University of Roehampton: Managing People and Career Report Analysis

This report analyzes the graduate recruitment and selection approaches of two organizations, Apple Inc. and ASOS.com. It examines their hiring processes, including online applications, interviews, and assessment centers, highlighting the emphasis on quality over quantity and the importance of diversity and inclusion. The report also explores the internship programs offered by both companies, providing opportunities for students to gain experience and develop their skills. Furthermore, it reflects on the author's self-assessment of business readiness, identifying strengths and weaknesses in areas such as confidence and self-expression, and outlines steps taken to improve these areas through practical experiences and learning cycles. The report concludes with a comparison of the two organizations' recruitment processes and the learning experiences they offer to employees, emphasizing ethical hiring practices.

Running head: MANAGING PEOPLE AND CAREER
MANAGING PEOPLE AND CAREER
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Campus recruitment or graduate recruitment is considered to be the process where
students who are going to graduate from universities and colleges are hired by companies
(Shenoy and Aithal 2016). In recent times, it has been seen that most students have been
focusing on joining jobs before graduating from their universities and colleges in order to gain
experience and learn from the jobs for their professional development. Organisations these days
have started providing internships to students who are going to pass put out from colleges and
universities so that they can provide the students with the experience of the office culture and
help them develop while working for their organisation.
This report is going to focus on the approaches taken by two different organisations in
order to recruit and select graduates in their organisation. Since a very long time I wanted to
make my career in marketing as I feel I think in a different and creative way which would help in
coming up with new creative ideas which would be great in the marketing field. Working in the
marketing division would help me in developing my career and would help me grow which
would help me in becoming financially independent and successful. I had started examining all
the records of companies that were enlisted in the Times Top 100 Graduate Employers Director.
After assessing and doing a comparative amount if research, I decided to focus on two
organisations for this report and they are, Apple Inc. and ASOS.com. I chose these two
organisations as I feel that these two organisations are considered to be very popular and
organized and they highly focus on marketing which would give me an opportunity to learn and
develop new skills which would give a boost in my career. According to scholars, the times are
changing and major organisations have been trying to incorporate ethics in their work culture in

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order to operate in a systematic and a good manner. Apple Inc. and ASOS.com both claim that
they are companies who focus on merit and talent and diverse and inclusive. This is one of the
major reasons that had attracted me towards both these companies and wanted to be a part of
these organisations.
Organisations
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is one of the most successful American multinational technology company.
The company is currently headquartered in Cupertino, California. Apple generally develops
designs and is sells computer software, consumer electronics and other online services (Miller
and Maxwell 2016) Apple Inc. has had a significant growth since its inception and is
continuously growing which has led the company to have a strong presence in the international
market as well. In 2019, it has been seen that Apple has a total number of employees of 137,000
which shows the growth in employees in the company by 3.79% from the last year.
Apple Inc. other than their products outs high emphasis on the employees of the
organisation. from several research and by talking to many people who work for the organisation
have said that there is no room for employees with mediocre talent (Apple 2020). All the
employees at Apple from different divisions are highly talented and contribute a lot to the
company which has led to the success of the company. The company has extensive working
hours and always looks for talented and dynamic employees who have the zeal and the urge to
work and who will contribute positively to the organisation. Apple does look for experience
while hiring however they do provide an opportunity to young students with talent and the
personality to work for their organisation based on the interview and how they perform.

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The hiring and recruitment process is very easy in terms of the system however to crack
the interview is very difficult. According to employees who have already worked for the
company, the company provides jobs for interns but if one person is rejected they are likely not
to get an opportunity again as they tend to keep a record of the people who have interviewed for
the company (Glassdoor.com 2020).
Finding information about the vacancies in the company is very easy as the company
updates the information via their website so that people who are interested can submit their
respective resume for consideration for the position offered or a candidate gets the opportunity to
express their interest and can give their resume to their friend or someone they know who
currently works for the company.
After the company receives all the applications and resume from the interested
candidates, the HR of the company contacts the candidates by phone and then conducts a
preliminary screening through the phone only in order to check if the candidates who have
applied for the job are interested. The same thing happens when the candidate express their
interest via someone working for Apple. After the telephonic conversation, the company then
invites the person for an interview where the candidate is interviewed by many members of the
team of the hiring manager over the full course of the day. After the interview, the team
members will report to their superior about their impression they had about the candidate. The
hiring manager will make a decision and then report to the HR. If the HR and the hiring
members do not approve of a candidate they let them know the very day and if the members in
the hiring team as well as the HR are impressed then they prepare for an offer for the selected
candidate (Engel and Curran 2016).

