Week 4 — Overall Study Guide

Week 4 turns from the legal and psychological foundations built in Weeks 1 through 3 toward the two operational engines of talent management: recruitment and selection. The Week 4 Overview page frames the week around workforce planning and contemporary topics, and names three things you will do — evaluate contemporary human capital topics such as flexible schedules, worker classification, and time-off policy as they bear on recruiting and retention; assess the usefulness of predictive analysis for human capital decisions; and formulate a recruiting and selection strategy using the sequential stages of recruitment, with attention to diversity and company branding.

The week's two discussion forums are exploratory and research-driven — each asks you to bring in outside articles and, in Discussion 2's case, to find two additional sources yourself. The assignment is the heaviest lift of the week: it asks you to build a full recruiting and selection strategy for Amazon, drawing directly on Chapter 11's talent-supply-chain framework and Chapter 12's selection-methods toolkit. This is also the first of a three-part Amazon case arc — the analysis you build this week becomes the foundation Week 5 builds on, and both feed into the Week 6 final presentation. Treat the thinking you do here as an investment, not a one-week deliverable.

Overview Table of Deliverables

The table below reproduces the Week 4 Overview page's deliverable table exactly. Three assessments carry weight this week, totaling 14% of the course grade.

The Canvas Overview page lists three Weekly Learning Outcomes (WLOs). They are reproduced verbatim below, each followed by a note on what it actually requires of you and where in the week it is assessed.

Read the three outcomes as a single build. WLO 1 and WLO 2 supply the contemporary, research-backed lens — flexible work, worker classification, time off, and predictive analytics — that a modern recruiter cannot ignore. WLO 3 is where that lens gets applied concretely, inside Chapter 11's talent-supply-chain structure, to a real company. The assignment's rubric explicitly rewards discussing "the benefits of diversity in recruiting, the Amazon brand, contemporary human capital topics, and predictive analysis" — meaning the two discussion forums are not academic side quests this week; they are direct rehearsal for one full section of the assignment.

The required text remains Cascio, W. F., & Aguinis, H. (2019). Applied Psychology in Talent Management (8th ed.). SAGE Publications, available through Ebook Central in the UAGC Library. Week 4 assigns two chapters, one supplementary book, and four required articles, plus four recommended articles. The Resources page describes each and ties it to specific deliverables.

For full term-by-term coverage of each chapter's frameworks, key terms, and closing discussion questions, see the dedicated Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 deep-dive study guides on this site — this overview does not repeat that material, only where it lands in the week's work.

The Four Required Articles

Beyond the textbook and the Mantzaris chapters, the Resources page names four required articles that anchor the week's discussion and assignment work.

• Cho, W., Choi, S., & Choi, H. (2023). Human resources analytics for public personnel management: Concepts, cases, and caveats. Administrative Sciences, 13(2), Article 41. Explains the concept of HR analytics and how it can upskill employees; assists Discussion Forum 2.
• Cleary, R. T. (2020). No obstacles: Opportunities and strategies for virtual recruiting and selection. LIMRA MarketFacts, (4), 52–57. Covers how financial-services professionals use video conferencing to simplify hiring; assists Discussion Forum 2 and the Amazon assignment.
• Ibarra, P. (2022, June 1). Help wanted, part 1: Turning your workplace into a talent magnet. Public Management, 104(6), 18–23. Covers 21st-century workforce strategy, employer reputation, and hiring for skill fit; assists Discussion Forum 2.
• Spellman, M. B. (2023). Hiring independent contractors, outsourcing work, and hiring consultants: Here's what you need to know about these unique business relationships. Podiatry Management, 42(9), 36–38. Covers the business relationships and concepts behind contracting and outsourcing; assists Discussion Forum 1 and the Amazon assignment.

Recommended Resources

Four recommended articles round out the week for students who want to go deeper: Gonzales (2023) on the retrenchment of DEI positions and why diversity programs underperform; Ibarra (2022, August 1), a part-two follow-up on HR's rapidly changing role; Tamayo et al. (2023) on reskilling in the age of AI; and Winsor and Paik (2024) on external talent clouds. None are required, but the Gonzales and Tamayo pieces pair naturally with the Amazon assignment's diversity and contemporary-topics section.

