Cooliris Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Question Analysis

Question No.1: What Cooliris is doing right and wrong with regards to its current recruitment process? What will you change?

Current Recruitment Process

  1. 1.       Hiring a top-notch technical team

After receiving funding and investment, Cooliris identified different critical steps in order to achieve the company’s long-term vision. The most important step was to find out the top class A+ plus technical team, who will be providing support to achieve the objectives of the company. Furthermore, they defined that the personnel will have to be competent in terms of entrepreneurial and technical skills.

  1. 2.       Categorizing with respect to grouping of players

They believed that the true competent personnel will be hired from the beginning through wisdom process. They believed that A-player will hire A-player, B player will hire accordingly as they are, while C player will hire only bozos.

  1. 3.       Leadership

Josh was a fresh Stanford graduate and excitedly took a responsibility of leadership regarding the recruitment of a new team. He anticipated that recruitment will take half of his time leaving half of his time for the development of business. He overestimated many things, which was one of the reasons behind the failure of company’s recruitment process.

  1. 4.       Tapping the social networks for potential hires

Cooliris’ team started the recruitment process through the conventional entrepreneurial approach, which was done by tapping their social networks for the potential hiring. Though, it was a good approach to hire general competent personnel but technically it was not possible to say if anyone had a network where potential hires could be found. Furthermore, Josh developed an incentive to motivate his social network to recruit candidates by offering $1000; who would be hired through the recommendation of any of the social network.

  1. 5.       Alternatives for the hiring

Additionally, Josh recognized that all of the Cooliris team did not have links with the potential as well as competent hirees and to fill the gap he alternatively started searching through the online databases like Google and LinkedIn where he started searching through the term ‘3D Graphics Engineer’. Social networks gave mixed results of potential hirees while the online databases did not give the desired caliber candidates.

  1. 6.       Receiving of resumes for the potential hires

After the exhausted searching for the candidates, Cooliris’ team reviewed over 1200 resumes in order to look for the potential hires. Josh anticipated that 50 percent of the resumes may be an A-player.

  1. 7.       Introductory email to candidates after filtration

After filtration of the resumes, Josh shortlisted 400 candidates through introductory email to evaluate the  opportunity provided by Cooliris as well as candidate’s skills accordingly, with the vision of Cooliris and to talk briefly about the company.

  1. 8.       First round interview

Cooliris’ team shortlisted 50 candidates for the first round interview in which the candidates will be given ten-minutes briefing about the company’s visions and products but the team is conscious about not telling the future directions and upcoming products of the company because all of the candidates will not be selected obviously.

  1. 9.       Final interview

After the thorough interviewing in the first round, the Cooliris team shortlisted 9 candidates from the 50 candidates. Each final interview lasted about two hours for in-depth analysis of the candidates about the candidate’s skills and talents. They also talked in much detail about the company’s future and offered financially competitive salaries with the Google and others accordingly.

  1. 10.    Selection

The team decided to select the five candidates from the nine candidates, which were shortlisted for the final interview. Among these candidates, four candidates downed the offer while the fifth candidate verbally accepted the offer but later went to Europe for a trip.

Right’s in the current Recruitment Process

  • Conventional Entrepreneurial Approach

Josh implemented the conventional entrepreneurial approach by tapping the social networks. Though, it was a good approach for the potential hirees and could result in finding the competent personnel from the social circles but it did not guarantee a desired hiree. Overall, it was a good approach for the recruitment.

  • Alternative Approach

Though, the Cooliris team was approaching their social networks but Josh still looked for an alternative option of online databases like Google and LinkedIn. It was a good step for recruiting the potential hirees but the method was wrong. Ads gave an insignificant result because the potential talents ignored it and those candidates were already receiving nice offers via different channels. The right prospective was an alternative but the methods were not effective.

  • Introductory email

It was the right step that was taken by Cooliris’ team to explain the opportunity in the company and team’s interest in the candidate. Josh approached 400 candidates through introductory e-mail for the invitation about the discussion with Cooliris that resulted in short listing of 50 candidates for the first round of interview.

  • Non-disclosure of company’s future direction

The company was careful to avoid the disclosure of its future directions and upcoming products to the candidates because every one of them was ................................

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