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Apple highly believes in diversity and inclusiveness and thus it provides opportunity to
everyone irrespective of their gender, sexual orientation, religion and many more and highly
focuses on talent and merit.
ASOS.com
ASOS.com is an British based online fashion and a cosmetic retailer company. The
company was established in the year, 2000 in London. The company focuses primarily on the
young adults. The company sells more than 850 brands and ships the products to over 196
countries from their fulfillment centres in the US, EU and UK. ASOS.com has more than 4000
employees working for them and is a place with highly satisfying employees. According to the
reviews posted by the employees anonymously, the company provides many perks to their
employees and provides them with good support (Chamberlain et al 2017). The company is
flexible and gives the employees an opportunity to learn and develop themselves while working
in the organisation (Glassdoor.com 2020).
ASOS.com provides a global summer internship which is for two months. The
opportunities mainly exist in digital analytics, content, social media, performance marketing and
global trading. One can look out for the current vacant positions in the organisation via their
official website, official twitter handle and also from Linked In where they post about the vacant
positions to reach out to many people providing everyone with an equal opportunity to apply for
the jobs.
In order to join the company, one needs to complete an application online. The criterion
for filling the online application is that the candidate needs to be an undergraduate and who has
completed a 12 month placement for the placement year scheme of ASOS. Once the candidate

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has filled the online application, if the candidate is successful then the candidate will be asked to
give a video interview where the hiring team will assess the candidates on their role knowledge
and the opportunity to discuss the experience further. The selected candidates will be then
invited to one half day Assessment Centre where there will be a combination of individual tasks,,
group exercises, interviews and presentations.
Evaluation and Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be seen that both the organisations provide information about their
vacancies through their official website which is very user friendly and ensures everyone gets an
equal opportunity to apply for the jobs. The hiring process is somewhat similar however it can be
seen that ASOS. Com has more online presence as it provides information through various
mediums even in social media. Both the companies are seen to provide internships to the
interested candidates so that they can learn more and develop themselves however it can be seen
that ASOS.com does not provide internship to students who are still studying to get their
degrees. From the recruitment process it can be seen that both Apple Inc. and ASOS.com focus
on quality rather than quantity and take many interviews in order to analyze the personality of
the interested candidates and how they are going to work and help in benefitting the company. In
terms of the learning experience both organisations have got very good reviews where the
employees working for the organisations have stated that they have learnt a lot and it has helped
the not only enhance their skills but have also helped them in acquiring more knowledge and
skills which has helped them in working in a more efficient way however there are some
employees who work for Apple Inc state that the working hours are sometimes strenuous.
Applying for the job is however easy for both the companies as both the companies believe in

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providing opportunity to people who are deserving and do not make any discrimination in terms
of hiring employees in the organisation making their recruitment and hiring process highly
ethical.

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Reflection
Before completing the semester, I had undertaken the “Business Readiness Self-Report”.
The business report had supported many questions that reflected on the fact that how ready I was
for the business. From the report, I have come to understand the competencies I have which will
help me when I join a job in order to work efficiently however by taking the test I have
discovered that I also have some weak areas which need to be improved so that I can work in an
organisation in an efficient way especially in the organisations I have researched on which is
Apple Inc. and ASOS.com which are confidence to express myself and achieving results.
Reflective account one: Confidence to express myself
From the test, the results that I have acquired has provided with my strong points
however has also provide my weakness. I know that I have strong viewpoints and creative ideas
which are given importance in every organisation however I have always had difficulty in
articulating the ideas and have the confidence in expressing myself. According to the self-report,
I have acquired the same result that I have low confidence to express myself. In order to become
ready to work in an organisation, I had used the learning cycle that has been introduced by Kolb
so that I could improve by competency.
Initially, I went on to give interviews in various small companies in order to gain some
experience however i had seen that every company where I had went to give an interview had
conducted a round which was named general discussions. We were given topic where we would
have to present our argument or why we support the topics. I had initially seen that I was scared
to express myself in a big group, though I had strong points and concrete points to provide in the
discussion I would however refrain myself as I was not confident and often analyzed how the

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people conducting the discussion would take my opinions. Thus, in order to improve my
confidence I started giving more interviews in order to get accustomed to the process of the
general discussion so that I could talk to people who were unknown to me.
Petchboonmee, Phonak and Tiantong (2015) states the first step of the Kolb’s cycle
suggests to have a concrete experience thus slowly I first started conversing and practicing
providing my opinions with my friends and family. After talking to them and conversing with
them I got an idea of how to communicate and present my viewpoint without offending anyone.
Initially there were many interviews where I had gone where I could not speak much. However
attending more group discussions had given me an experience and helped me in analyzing the
situation. After that, I always came back and thought about what I observed during the group
discussions and came up with new ideas how to speak, converse professionally and even read
upon it which is suggested by the second step by Kolb which is reflective observation. The third
step is abstract conceptualization and thus with several research and experiences I had developed
new methods and skills as to how to communicate without any fear and express myself clearly. I
have come to see that reflecting on the experiences I could modify the new ideas and concepts
that I had learnt and then started applying it and started doing that which is considered to be the
last step which is active experimentation. This not only helped in boosting my confidence level
and the fear of people not hearing me out properly however I had improved my communication
skills and also learnt the art of expressing myself in a way where my subordinates and people
around me would listen to me properly and take me seriously so that people could get what I am
trying to say and y exact point of view.

