The Wall Street Journal has recently published a story under the title “Boom Times for Young Workers”; it tells about the new trends in recruitment and attitude to personnel worldwide under the conditions of recession. It turns out that nowadays young professionals receive responsibilities that are typically granted to more experienced and qualified employees, which leads to a set of consequences both of positive and negative nature.
A great workload remains for those who have survived numerous layoffs, so those who stay at the workplace receive higher-level work. This all happens under the conditions of companies rethinking their business models that turn out inappropriate in the period of the economic crisis. As the author notes, employers who face the necessity of downsizing are now increasingly looking for employees who can go above and beyond (Marte, 2010).
These practices suggest the emergence of an employee of the new type – the workers who can survive the recession have to be creative, energetic, and multifaceted. They need to be highly developed and capable of learning new skills; however, at the same time, the situation may lead to inappropriate ambitions and loss of efficiency due to miscommunication and mistakes that result from an unwillingness to consult, to ask for help, and to receive guidance.
These problems, especially under the conditions of actual guidance and resource lack may become the real challenge for the new system to start working constructively. The main recommendation voiced in the article is aimed at providing more guidance and control for young workers’ mastering of their new position and skills, as well as initiating their pursuit of consultation and advice, communication with senior management to face its objectives (Marte, 2010).
As it is evident from the article, modern companies face innovative challenges in recruitment and selection on the international level. Together with the complexities enumerated by Marte (2010), there is a great set of moderators in the international HRM sector that worsen the position of modern employees and hinder the implementation of corporate and business goals.
As Dowling, Festing, and Engle (2008) note, there is a great chance of a business failure in case the manager who works in the international business field does not have enough experience in it or tries to transfer his/her domestic business practices in the international field. Here the authors stress the extreme importance of inter-organizational networks and coordination as vital elements of the company’s HRM strategy success on the international level (Dowling, Festing and Engle, 2008).
Appreciation of cultural differences and cultural awareness is essential in the field of international HRM; considerations of cultural peculiarities are common nowadays in the choice of employees and design of the corporate system that has to correspond to the company’s strategy and long-term objectives (Dowling, Festing and Engle, 2008). A person cannot be solely judged in terms of his/her nationality, but business practices vary from nation to nation, and it should also be taken into account when matching the company’s goals with the potential of recruited staff.
There are many famous cases of international companies inviting senior managers from other countries to arrange the work in a particular company because of the lack of appropriate candidates for those positions in the local affiliates. The same trend may be observed in the field of innovative, creative young generation – some countries have educational systems that do not provide young working force because of longer or shorter education periods, etc., so candidates for responsible, demanding positions should be thoroughly chosen according to personal qualities of people and not their age.
Connecting the information from the article with the opinion of the named authors, one can notice that the third millennium is the epoch of international trade, integration, and globalization that dictates its own rules and methods for international recruitment and selection. Surely, there are distinctions in the measure of some countries’ involvement in globalization and overall communication processes, but it is obvious that the modern young generation is more knowledgeable about international differences due to traveling and Internet communication. Modern educational programs also include courses on international communication and interactions, so it is possible to await much better results in the international HRM from younger professionals.
Millmore et al. (2007) comment on the strategic implications of HRM as well and note that it is a dual process, being linked to the company’s strategy and helping shape it. They support the ideas from the article in the evolutionary perspective to strategy and HRM, describing the matching model that is now utilized by the majority of companies. The essence of the model lies in the direct dependence of the company’s strategy on the external environment that controls the fate of the organization and its human resources without strong links to the human effort from the inside of the company (Millmore et al., 2007).
This model seems more appropriate for modern conditions because of the unexpected economic recession that began less than two years ago and changed the world’s business dramatically. Even successful companies that operated in the international market faced the urgent necessity of layoffs, thus having to refuse from a necessary portion of the staff. Each person who was made redundant in the stroke of the crisis fulfilled important functions indispensable for the company; now the position was empty, and the functions had to be redistributed, with the remaining staff obliged to take over the responsibilities left without the executives.
This is what the discussed article is about – people who remained employed were forced to get better qualifications, to become capable of doing several types of work, doing it much better than they used to. These are the tough laws of competition nowadays, and in the present context, previous qualifications and job experience become irrelevant. In case young people can comply with the dictated complexities, they will remain employed. It is surely a challenge, as described in the article, and not all young people can assess the granted responsibilities adequately; but they still leverage from the modern situation, which stands to reason.
Strategic HRM is a combination between strategic planning and human resources, and it possesses its peculiarities. Bohlander and Snell (2009) offer the scheme in which they analyze the links that exist between corporate strategies and human resources that can be utilized in times of change as well.
One can see that the stipulation of the company’s purpose, scope, and long-term direction is vital for the change in HRM; hence, the authors offer such kinds of interventions as capturing the underlying philosophy of employees, establishing a firm cultural foundation and code of ethics that prove to be much stronger stimuli than external rewards. They also touch upon layoffs and downsizing and stress the necessity of leadership, communication, and change as business-corporate strategies corresponding to these practices (Bohlander and Snell, 2009).
Consequently, one can see how important networking and communication is – referring to the described article, the HRM process is in the recession shock, and in case people are guided only with their fear to lose the job, the productivity is not likely to rise. Hence, innovative practices on employee motivation and commitment are necessary for modern HRM strategic implementation. The changing time requires new attitudes, new skills, and new employees, both at the national and international scale.
Renewed companies that went through the stress of the crisis assess employees on different scales now, and the more varied and rich the applicants’ skills are, the more chances they have to succeed in their work. Modern recruitment, strategic HRM, and selection are tougher and more diverse, so people who start their careers have to be ready to do more than possible to compete with others successfully.
References
Bohlander, G., and Snell, S. (2009). Managing Human Resources (15th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Dowling, P.J., Festing, M., and Engle, A.D. (2008). International human resource management: managing people in a multinational context. (5th ed.). Cengage Learning EMEA.
Marte, J. (2010). Boom Times for Young Workers. The Wall Street Journal. Web.
Millmore, M. et al. (2007). Strategic human resource management: contemporary issues. Pearson Education.