Interview Questions Posted: April 12th, 2014
For this activity you will write a business letter to an outside investor based on the following situation. You may use any resources at your disposal, including articles, online research, market research, and interviews (except, as noted in the syllabus, other groups in this class past and present). You must reference all sources used.
Situation: Your team is opening a Molly’s Cupcakes LLC franchise in the Dubuque, Iowa area. Each member of your team will be part owner, but you also have an outside investor who is helping finance the start-up costs of your franchise. You have already hired a full-time manager with prior experience running a similar business. You decide you should also hire an assistant manager to help with day-to-day operations in the franchise and to serve as a supervisor when the manager is not available. With help from the franchise materials, your full-time manager, and outside resources, you developed a draft job description for this position.
You also developed a job advertisement that you placed in local newspapers. You have already received 6 resumes of people interested in the position. These resumes will be posted on ICON as a separate file. Because there are only 6 resumes, you plan to continue and expand your search.
Questions: In a letter addressed to your outside investor, whom you are keeping up-to-date about your progress, answer these 4 questions related to hiring your assistant manager:
How do you plan to expand your recruiting efforts? More specifically, what else in addition to advertising in a local newspaper can you do to find qualified applicants? What questions will you ask in an interview? Why are you asking each question? What would a great answer to each question sound like? Exclude the general opening (i.e., “Tell me about yourself”) and closing (i.e., “Do you have any questions for me?”) interview questions, and write at least 3 interview questions that you will use. Explicitly explain what you are trying to learn from candidates with each question. To answer this question completely you should also indicate what would be your preferred answer for each interview question would be. In other words, think through in advance how an ideal candidate would respond (the preferred answer). What are the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate relative to this job? Who would you chose to interview and why? Critique each candidate’s resume and indicate which ones you would interview (and why). How do you plan to pay the future assistant manager? Considering the mission and strategy of the company and the local job market, what compensation strategy do you plan to use for the assistant manager position? Explain the reasons why this compensation strategy makes sense.
[1] Molly’s Cupcakes LLC is a real business. However, the scenario presented for this project is purely fictitious.