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Reflective account two: Achieving result
The other weakness which is discovered through the self-assessment test is achieving
result. One of my positives is that I plan well and can come up with good and creative insights
however achieving results is difficult as I cannot measure that if my plan can bring out the
desired outcome. However, in order to achieve results I had applied the Kolb’s learning cycle
which has helped me immensely in improving my weakness.
Petchboonmee, Phonak and Tiantong (2015) states the first step that has been stated by
Kolb is concrete experience and thus I have applied my own method of achieving results in my
course work. I have experienced the situation where I wanted to achieve good results in my
academics and I had seen that the method I was using was not very beneficial to me as I was
focusing on long term goals and thus I shifted my focus on achieving short term goals which
helped me immensely. Then the next step is reflective observation and from the experience I had
observed that focusing on the short term goals were helping me a lot as studying little bit helped
me in learning the course thoroughly. The next step is abstract conceptualization where I had
come up with new methods where I had made charts and time tables as to which chapters to
complete within how many days and set a deadline for myself making it more systematic. The
last is active experimentation where I followed these deadlines thoroughly which had helped me
immensely as these small steps had helped me in understanding the entire subject step by step
and also helped me in achieving the desired goals I had for myself.
Thus, by applying the Kolb’s learning cycle I have turned my weaknesses to my strengths
and have managed to overcome the issues. This has helped me immensely in becoming business
ready which will help me in the near future as well especially when I join an organisation as an

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employee. These skills are highly important in an organisation and will help me in contributing
to the success of the organisation I work for.
Reference
Apple (2020). Do what you never thought possible.. [online] Apple. Available at:
https://www.apple.com/jobs/us/ [Accessed 6 Jan. 2020].
Chamberlain, B.P., Cardoso, A., Liu, C.H., Pagliari, R. and Deisenroth, M.P., 2017, August.
Customer lifetime value prediction using embeddings. In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGKDD
International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (pp. 1753-1762). ACM.
Engel, M. and Curran, F.C., 2016. Toward understanding principals’ hiring practices. Journal of
Educational Administration, 54(2), pp.173-190.
Glassdoor.com (2020). [online] Glassdoor.com. Available at:
https://www.glassdoor.co.in/profile/joinNow_input.htm?hs=true&uoh=10&requestUrl=
%2FReviews%2FApple-India-Reviews-EI_IE1138.0%2C5_IL.6%2C11_IN115.htm
%3FcountryRedirect%3Dtrue [Accessed 6 Jan. 2020].
Glassdoor.com (2020). [online] Glassdoor.com. Available at:
https://www.glassdoor.co.in/profile/joinNow_input.htm?hs=true&uoh=10&requestUrl=
%2FReviews%2FASOS-Reviews-E35373.htm%3FcountryRedirect%3Dtrue [Accessed 6 Jan.
2020].
Miller, T. and Maxwell, R., 2016. Apple. In Global Media Giants (pp. 383-396). Routledge.
Petchboonmee, P., Phonak, D. and Tiantong, M., 2015. A comparative data mining technique for
david kolb's experiential learning style classification. International Journal of Information and
Education Technology, 5(9), p.672.

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Shenoy, V. and Aithal, P.S., 2016. Changing Approaches in Campus Placements-A new
futuristic Model. International Journal of Scientific Research and Modern Education (IJSRME)
ISSN (Online), pp.2455-5630.
Appendix
Resume
PERSONAL DETAILS
Name:
Address:
Contact Numbers:
Email Address:
CAREER OBJECTIVE
To establish a career as a Junior Graduate Developer specializing in application
development. Universities studies in Bachelor of Information technology will be
completed on June 2020. Level 5 Diploma in Computing (NCC Education UK) has been
successfully completed. Excellent skills in problem solving and explaining technical
issues to non-technical audiences.
EDUCATION
Years Degree
PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENTS
2008-2011 Captain of the School’s Cricket Team

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EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
Years Position
HOBBIES AND INTERESTS
Building and troubleshooting computers
 Built multiple customized computers for personal use and friends and family
 Volunteered for repairing computers of low privileged schools in Sri Lanka
Outdoor activities
 Camping
 Trekking
 Fishing
 4x4 Racing
WORK SKILLS MATRIX
SKILL LEVEL EXPERIENCE