Strategic Staffing, 2e (Phillips/Gully)

Chapter 10 Assessing Internal Candidates

1) A firm's internal assessment goals tend to be the same as its external assessment goals.
Answer: FALSE

3) When employees are turned down for the promotions or lateral moves for which they were
considered it rarely affects productivity.
Answer: FALSE

5) More and richer information is usually available about external rather than internal job
candidates.
Answer: FALSE

8) The advantage of using self-assessment is that people are often good judges of their own
talents.
Answer: FALSE

9) External customers are the best source of information on employees' task behaviors.
Answer: FALSE

10) Peer ratings tend to do a poor job predicting promotion criteria.

Answer: FALSE

11) A clinical assessment puts job candidates through a series of simulations and exercises that
reflect the typical challenges of the job.
Answer: FALSE

13) Succession management means identifying specific back-up candidates for specific senior
management positions.
Answer: FALSE

14) Succession management cannot be used to enhance organizational diversity.

Answer: FALSE

16) Internal assessment typically improves a firm's strategic capabilities by ________.

A) conducting a legal audit of the staffing system
B) giving all poor performers a chance to improve
C) assisting "blocked" employees to improve their performance
D) improving the competence of human resource personnel
Answer: C
17) A company cannot know what training to offer employees unless it ________.
A) emulates its competitors policies and programs
B) assesses their strengths and weaknesses
C) reaches a minimum of 100 employees
D) stops internal recruiting completely
Answer: B
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18) Why do some firms prefer to call groups of employees targeted for accelerated development
"acceleration pools" rather than "high-potential pools"?
A) Because acceleration implies faster promotions.
B) Because "high potential" pool implies the rest are of low potential.
C) Because "acceleration pool" employees always rise to managerial levels.
D) Because "high potential pools" occur only at technical levels.
Answer: B

19) When an employee quits because he is passed over for promotion, what has occurred?
A) a breach of employee ethics
B) a negative stakeholder reaction
C) succession management
D) external assessment
Answer: B

20) Which of the following would be required to provide critical skills to employees that might
be needed in the future?
A) competition
B) promotion
C) evaluation
D) training
Answer: D

21) An organization claiming to provide an environment in which employees can grow their
careers has to ________.
A) provide performance feedback and development opportunities
B) emulate its competitor firms and their placement strategies
C) cease internal recruitment and rely on external recruiting alone
D) implement a transparent hiring and firing strategy
Answer: A

22) An additional ethical issue involves the ________ of an employee's application for another
position in the company.
A) assessment
B) processing
C) confidentiality
D) rejection
Answer: C

23) Which of the following improves the ease of use of skills inventories?
A) O*Net
B) career management
C) databases
D) nine box matrix
Answer: C

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24) Which of the following is a limitation of using supervisors in performance reviews?
A) They may be less able to see the employee's task and interpersonal behaviors.
B) They may be unfamiliar with the employee's job performance.
C) They may be unfamiliar with the employee's job requirements.
D) They may focus on interpersonal behaviors rather than outcomes.
Answer: A

25) If a company wanted to quickly identify which employees speak Spanish, what would be the
best way to do this?
A) Query the company's replacement charting system
B) Ask all managers to ask their subordinates if any of them speak Spanish
C) Query the company's skills inventory system
D) E-mail all employees and ask Spanish speakers to respond
Answer: C

26) Adam has joined an advertising firm as a junior executive. Due to his lack of experience, he
has a lot to learn and has been assigned as a protégé to Mark, a senior executive in the firm, who
will help train him and assess his performance. This process of internal assessment is called
________.
A) skills inventorying
B) performance reviewing
C) a mentoring program
D) job knowledge assessing
Answer: C

27) Assigning a new employee to regularly meet with a more senior, more experienced employee
to further the career development of both employees is ________.
A) job sharing
B) transferring
C) mentoring
D) training
Answer: C

28) Which of the following would result in peer ratings being a successful method of internal
assessment in a firm?
A) A well developed skills inventory system exists.
B) The level of technological expertise in the firm is high.
C) All supervisors provide timely feedback.
D) Work in the firm is done in teams.
Answer: D

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29) Matthew works as an accountant in a mobile phone company. During lunch he spoke to Peter
from the sales department about wanting to buy a mobile phone for himself. Peter persuaded
Matthew to buy a mobile phone from the sales department itself, which Matthew did. Matthew is
a(n) ________.
A) stakeholder
B) internal customer
C) human resource personnel
D) external customer
Answer: B

30) Which of the following raters is often the most controversial feature of a multisource
assessment?
A) internal customers
B) external customers
C) peers
D) subordinates
Answer: D

31) External customers are often best for evaluating an employee's ________.
A) interpersonal behaviors
B) job performance
C) completion of job requirements
D) teamwork skills
Answer: A

32) RBC Electronics is a retailer of electronic appliances. If Sandy does not see or understand
the work processes and rules that influence RBC employees' task behaviors and has limited
knowledge of the regulations, policies, and resources that affect employees' behavior, then Sandy
is most likely a(n) ________.
A) internal customer
B) subordinate
C) external customer
D) supervisor
Answer: C

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33) Prestige Pegasus is a multinational firm that specializes in the manufacturing of hardware for
high-end technical products and sells its products mostly through business-to-business
interactions. Following a good year with soaring profit-margins, Prestige Pegasus is planning to
conduct an internal assessment throughout the organization. In a meeting following the decision
to conduct the internal assessment, Douglas McCarthy (the Chief Operations Officer) and Tom
Castleback (the Chief Marketing Officer) are the prime contributors on the methods that the
organization should use to perform these assessments.