Chapter 11 frames recruitment as a talent supply chain with three sequential stages: sourcing (generating a pool of applicants), assessing (evaluating knowledge, skills, and abilities), and employing (moving the desired candidate into employment). The chapter walks through recruitment planning, the internal-versus-external sourcing decision, yield ratios and time-lapse data for staffing forecasts, cost-per-hire analysis, source analysis, diversity recruiting, applicant tracking systems, and realistic job previews. This is the chapter's own structure, and it is also the exact structure the Amazon assignment asks you to use for the recruiting-strategy section.

Chapter 12 shifts from generating a candidate pool to choosing among its members. It surveys personal history data (application blanks, biodata, résumés), recommendations and reference checks, polygraph and honesty testing, drug screening, computer-based screening, and — at greatest length — the employment interview: what distorts it, what a structured interview gets right that an unstructured one gets wrong, and where technology (social media screening, remote interviewing, virtual reality) is headed next. The chapter's emphasis on gathering historical data and using valid, reliable measures is exactly what the Amazon assignment's selection-strategy section — application, recommendations, employment testing, experience, drug screening, computer-based screening, interviewing — draws from directly.

Week 4 has three graded deliverables, and each has a dedicated study guide that takes the prompt apart in full. The summaries below orient you and point you to the right companion document.

6.1 Discussion Forum 1 — Contemporary Human Capital Topics

Tagged to WLO 1 and CLOs 1, 3, and 4, worth 3%. After reviewing Chapter 11, Mantzaris Chapters 6 and 8, and the Spellman (2023) article on independent contractors and outsourcing, discuss two contemporary human capital topics — using the week's required articles or your own research — that have impacted your workplace or that you foresee impacting a business, and address how understanding these topics helps a leader recruit and retain employees. The initial post runs 200 words minimum, due Day 3; two peer replies of 100+ words each are due by Day 7. See the Week 4 Discussion Forum 1 Study Guide.

6.2 Discussion Forum 2 — Current Human Capital Management: Predictive Analysis

Tagged to WLO 2 and CLOs 1, 2, and 4, worth 3%. After reviewing Chapter 12 and the Cho et al. (2023), Ibarra (2022), and Cleary (2020) articles, research two additional articles on predictive analysis yourself, then discuss how predictive analysis is used to make HR decisions, how a manager might use it to build strategic global competitiveness from human assets, and give specific company examples. The initial post runs 200 words minimum, due Day 3; two peer replies of 100+ words each are due by Day 7. See the Week 4 Discussion Forum 2 Study Guide.

6.3 Assignment — Amazon: Human Capital Development—Recruiting and Selecting

Tagged to WLOs 1, 2, and 3 and CLOs 1, 2, and 3, worth 8%, and due Day 7. A 4–5 page APA paper in which you analyze Amazon's company profile and business model, construct a recruiting strategy using Chapter 11's three sequential stages (sourcing, assessing, employing), discuss the benefits of diversity in recruiting alongside the Amazon brand and this week's contemporary topics and predictive-analysis themes, and create a selection strategy covering both managerial and staff positions. This is the first installment of a three-part Amazon case arc that continues in Week 5 and concludes in the Week 6 final presentation, so the analytical groundwork built here — Amazon's business model, its brand, its workforce needs — will be reused and extended, not thrown away. See the Week 4 Assignment Study Guide.

The Week 4 assignment is not a standalone case study — it opens a three-part arc built around Amazon's human capital practices that runs through Week 5 and lands in the Week 6 final presentation. Week 4 asks you to build the recruiting and selection strategy: how Amazon should source, assess, and employ both managerial and staff talent, and how its brand and diversity commitments shape that strategy. Later weeks will build on this foundation with additional dimensions of Amazon's human capital management, and the final presentation will draw together the accumulated analysis into a single deliverable.

BUS 623 builds from foundational concepts (Weeks 1–3: applied psychology, fair employment law, job analysis and workforce planning, and organizational and individual analysis) toward applied, workplace-facing skill. Week 4 is the pivot into operations: recruitment and selection are the first two functions in the talent-management pipeline that a manager actually executes, and everything from this week forward assumes fluency with the talent-supply-chain vocabulary (sourcing, assessing, employing) and the selection-methods vocabulary (validity, structured interviews, biodata) this week introduces.

The contemporary-topics and predictive-analysis threads introduced this week — flexible work, worker classification, time-off policy, and HR analytics — recur across the rest of the course whenever a deliverable asks you to reason about a modern, technology- and data-informed workforce rather than a purely traditional one. Treat Chapters 11 and 12 as reference chapters you will return to, not material to clear and forget.