Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad

End Term Exam (Term – II) Take Home Exam

(Time Duration: 2.30 hrs)
Batch 2020 - 22

Answer-sheet

Enroll. No.: Name:

Section:

Date: 14th January, 2021 Term: II

Subject: Human Resource Management

Faculty Name:
Answer No.1
Statement Of Purpose
As a first year PGDM student at IMT Ghaziabad majoring in Marketing, my focus has
been on understanding the intricacies of marketing processes and to familiarize myself
with the key concepts required for practical application in the real world. My focus has
mainly been on understanding the media buying processes of companies and how to
create effective market research for better sales conversions.

My educational background has been in Business Administration from MS University

and I have a combined 31 months of work experience with being a co-founder for an
Advertising firm, Media Relations Manager in a Film Production Company and
Overseas Sales for an IT MNC. During my short career, I have tried extensively to
imbibe the qualities of customer centricity and self-motivation to better my productivity
and the quality of output.

I am a person that enjoys a challenge and the biggest factor that prompted me to apply
for this internship was the inclusive nature of the internship with possible interactions
with upper management and also the importance given to challenge preconceived
notions through an intern platform. I believe I have the required skill-set and the right
attitude to be a good fit for this internship. My purpose with this internship will be to think
creatively to find solutions to recurring problems and to learn as much as I can about
the marketing processes of the company.
As for why I’m a good fit for the company, I am an extrovert with a knack for connecting
with people and a self-motivated individual with a high regard for self-improvement. My
ultimate objective with any work I undertake is to understand my role and its
expectations and to maintain the highest standards of professional integrity in the
execution of my role. I assure you I will bring a can-do attitude for the company and be
a team player and an eternal student looking to positively contribute to the company. I
am flexible with work timings as well as with location and I identify with the core values
of TATA.
An opportunity to work with TATA will be a dream come true and I promise to be a value
addition to the team.
1) Having previously been a cofounder of a startup, I bring ownership to my work and
also strive to maintain and foster team spirit and an enjoyable work environment.
Having happy, motivated people to work with is the best way to improve productivity and
I can bring my ideas to help build this work harmony.

5) I would first understand the core issues that are prompting the employees to
unionize. I will try to mediate the conflicts that have arisen due to unionization by
facilitating open and honest dialogue with representatives from unions and the
management to try and find an amicable solution
Answer No. 2
Process of Job Analysis
1. Identifying the parameters to evaluate through job analysis. For this case, we
would look at job roles that have cross-departmental applications and the
process of delegation of work.

2. Creating an organizational chart for assessing the roles in the organization and
generating a workflow analysis to understand the flow of work from job to job.
The workflow should include information on work activities undertaken,
behavioral traits required, machines and technology utilized, standards of
performance, the context of job role and the skills required.

3. Identifying the jobs that have multi-departmental applications. This will help to
analyze the jobs that are frequently being done across departments (i.e.
everyone doing everything).

4. Identifying the gaps in delegation of work processes and the roles responsible for
delegation of work

5. Analyzing and evaluating the job roles identified as cross-departmental and

having responsibility of delegation and undertaking business process
reengineering to centralize the delegation process of tasks and the
responsibilities of those jobs.

6. Developing job description and specifications for the roles identified for
streamlining the process and assigning responsibility accordingly.

Key Considerations
 Informal delegation of work might hamper efficiency therefore it is critical to
centralize the delegation process and to assign responsibility. Undertaking job
analysis will also help realize unassigned duties that become part of job role for
other employees.

 Everyone doing everything is not the most productive way. Instead, small
multifunctional teams can be assigned the responsibility of cross-departmental
jobs that frequently occur. This will increase the output quality and ensure the
 employee who is best at that work is doing that work and is not undertaking work
that is outside his skill set.

 With this process, recruitment and selection will be easier as job roles will have
stipulated specifications and finding the right fit will be easier. Moreover,
performance appraisal can be effectively undertaken as performance standard
criteria will be clearly defined. This will also help train employees more
effectively.

