market.

Employer branding is a term that is used to describe the value of a company or business enterprise as an employer, that is, whether a company has a good enough reputation or not by lieu of the working environment that it provides its employees with and the kind of work culture it creates for their benefit. As far the Best Buy Company is concerned, its employer brand value is one that tend to be quite high when compared with related businesses in the USA and Canada. This is because Best Buy is a company that pays special attention to recruiting or employing people who have a high sense of integrity about them and who are also sociable and friendly and can make others feel at home at the work place. The company is not focused on hiring people who are simply competitive and driven in nature, and who like to spend all their time in isolation by working hard for the company and promoting its business growth (Jahan, 2014). Of course, Best Buy values competitive and driven professionals immensely and makes sure that each and every one of its employees has a high level of competitiveness in him or her so as to take the company in forward direction. However, in addition to competitiveness and drive, the Best Buy Company is also one that places a good deal of value on hiring and nurturing employees who have friendly and sociable. It always recruits individuals who are capable of getting along well with others at the work place and who have the ethical values and high moral sense that is needed in order to do good business (Cloutier et al., 2015). People who lack in integrity will not find a place in the payroll of the Best Buy Company, ever.

The four strategic recommendations that have been made in the section above for the recruitment of entry level blue shirt sales specialists and software developers by the company are those that are in keeping with its overall employer brand value. The self-assessment questionnaires, interactive sessions and in depth personal interviews that are carried out when recruiting entry level sales persons and software developers alike, will not only reveal whether or not the people who are being recruited are friendly, sociable and ethical but who are also competitive and driven, with ambitious goals and aspirations of their own.

Recommendations for Selecting Entry Level Blue Shirt Sales Specialists 

The Best Buy Company is one that needs to focus on selecting entry level blue shirt sales specialists who do well in the interview round, more so, than the manner in which they answer the different questions in the self-assessment questionnaire. This is because a prominent company like the Best Buy Company will want individuals serving it who are confident in front of large groups of people and who are capable of arguing and doing their work successfully without feeling intimidated by others. Intelligent people are capable of doing well in written assessments. However, individuals who are intelligent, driven, competitive and confident all at the same time, are those that do exceedingly well in personal interviews and in interactive sessions where they have to communicate with large or small groups of people and where they have to really get their point across by any means (Gibbs, MacDonald & MacKay, 2015). Hence, the Best Buy Company needs to place a lot of emphasis and value on the manner in which candidates perform in the interview and other interactive sessions, in order to select the right entry-level specialists for its sales jobs.

The Best Buy Company should also pay a good deal of attention to selecting people from diverse ethnic backgrounds to be a part of its employee base. Out of all the candidates that apply for the position of entry level blue shirt sales specialists, the company needs to take care to recruit people from minority ethnic backgrounds, or sexual minorities or both, so that the matter of diversity and inclusiveness is addressed and that no member of any gender is felt left out or discriminated against because of the company’s candidate selection process (Spence et al., 2017).

Where the selection of software developers is concerned, the Best Buy Company recruiters need to place a lot of emphasis and value to candidates who are capable of answering interview questions well rather than simply hiring those who have good academic credentials. The interview process will reveal whether the software developers are able to apply what they have learnt as a part of pursuing their academic degree and other programs, to resolve practical IT related matters. There is no point in selecting software developers who have good textbook knowledge but who are unable to apply all that they know well enough, at the time of doing a job.

When it comes to recruiting individuals who are well experienced and who have worked for several years as software development professionals for other IT companies, special value and emphasis need to be placed at the time of selection in hiring software developers who are more years of experience compared to those who have fewer years of experience. For instance, a candidate who has been working for seven years or more as a software developer at an IT Firm should be preferred over someone who has been working for just three to four years. Such a selection should be made only after taking a number of other important factors into consideration, such as whether or not the individual is sociable, whether he is capable of integrating well with his peers and whether or not he is capable of doing his work in as ethical a manner as possible. A software developer who is well experienced will have the acumen, the knowledge and the skills that are needed to take care of all types of IT related jobs as quickly and as smoothly as possible.

Conclusion 

Thus, by taking all the recommendations for recruiting and selecting entry level blue shirt sales specialists and software developers into account, the Best Buy Company can go a long way in recruiting the right people to work for the growth and development of its business. The Best Buy Company should always take cognizance of its employer brand value and recruit individuals who are committed, have high integrity, are sociable and have all the skills, credentials and experience that is required to do the best that they can to take the company in forward direction.

References

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