Employee Selection
To firms of any size, the selection of qualified and able employees is a huge thing. Indeed, selecting the wrong employee can cause major issues and is simply expensive even in the best of circumstances as hiring and training new people just adds to the expenses and such that come up. As such, firms and organizations need to know precisely what they are looking for and how to find it. Just one organization that has had massive struggles in this regard, up to and including the leadership, would be the Veteran Affairs Administration. Even with a recent change of leadership, they are still having issues from top to bottom. While the Veteran Affairs Administration has had some gaffes and issues when it comes to hiring and selection, the core processes they have in place are actually very solid.
Analysis
The introduction to this report mentions the Veterans Affairs Administration. When it comes to organizations and their hiring practices and performance, public agencies like the VA are obviously (and should be) held to a higher standard, and for more than one reason. Indeed, there are taxpayer dollars in play, as is the case with all public agencies of any level, and the people ostensibly being served by the VA are veterans who have become injured and maimed in a wartime situation. The duality of those facts makes it all the more important to pick and select the right people. More than a few things have cropped up in terms of problems at the agency including documents being shredded improperly, veterans with life-threatening conditions dying or at least waiting too long when it comes to medical care and beyond. With those items and mind as a starting point, the author of this report is going to assess how the VA is...
Indeed, a review of the VA's hiring practices from as recently as 2014 reveals that they are engaging in practices that are unethical or even illegal on their face. Just as one example, there was apparently a position created for a friend and not because it was actually needed. That job was part of the Cemetery Administration. In another case, a woman was unfairly provided with a letter of recommendation so as to help her procure government contracts that she might not get were she not to have the letter. In yet another case, a person was allowed to retire over a long amount of time so as to get the salary of the person to $100,000 a year before the
retirement went through. In short, the amount of cronyism and favoritism that has been going on with the VA is just on top of the other bad or illegal practices going on that have led to veterans not getting the quality or amount of care that they ostensibly should be entitled to (Ybarra, 2014). Speaking of veterans not getting care, there is apparently a boon of bureaucratic red tape that is precluding the needed people from being hired. Per a 2015 article, there was to be the hiring of 28,000 new clinical professionals so as to improve waiting times and the quality of care. This was paired with a cash infusion of roughly $5 billion USD. However, the aforementioned red tape led to only a tenth of the requested and requiring hiring being completed (Robeznieks, 2015).
Even with the malfeasance noted above, the VA actually does a good job overall and should not be judged solely for what they do wrong. Indeed, they do a lot of things right and this includes the realm of hiring and selection. Just as one example, they have a rather advanced and detailed hiring portal on their
website. They give a first-hand view to applicants about what the hiring process is like at the VA. They also have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section to address the common concerns that applicants have. Beyond that, they have sections and programs tailored to certain kinds of applicants. Examples include…