Methods of Collecting Information

 Interviews – For understanding qualitative insights on job performance
 Questionnaires – For realizing the range of every employee’s job role
 Observations – For identifying unspoken reasons for informal delegation
Answer No. 3
Hiring Managers are part of the HR department responsible for talent acquisition and
retention. Although in most companies HR Managers and Hiring managers are used
synonymously, they each have different scope of work assigned to them.
Hiring Managers contribute in the following ways:
• Understanding the staffing requirements of the company and the qualities for a
good fit for those positions. This enables them to provide valuable insights into a
strategic fit for the company.
• They are responsible for drafting job requirements and descriptions so they can
ascertain the qualities that fit well in candidates with each vacant role present in the
organization
• As an unbiased authority, they are responsible for formulating teams that
undertake hiring processes therefore, their outlook in criteria to look for is valuable.
• Hiring managers know the right questions to ask since they are aware of the less
pretty work that exist for a particular job roles.
• They are the point of contact between the candidate and the company and also
determine the market outlook of the company’s processes
• Hiring managers can also leverage the existing employee network for finding
referrals for a particular position that will fit in easily with the company culture.
• Their expertise in people management and also negotiation helps them achieve
a fair result in terms of the terms of engagement for each employee
Hiring managers are specially trained personnel that add value to the recruitment
process of any organization.
Answer No. 4
Interviews make or break careers. Therefore, it is essential to provide a fair chance to
all candidates despite differences. Following are some of the biases that occur which
hamper fair evaluation in interviews:
Similar-to-me Bias
When a candidate displays personality traits that are similar to the interviewer, it triggers
the similar to me bias in the interviewer prompting him to overlook certain negative
aspects of the individual. For example, being from the same city or school as the
interviewer has no bearing on the candidacy of the candidate although it may still
increase the chances of that candidate getting hired. This bias can be solved by
vigilance on the interviewer’s part and by also following standard operating procedures
for interviewing.
Stereotyping
Stereotyping is unfortunately a common interview bias that occurs. This bias occurs
when the interviewer has a specific understanding of a person based on them being
part of a particular group. It may be based on gender, race, class, etc. This bias tends to
happen due to bigoted ideologies of interviewers who turn the candidate’s identification
with group as the candidate’s identity and have trouble looking beyond that association.
Stereotyping can be solved by understanding the behavioral and personality traits that
can hamper the selection process of candidates.
Halo/Pitchfork Effect Bias
The halo bias occurs when one outstanding point of a candidate dominates the entire
interview process. Contrarily, the pitchfork effect bias occurs when a negative point
made about the candidate dominates the entire interview process. Both of these effects
have negative outcomes on the end result. For example, having an IIM tag does not
necessarily make you the best available manager and having poor academics do not
automatically make you a bad manager. This bias can be solved by more vigilance on
the interviewer’s part and also by taking into consideration the holistic interview process
for evaluation and not just particular instances.
Question Inconsistency
This bias occurs when different questions are asked to candidates for evaluating their
relative candidacy. Without a standard for evaluation, the selection becomes subjective
to the nature of conversation rather than the parameters of evaluation. Moreover, it may
also happen that the order of questions asked may also change thereby distorting the
context of evaluation and providing different results for different candidates. This bias
can be solved by having a standard operating procedure mentioned in an interview
guide and with standard questions for evaluation for all candidates.

Central Tendency Bias

This bias occurs when an interviewer has difficulty in ascertaining which one of the
candidates is relatively better. Due to this, the interviewer rates all candidates about the
same and the issue of averages happens. Due to central tendency bias, deciding which
candidate should be hired becomes very difficult and the interview process becomes a
bit redundant. Central tendency bias can be solved by making questions clearer and
more specific. Interviewers should also not need to justify higher or lower ratings to
remove the instinct to give average ratings to all. Interviewers should also be asked to
avoid giving neutral ratings and provide ratings on either side of the spectrum
Answer No. 5
Following are the core issues that need to be addressed through training:
 Faster enabling of new sales executives
 Reducing distributor sales executive attrition
 Improving productivity of Territory Sales Managers and Distribution Sales
Executives
 Improving on sales capability gaps
 Resolving leadership challenge grievances
Considering the above challenges, following are the key components of the training
program to be conducted for TSMs:
1. Identifying the sales capability gaps that require improvement and providing
an in-class training program with support from external industry experts.