Douglas: "We should encourage 360-degree feedback, mostly concentrating on subordinates, as

they would be the right people to judge their superiors."
Tom: "We should definitely use 360-degree feedback, mostly from external customers, as they
are the ones who matter in the end."

Which of the following statements, if true, would support Douglas' argument?

A) The company lacks a feedback mechanism that guarantees employee anonymity and protects
their interests.
B) The company is focusing on the recruitment for middle-management positions which
mostly emphasizes on people management skills.
C) The company is planning to flatten its organizational structure by combining certain top
management positions, while removing redundant ones.
D) The company is introducing workforce diversity initiatives in order to comply with certain
affirmative action policies.
Answer: B

34) Prestige Pegasus is a multinational firm that specializes in the manufacturing of hardware for
high-end technical products and sells its products mostly through business-to-business
interactions. Following a good year with soaring profit-margins, Prestige Pegasus is planning to
conduct an internal assessment throughout the organization. In a meeting following the decision
to conduct the internal assessment, Douglas McCarthy (the Chief Operations Officer) and Tom
Castleback (the Chief Marketing Officer) are the prime contributors on the methods that the
organization should use to perform these assessments.

Douglas: "We should encourage 360-degree feedback, mostly concentrating on subordinates, as

they would be the right people to judge their superiors."

Tom: "We should definitely use 360-degree feedback, mostly from external customers, as they
are the ones who matter in the end."

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the Tom's argument?
A) The salespeople of the company travel extensively and are expected to work independently
without supervision.
B) The salespeople of the company do not have any flexibility in the selling price of the
product.
C) The company targets a niche market segment with a limited customer base.
D) Previous surveys have revealed that customers are more satisfied with the company's services
than the actual products
Answer: B
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35) Having administrative assistant job candidates perform a set of exercises including taking
phone messages, typing reports, scheduling meetings, and filing is an example of a(n) ________.
A) clinical assessment
B) job knowledge test
C) assessment center
D) structured interview
Answer: C

36) ________ rely on trained psychologists to subjectively analyze a candidate's attributes,

values, and styles in the context of a particular job.
A) Clinical assessments
B) Mentoring programs
C) Multisource assessments
D) Job knowledge tests
Answer: A

37) The focus of the career crossroads model is on ________.

A) physical work
B) technical work
C) professional work
D) managerial positions
Answer: D

38) The value of the nine box matrix depends most heavily on ________.
A) the quality of the assessment methodology
B) the number of people being assessed
C) the length of time it covers
D) the motivation of the employee being rated
Answer: A

39) A nine box matrix requires assessing employees on ________.

A) past job performance and current job performance
B) past job performance and future potential
C) tenure and current job performance
D) current job performance and future potential
Answer: D

40) In the career crossroads model, each passage requires that the person ________.
A) build on old skills
B) change organizations
C) unlearn old skills and learn new skills
D) is promoted based on their mastery of their current job
Answer: C

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41) An insurance company assesses all employees' current job skills and creates road maps for
them outlining the competencies they need to advance within the company. The company then
makes sure they get the training they need, including coaching and mentoring, classroom
training. This is an example of ________.
A) making a career development plan
B) succession management
C) restructuring
D) ethical assessment
Answer: B

42) The ongoing process of systematically identifying, assessing and developing organizational
leadership to enhance performance is ________.
A) development training
B) replacement planning
C) succession management
D) business planning
Answer: C

43) Managers' involvement and commitment is critical to the success of the succession
management process because ________.
A) their skills assessments are central to the preparation of identified candidates for future
positions
B) they will be the future employers of the promoted employees
C) managers need to develop their own replacements by training their subordinates adequately
D) their bonuses are tied to the success of their subordinates
Answer: A

44) After choosing the position on which to focus, the first general step in a succession
management project is to ________.
A) identify each interested candidate's strengths, weaknesses, and succession readiness
B) check that the job description outlines the current and future competencies, a person
needs to perform at a high level in the key position
C) create a plan to continually and systematically improve the capabilities of all identified
succession candidates
D) write a person specification linked to the firm's business strategy
Answer: B

45) ________ is used to reenergize employees and give them the opportunity to develop skills
and pursue other interests via workshops, formal classes, or travel.
A) Job rotation
B) Skills assessment
C) Peer reviews
D) Sabbaticals
Answer: D

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