Strategic Staffing, 2e (Phillips/Gully)

Chapter 13 Staffing System Evaluation and Technology

1) The influence of strategic staffing on a candidate ends once the candidate is hired.
Answer: FALSE

3) Lagging indicators help a company improve its staffing efforts midstream.

Answer: FALSE

5) Staffing efficiency is usually more difficult to measure than staffing effectiveness.

Answer: FALSE

6) Cost per hire is a staffing effectiveness metric.

Answer: FALSE

9) The DMADV method of Six Sigma stands for Design, Measure, Analyze, Deduce, and
Verify.
Answer: FALSE

10) The balanced scorecard approach bases its assessment of employee performance completely
on financial gain to the company.
Answer: FALSE

11) The choice of criteria in a balanced scorecard should be based on the company's strategy and
goals, not on the challenges the company anticipates.
Answer: FALSE

14) A human resource information system is a database of both applicant and job information.
Answer: FALSE

15) Digital staffing dashboards lack scalability and hence are not suitable for small- and
medium-sized companies.
Answer: FALSE

16) Which of the following refers to the process of analyzing a hiring system to determine its
performance and effectiveness?
A) digital staffing
B) staffing evaluation
C) HR planning
D) recruitment life cycle management
Answer: B

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17) Due to inappropriate staffing practices a number of good quality candidates were rejected in
favor of poor quality hires at Mac Computers. The rejected candidates joined other software
firms and mentioned this experience to other software personnel. Everyone who heard it formed
a bad impression of Mac Computers and its staffing practices. This is an example of the
________ related to poor staffing practices.
A) direct costs
B) leading indicators
C) negative spillover effects
D) key performance indicators
Answer: C

18) Indirect staffing costs ________.

A) precede a staffing outcome
B) can be more significant than the direct costs but are more difficult to measure
C) are incurred if critical positions are unfilled for longer than necessary
D) do not have any financial implications for the firm, unlike direct costs
Answer: B

19) ________ is a direct cost of staffing.

A) Lost market share
B) Lower productivity
C) Lost business opportunities
D) Lower competition
Answer: B

20) Measurable factors critical to the firm's success and long- and short-term goals are
________.
A) key performance indicators
B) digital dashboards
C) staffing moderators
D) HR scorecards
Answer: A

21) Information that is available only after staffing decisions have been made constitutes a
________.
A) leading indicator
B) lagging indicator
C) primary data source
D) secondary data source
Answer: B

22) In terms of evaluating staffing systems, lower applicant quality is a ________.

A) leading indicator
B) lagging indicator
C) staffing metric
D) staffing scorecard criterion
Answer: A
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23) If a company identifies and tracks underrepresented candidates and employees and leverages
the sources from which they were recruited, which of the following is most likely to be the
company's key performance indicator?
A) expanding its business
B) providing equal pay
C) diversifying the workforce
D) diversifying business lines
Answer: C

24) Which of the following is both a leading and a lagging indicator of staffing outcomes?
A) employee-organization fit
B) promotability of firm's new hires
C) high rate of turnover
D) number of applicants per position
Answer: D

25) Which of the following is a leading indicator of staffing outcomes?

A) employee-job fit
B) time to fill a position
C) fewer applications per position
D) promotability of firm's new hires
Answer: C

26) ValuTech is a large-scale software company. Which of the following, if true, is a leading
staffing indicator?
A) The company's quarterly performance has declined after it preferred employment agencies
over campus recruitment programs.
B) The company recently modified its training programs specifically to suit the needs of new
recruits.
C) The company's workforce is short of managerial talent due to the lack of investment in
management development programs.
D) The company's current business model only allows it to pay salaries that are below the
industry average.
Answer: D

27) ValuTech is a large-scale software company. Which of the following, if true, is a lagging
indicator of staffing?
A) The company's image was tarnished by a spate of lawsuits which resulted in the resignation
of several members of the top management.
B) The company has witnessed a drop in demand for its products and services over the last six
months owing to recessionary trends.
C) The company relaxed its hiring standards at the time of recruitment and new hires are
struggling to keep pace with the dynamic work environment.
D) The industry-wide adoption of new technologies has resulted in several firms redefining their
job requirements.
Answer: C

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28) The best use of short-term staffing metrics is ________.
A) to be leading indicators to assess a company's staffing system
B) to evaluate the effectiveness of the staffing system as a whole
C) to evaluate how well the staffing process contributes to strategy execution
D) to identify balanced scorecard criteria
Answer: A

29) Which of the following is a long-term staffing metric?

