Assignment

Selecting Your Future Job right after Graduation

The deliverable is a word document with two tables that show your job selection decision making process. No explanation of the tables is required since the tables will be self-explanatory if you have followed the format in the example from the class.

Part I. Desired Ends and Criteria

Please Note: This assignment must be completed and submitted to the Blackboard course siteprior to the deadline indicated on the syllabus.

 For this assignment, assume that you have offers from five (5) different jobs, and you need to make a decision within a week. The jobs have to be appropriate ones for your level of experience and education.

1. ConductingJob Search: Given the above constraint, please do a search on one or more job hunting sites of your choice. Monster.com or indeed.com may be a good place to start.

Now, you should have five job postings that you are interested in. Let's assume that all those five jobs offered positions to you. Now, you need to decide which offer to take.

2. Developing Desired Ends: Desired endsare the benefits that you want to achieve from the decision making. Giving you an example from house hunting (but remember you are working on job selection!), someone may say "I want to buy a modern design house with at least 4 bed and 3 bath with at least one acre of land in a quiet, located in a safe neighborhood with a good school district. It should not be too far away from job, and it should be near some major shopping malls." In this decision statement, you can find multiple desired ends including modern design, certain number of BD/BA, large lands, safe neighborhood, and proximity to jobs and major shopping malls.Now, let's develop your desired ends:

 a.  First,please list all your "concerns, interests, and preferences" that you have about selecting a job. Freely list all the items below.

b.  Please convert these into a list of "succinct preferences" by removing overlapping ideas and by refining languages. Then, organize them into "desired ends."

c.  Then, next to each desired end, write how you can measure your desired ends. This is what we call "measurable (evaluative) criteria."  The measurable criteria can be based on archival or objective data, well-known reviews (star ratings), or your subjective scoring. 

Convert the list into desired ends and measurable criteria. Note that there can be more than one criteria for each desired ends.

 Table1. Desired Ends and Measurable Criteria

Part II.Refining Your Criteria & Creating a Consequence Matrix Assignment

The task is to create a Consequence Matrix (examples found in our chapter 7 PPT) that displays all your desired ends, evaluative criteria, alternatives, and consequences. Here are steps you need to follow:

Step 1:  Columns represent all 5 jobsthat you identified previously. You need to lay out your alternatives (jobs) across the top.

Step 2:  Finalize your set of "Desired Ends" (benefits that you are looking for) and the specific evaluative criteria (features) that you will use to measure how well each job achieves your desired ends. Enter all your desired ends and criteria in the first column. Alternatively, you may create two columns- one for desired ends and the other for evaluative criteria. In either case, you need to organize your criteria as subsets under each desired ends. For more information, refer to our class PPT

Step 3: Create a consequence matrix based on the above alternatives (jobs), desired ends & evaluative criteria. Working across the row (each evaluative criterion), create a consequence description (verbal, quantitative) for each alternative (specific job).

Refer to the examples from our Chapter 7 PPT.

Part III. Final Selection Process using Weighted Scoring Method.

 It will be easier and faster if you create tables in Excel and copy and paste tables in the Word doc.

 Start with your Consequence Matrix that was created in the previous section.

• Your job is to select the alternative that best matches your desired ends.
• Remember that your criteria need to be independent from one another, and they should comprehensively represent all your desired ends in a job selection decision.
• You need to have at least five (5) but no more than ten (10) observable criteria for the purpose of this exercise. In my opinion, 6 to 7 criteria will be the best for the learning purpose.

Step 1: Assign an "importance score" to each measurable (evaluative) criterion, following the process we discussed in class.  The most important criterion should have the maximum importance score of 10 (if you are using 0-10 scale, but 100 if you are using 0-100 scale), then, assign an importance score to other criteria that is less than the maximum scale and that is also consistent with how important it is compared to the most important criterion.

Step 2: Select the first criterion:

a. Assign 10 to the job that best achieves or meets that criterion.  (Note, no matter how poorly it meets the criterion, if it is still better at doing so than the other jobs, you must automatically give it a 10)

b. Assign scores between 1 and 10 to each of the remaining jobs, based on how well each meets that criterion compared to the one that meets it the best

Step 3: Go to each of the other criteria and again:

1.  
   • Assign 10 to the job that best achieves or meets that criterion
   • Assign scores between 1 and 10 to each of the remaining jobs, based on how well each meets that criterion compared to the one that meets it the best

Step 4: When you have completed the importance and achievement scores, multiply each alternative's achievement score by the corresponding importance score for that criterion, then add down the column to obtain the total weighted score for each job - the one with the highest total weighted score is your tentative best choice. Mark your final selection in the table (highlight it!).