A newspaper company in Southeast United States has experienced rapid growth. However, in the past two years, competition has increased with two new newspapers in your area and the expansion of another newspaper from a neighboring town into your area.The advertisement for customer service representatives states the following: "The position qualifications are: knowledge of MS Word or WordPerfect; typing speed of 35 wpm; filing; experience in customer handling such as answering phones and referring customer calls to supervisors; some selling of additional services and calls for nonpayment of bills. Starting Salary: $8.50 an hour for a 30-hour workweek. CSRs work 6-days per week in 5-hour shifts.
The newspaper has successfully recruited CSRs, turnover in the position has been high. The following table gives the break-up.
Recruitment Source
Total # of Applicants
Potentially Qualified
Interviewed Offered Job
Accepted Job
Six Month Survival
Total Recruitment Costs Internet 450 32 20 17 11 5 $200 Newspaper 115 78 64 56 53 24 $465 Walk-Ins 31 20 14 9 7 3 $295 Public Employment Agency 37 19 7 7 7 6 $250 Total 633 149 105 89 78 38 $1,210
Racial Break-Up of Applicants:
Rac\ial Category Total # of Applicants
Potentially Qualified
Qualified and Offered Job Caucasians 341 91 64 African-Americans 177 43 20 Hispanics 115 15 5 TOTAL 633 149 89
Most Frequently Cited Reasons for CSR Turnover (For the past 3 years). Requirement to work on Saturday and Sunday from 7 AM to 1 PM75% of calling customers are irate with CSRs on issues over which CSRs must sit for long-hours with no they have no control physical movement and must talk to customers for long periods of No proper training Noisy and hectic work environment time Cold calls for provided for handling billing complaints No additional remuneration subscriptions result in 78% hang-ups. CSRs don't like the cold calls for solicitation successes. Supervisors monitor don't like calling people at dinner few time sample calls and often contradict what CSRs say.
Questions:
1. Based on the information provided, determine if there is any adverse impact against Hispanics or African-Americans in the hiring of CSRs. Assuming an Hispanic and an African-American applicant who were not hired for the job filed a lawsuit against the newspaper, what advice would you give the newspaper?