You work for Plush Carpets, a major carpet brand, as the Director of Recruitment. Your company has 20 showrooms around the country and your major customers include interior designers who resell the carpet they purchase to their high-wealth clients.
Your salespeople, on average, have been with the company for 30 years, and many will be retiring over the next 2 years.
The Vice President of Human Resources (VP of HR) has asked you to develop a recruitment strategy that results in adding 2 new account managers (sales professionals) for each showroom over the next 6 months so there is overlap and the existing account managers can train the new account managers on the products, information technology (IT) systems and standard operating procedures before members of the sales team begin to retire.
Plush Carpets’ current Mission is as follows:
To provide a customer experience that the competition can’t duplicate. This is achieved through superior customer service and quality production of any type of carpet design and size that our customers require.
Plush Carpets’ Strategy is as follows:
To remain the market leader in the high-end (high revenue) niche market indefinitely by continuously investing in technologies that improve the carpet manufacturing process and quality; to train our employees to always work as a team; and to always innovate to ensure customer satisfaction, which in turn leads to continued sales revenue and profit.
Plush Carpets’ main financial goal is as follows:
Grow the company from a $250 million to a $1 billion company over the next five years.
(The VP of HR wants to meet with you in a week to hear your recruitment strategy outline and the results of a general Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis related to the company)
For this role-play answer the following questions.
What are some potential strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to Plus Carpets that you might uncover as a result of your SWOT analysis?
What do you think are some of Plush Carpets’ core competencies and why?
How can you use Plush Carpets’ core competencies to ensure your recruitment strategy will be successful?
