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1. Consider the three candidates in Exhibit A. If forced to make a decision tomorrow,

which candidate should Alistair choose for the job? What major factors should

determine his choice?

Taking all three candidates into consideration, when forced to make a decision, I would

recommend hiring the first candidate, Marie Erten-Loiseau, (Dowling, Festing, & Engle,

2013).as she is well experienced in dealing with projects in this particular region of Europe

where the firm does not have a proper foothold, thus knows the intricacies of dealing with

government officials as well as the technical side as her work in previous two projects have

yielded great success. She is conversant with the languages spoken in all three countries of

interest. On her personal level, she has an almost retired spouse and child attending university

and thus allowing for her moving to a different country without the fear of disrupting her life.

In contrast, the second candidate, Janos Gabor, who is a native of the main country of

interest, and is well connected with government official, might seem like a better fit, but he has

no experience dealing with any form of government policies which is a requirement that needs to

be there as the nature of this position requires one to navigate political barriers as well as

technical ones. As for the third candidate, Sinead Marrinan-Mcguire, she is the most uniquely

qualified for this post as she has done her due diligence, an is already conversant with the

technology to be applied in the joint venture, but she has no language skills required for two of

the three countries in question as she has had no dealing in either of the two, and more

importantly, she has a young family and would be a highly inconveniencing for her young family

to be displaced. Her husband has an established career which would be hard to displace. As a

theme in her career, she only takes short trips to France. (Dowling, Festing, & Engle, 2013)
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2. We are told nothing of the process that Trianon uses to recruit candidates for this

level of final selection. Given what you know about the firm from the case, outline a

general recruitment and selection process for Trianon. Describe how your proposed

process fits with ‘best’ selection practices as well as the strategic needs of this

company

Based off the information provided, we see that Alistair Mackay, has a high consideration

for those who are uniquely qualified to any given position ranging from technical ability,

administrative ability, and personal circumstances. Going off the details in which his short list

for possible candidates for project engineer. He has taken the interest to find the technical ability

of each individual, delving into their recorded achievements. Then he takes a look at their

administrative capabilities of the same criteria of their career record, and finally, he looks into

their personal lives’ circumstances. And then based of the requirement of the job, they will pick

the one most uniquely qualified for the position without having to inconvenience the candidates

personal life. For example, it would not make sense to hire the third candidate while she has a

young family and a husband with an established career over the single, second candidate while

all of them have qualified to be listed for the position of Project manager. (Dowling, Festing, &

Engle, 2013).

3. Should HR staff be involved in strategic decisions relating to international business

operations such as finalising a joint venture agreement?

I believe that HR should be involved in the strategic decisions that relate to international

business operations as they are mandated to hire the right people for the jobs under some tight

schedules, and would thus be important to include them, if only to streamline the process of
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hiring the correct candidates for the positions eliminating the need for rush hires that would end-

up undermining the company’s efforts abroad.

References
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Dowling, P. J., Festing, M., &(Dowling, Festing, & Engle, 2013). Engle, A. D. (2013).
International human resource management(6th ed., pp. 287-288). Cengage Learning.