Tanglewood Case study 3
Case Objectives
Recruiting is the first stage in which organizational plans for staffing come into contact with
the labour market for employees. Before making any new recruiting effort, an organization
needs to carefully consider the methods available and balance out the costs of each method
with the organization’s needs.
The recruiting case provides an opportunity to see how staffing managers develop plans for
recruiting efforts. You will develop a recruiting strategy and a recruiting guide for the store
associate job. The case also demonstrates how you can use organizational data to determine
what the best methods for recruiting are. Finally, you will have an opportunity to develop
various forms of recruiting messages that will encourage individuals to apply for jobs as sales
associates at Tanglewood.
Primary Concerns Regarding Recruiting
Like any retail organization, there is a constant need for new employees at Tanglewood
because of turnover. In a typical year, approximately 50% of the sales associates will
turnover. The process of recruiting is therefore of great concern for managers in the field.
However, up to this point, the organization has not had any centralized method for
recruiting new employees. As part of the consolidation across stores, Tanglewood is now
encouraging a systematic review of their recruiting policies that will ultimately result in a
better recruiting system for store associates.
Staffing services has made very few decisions regarding how recruiting should proceed. Each
store has been encouraged to ensure that their recruiting methods attract a culturally
diverse group of applicants. Beyond this general directive from the corporate offices,
however, there is not very much direction for stores regarding how they should be recruiting
new store associates. Regional managers occasionally discuss ideas for how to recruit new
employees, but as you will