Question

About a year ago Smith Printing was looking for a new managing editor of a specialty line of magazines. Smith Printing needed someone who could start quickly and didn’t need to be trained. The editors and the HRM department debated about what were the key characteristics needed in the new managing editor. Some felt it was knowledge of the business. Others thought it was interpersonal skills to get along with the staff. A few others believed it was the ability to solicit writing talent and subscribers. No final agreement was ever reached, but they nevertheless went ahead with the search. HRM did the initial screening of candidates, but the editors and HRM would jointly interview the remaining candidates to determine the finalists. Then, the HRM director would make the final choice alone to avoid competition among the editors. Advertisements were placed nationally. A number of candidates were interviewed informally, with each interviewer asking his or her own questions. The final step was for references to be checked for the finalists. After a long search, a new managing editor was hired and he was a disaster. Although he was technically competent as an editor, he tended to be very autocratic with the staff. As a result, he drove away two talented editors who left for jobs with competitors. In addition, the new managing editor did not want to perform specific job duties, such as soliciting writers and developing ideas about how to increase circulation. After 10 months, the publisher fired him and began looking for a new managing editor. Smith Printing wants to be certain it doesn’t make the same mistakes a second time. Referring to Case 1, based on the new managing editor's performance, it is likely that both HRM and the staff failed to properly assess the applicants':

cognitive skills.

general knowledge of the publishing business.

motivation to perform the job's tasks, duties, and responsibilities.

technical knowledge relevant to being a managing editor.

Answer 1

The head of editor needs to have leadership quality as well. The functional and domain expertise with interperosint skills would be the best choice for the candidate. The last hired was a disaster manorlm because he wasnot s people manager and because of him company lost talented editors and other business losses. Thus the new hiring should be a compensatory model where the shortlisted cancidcand will be assessed in multimodular stages and then provide weightage for all the required qualities such as communication, interpersonal, experience, people management, stress mabagmanag, conflict resolution capability, decision making capability, commitment,ethics and values.