2. Identifying leadership potential in ASMs and TSMs by assigning them as

mentors to new sales executives. This will also help in quicker turnaround in
training and faster enabling of new joinees.

3. Providing essential skill building training with communication skills, problem

solving, basic etiquette, leadership etc. with lectures from industry experts.

4. Theoretical and academic nature concepts like sales forecasting, market

research, lead generation etc. can be done through exclusively structured
reading material and course curriculum as a short term certificate training
program.

5. A blend of in-class training coupled with practical on-the-field training. Total

training duration will be of 2 months for basic entry level with advanced
modules available for interested employees.

6. Involvement of upper management will be critical to the effectiveness of this

training program as timely feedback and vigilant supervision will provide
various insights into the level of competency of sales executives.

7. This training program can also act as a qualification criterion for promotion.
Answer No. 6
In this case, the supervisor has committed the bias of Halo Effect.
Halo Effect Bias
The halo bias occurs when positive impression of a person dominates the outlook
extended towards him/her. It extends to first impressions as well as impressions based
on historic experiences.
In this case, Vineeta knows that her latest report was not as good as the previous two
reports. Despite that, her supervisor has given her high ratings. This can be because
the rater has not bothered to go through the report in detail and has given her a high
rating based on her past performance by assuming that Vineeta will only do a great job.
This kind of approach can have lots of issues:
1) It can hamper the productivity of the organization by low quality standards in work
assigned
2) Performance appraisals will be unfair to other employees due to this ‘favoritism’
3) Vineeta may suddenly held responsible for poor performance by a change in
management

Although past performance are good indicators of future performance, relying

extensively on past performance for evaluating current performance is a slippery slope.
As a good manager, it is the responsibility of the manager to evaluate work assigned
fairly and in the context of the present time.

Answer No. 7
Compensation
Compensation can be defined as the basic pay received by an employee for rendering
his/her services to the organization he/she is employed at. It has a monetary value and
is synonymous with salary received. Compensation’s core idea is to attract and retain
top talent for achieving organizational goals and objectives. For example, 18 LPA salary
received.
Benefits
Benefits are non-monetary perks that an employee receives due to being employed by
the organization. Benefits are given over and above the normal pay. The core idea of
benefits is to foster the welfare of an organization’s employees and to also serve as
motivation. For example, 10 Sick Leaves every year.

Key Differences
Benefits are membership based and not performance based
While direct compensation is mainly based on the value of the employee to the
company, benefits are fringe perks that are extended to employees for being employed
in the organization. Since it serves as an added incentive to work for the company,
benefits are extended to every employee of the organization. Even-though they are not
performance based, they are shown to help increase performance if benefits provided
are satisfactory and lower productivity and higher attrition if the benefit plans are not
satisfactorily structured. Therefore, it is critical to structure a package in a way that it
motivates employees.

Benefits have a non-monetary value

Direct compensation has a specific monetary value attached to it whereas benefits do
not have a monetary value. Their main purpose is for uplifting the welfare of employees
therefore the value of benefits is determined based on the function it serves. For
example, providing paid leaves and maternity leaves shows that the organization cares
about an employee beyond the work that an employee does for the organization.
Benefits are critical for a positive outlook of the company in the eyes of the employee. In
certain cases, it can also help attract talent at the same base pay thereby providing a
competitive edge to the organization as well.

Employees can choose benefits package

While compensation is already fixed for a particular job role, employees can choose the
benefit plans available at their own discretion. For example, elderly employees will be
attracted by retirement benefits, people with families will be attracted by health benefits,
young people will be attracted by personal service benefits etc. Therefore, benefits
provide a more subjective treatment to an organization’s employee.