A) the average time-to-start (by position, source, and recruiter)
B) the number of high quality new hires coming from each recruiting source
C) the number of diverse hires coming from each recruiting source
D) employee job success measured by recruiting source and recruiter
Answer: D

30) How well staffing processes meet stakeholder needs and contribute to strategy execution and
organizational performance are elements of ________.
A) strategic planning
B) staffing efficiency
C) staffing effectiveness
D) staffing information systems
Answer: C

31) The HR manager of a manufacturing firm was calculating the amount spent annually by the
company on its staffing practices. Which of the following should be classified as a replacement
cost?
A) background checks on candidates
B) candidates' travel expenses
C) referral bonuses
D) productivity losses due to the vacancy
Answer: D

32) Staffing efficiency ratio is calculated by ________.

A) multiplying a firm's total staffing costs with the total compensation of the new hires divided
by 100
B) dividing the total compensation paid to new hires by the number of new hires multiplied by
100
C) dividing a firm's total staffing costs by the total compensation of the new hires
multiplied by 100
D) multiplying the compensation paid to new hires with the total number of new hires divided by
100
Answer: C

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33) A firm hires only 5 employees annually but each for a compensation of $100,000 a year.
Assuming it costs the company $12,000 to recruit one person, what is the company's staffing
efficiency ratio?
A) 10.2 percent
B) 1.2 percent
C) 21 percent
D) 12 percent
Answer: D

34) ________ refers to job performance as well as the new hire's fit with his or her work group,
unit, and organization, and the degree to which his or her values are consistent with the
company's culture and values.
A) Job success
B) The value of top performers
C) Staffing efficiency
D) Staffing return on investment
Answer: A

35) The ________ reflects whether the company hired the people it set out to as defined by
hiring manager's predetermined job performance requirements.
A) cost per hire
B) quality of hire
C) value of top performers
D) return investment
Answer: B

36) Which of the following is a data-driven quality initiative and methodology that uses
statistical analysis to measure and improve business processes and their outcomes to near
perfection?
A) key performance indicator analysis
B) digital staffing dashboard
C) Six Sigma
D) balanced staffing scorecard
Answer: C

37) Which of the following is true about Six Sigma?

A) It has limited applicability outside manufacturing industries.
B) It focuses merely on identifying the sources of error, not removing them.
C) It aims to reduce defects to near zero.
D) It does not attempt to control the variables that influence the measurement of activities.
Answer: C
38) A majority of the measures in a balanced staffing scorecard should focus on ________.
A) staffing efficiency
B) value creation
C) cost control
D) candidate assessment metrics
Answer: B
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39) A balanced scorecard balances a firm's ________.
A) recruiting, staffing, and turnover
B) staffing effectiveness and staffing efficiency
C) strategic, operational, financial, and customer-related goals
D) human resource strategy and business strategy
Answer: C

40) Staffing technology improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the staffing function by
________.
A) reducing costs related to staffing for the entire organization
B) automating many of the steps of the staffing process
C) improving the strategic alignment of the staffing system
D) improving the quality of data used in calculating staffing metrics
Answer: B

41) Which of the following represents a breach of staffing evaluation ethics?

A) The data used to conduct a staffing evaluation is of a high standard.
B) The salary information of employees is kept private.
C) The firm's candidates are unaware of how their information will be used.
D) The comparison of recruiters' performances is limited to year-to-year comparisons.
Answer: C

42) Software that allows you to maintain a database of both candidates and job information to
facilitate finding matches between openings and candidates is a(n) ________.
A) applicant tracking system
B) resume screening application
C) balanced staffing scorecard
D) digital staffing dashboard
Answer: A

43) Which of the following is a potential drawback of résumé screening software?

A) It can disproportionately exclude groups of people from various protected categories.
B) It is a time consuming process even if the use of the software is mastered.
C) It results in a very small pool of résumés matching the desired keywords.
D) It generates detailed profiles of candidates with information from unreliable sources.
Answer: A

44) E-recruiting should be used when ________.

A) a small number of candidates are needed
B) the job description specifies only average educational qualifications
C) all other methods of recruitment have proven to be ineffective
D) the candidates being targeted come from specific labor markets
Answer: D

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45) Which of the following statements is true about the digital dashboards?
A) They contain safeguards to protect sensitive employee data.
B) They lack scalability and hence are not suitable for small- and medium-sized firms.
C) They do not provide any indicators of individual employee performance.
D) They present large amounts of data in formats that are not user-friendly.
Answer: A

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