Human Resources

Q3.

In order to make the final decision on the selection of the final two candidates, the following actions are recommended to take.

First of all, it is important for all the recruiting members of SG Cowen agreed upon what are the most important criteria's for SG Cowen to select the candidates. There are six criteria's on the evaluation form, Commitment to firm, Judgment/Maturity, Interpersonal skills (Presence and Communications skills), Leadership (Initiative/ Motivation), Technical Skills (Creativity, Modeling, Accounting/Finance, Prioritizing) and Work Ethic (Team Player, Flexibility/Versatility and Motivation). Among the six hiring criteria's SG Cowen has, we can see that some of these criteria's are soft qualities and some are the hard qualities. The hard quality is referring the skills and knowledge, which the candidate can obtain from training and learning; and the soft qualities are more referring the qualities, resulted from one's personality, the learning capability and the motivation, which are the qualities, cannot be obtained by training or learning.

SG Cowen's core hiring strategy is to hire a candidate who fits the company the best and added the most value to the company instead of the best graduate with the highest grade. Therefore, for SG Cowen or any other company, the most important criteria would the candidate's commitment to the company. Therefore, from the feedbacks of the recruiters, Martin Street should be the first one to be eliminated, since the recruiters had doubts about his commitment to SG Cowen. Even though he had substantial leadership experience, the leadership experience is considered as hard qualities, which can be obtained from training.

Second, SG Cowen aims to find the candidate who fits the company the best, not the best candidate who does not fit in the company or fit well with others. Although Natalya Godlewska has the highest GPA and very good finance background, the recruiters' biggest concern towards her was she might not be a good culture fit with other associates. As mentioned before, SG Cowen needs to find the best fit candidate not the highest grade candidate, if the candidate cannot fit in with the group or with other associates, then her abilities and strength will be limited, which will not enable her to have a sustainable high performance, therefore we think she should be the second candidate to be eliminated.

Based on the above elimination selection strategy, we think the final candidates should be Ken Goldstein and Andy Sanchez. Although some recruiters have doubts about Ken due to his personal life, it is worth to mention that a good balance between work and private life will bring more motives and energy to the person to be dedicated to his work life. Therefore, we believe the concern about his private life