Managing people
Introduction
The aim of this report is to analyze and comment on the selection practices based on the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.
According to Scott (2005), “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was filmed in 2005 based on children’s book by Roald Dahl. The movie reveals a story about poor young boy – Charlie, who lives in town, where located chocolate factory owned by famous confectioner - Willy Wonka. Soon, Willy Wonka decides to allow 5 children to visit his factory and distributes five Golden tickets hidden in the five chocolate’s bars to the unknown locations. The one who will find golden ticket will be allowed to visit chocolate factory. Moreover last child left will win the main prize.
Thus, five children found, who found Golden tickets are: Augusutus Gloop – rude and glutton guy, who lives only for food; Veruca Salt – spoilt child, who demands whatever she wants from her parents by screaming at them; Violet Beauregarde – impudent girl, whom mind completely taken by gum chewing; Mike Teavee – bot, who addicted to television; and Charlie Bucket – very polite and shy boy, who is protagonist in this movie.
Throughout all movie, mr.Wonka will apply selection processes, because he needs to identify one child, who fits his demands and choose him as a heritor of the factory(Billsberry and Gilbert, 2007) . Thereby, he observes each child behavior, when they are taking a tour through his factory and eliminate those, who failed his perceptions about a good heritor.
Mukhtar (2010) states that selection is process of screening candidates and choosing the most suitable one, who fit requirements of the organization. Selection of the employees is crucial for organization’s management as they directly involved in performance and internal culture. However, selection processes must be done properly and carefully to prevent from hiring candidates with questionable backgrounds or with unsuitable skills (Rao, 2010).

Literature review

Key selection issues

Mayhew (n.d.) suggests that selection requirements are based on the organization’s goals, strategies and plans. The most common approaches to selection and recruitment that used in this report are psychometric, social and fit paradigms. All these three paradigms reflect the ways in which Willy Wonka selected his heritor and future owner of the factory.
According to Schmitt and Chan (1998), one of the most dominated selection and recruitment paradigms in organizations is psychometric paradigm. This approach underlines recruitment and selection based on organization’s point of view and do not take into consideration the employees’ personal issues towards the recruiting firm. Thereby, psychometric paradigm emphasizes assessing applicant with the best knowledge, skills and abilities for the particular job. The applicant is only needed to provide information and undertake the tests for assessing his skills, whereas employer plays a role of a decision-maker.
As we can see the changes in global trends lead to changes in people mind about the recruitment processes (Handler, 2004). Therefore, some organizations needed to adopt more social based approach to recruitment and selection such as social paradigm. Whereas psychometric paradigm emphasizes selection from the perspective of the organization, social paradigm stresses the interaction between the candidate and recruiting organization. Moreover this approach looking not only on the skills, but also considers applicant’s engagement with the organization’s culture. Social paradigm suggests significance of the developing trustful relationships between these two parties. For example: by providing a favorable environment to the employees.
One of the modern approaches to selection and recruitment is fit paradigm. Fit paradigm can be defined in two distinct ways such as: Person–Job fit and Person- Organization fit. (Handler, 2004). Person-Job fit is talking about measuring candidate’s skills, abilities and knowledge that will suitable to do certain tasks in the organization. Whereas, Person-Organization fit is defined as a match between applicant’s work-oriented values and culture of the organization. This approach shows that environment reflects people behavior and performance (Kristoff,1996). For example: employers need to check whether the applicant is suitable for the internal environment of the organization, because if person will not favor the environment his performance can fall.

All three paradigms, which are described above can be applied in context of the “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” film. From the psychometric paradigm perspective, it is possible to see that Willy Wonka identifies the main characteristics of his heritor, which are creativity, extraordinary and innovation. He identified his requirements to the applicants and performed a test to select the most suitable one. Moreover, as it shown in film, children were interviewed before visiting the factory and this gives prior information to Wonka how to check their characteristics. When testing the applicants, the most crucial thing is that these children do not that they are being tested for selecting the leader. This allows showing their natural personality and urges without the pressure of knowing that they are under the observation of Wonka. For example: Wonka showed to his guests the Chocolate Room, where he assures in Augustu’s greed and disobedience.
Social paradigm is viewed in this film by showing the results of failure to engage with organizational environment and culture. The environment of the factory expresses fun, creativity and magic, however it is restrict such characteristics as greed, spoiled and aggressiveness. Thus, children that had shown such behavior were eliminated from the test, because of their contradiction to the factory’s environment.
Fit paradigm in this film is shown in two ways: Person-Job fit and Person-Organization fit. In the Person-Job fit Wonka applies examines on the abilities and skills of the children and eliminates those who failed to reach his criteria. Next is Person-Organization fit, which are shown in Wonka’s ask the kids questions to determine, whether they liked the factory. Charlie was the one who showed positive expressions towards the environment and culture; therefore he fits with factory’s environment. But Charlie refused to become an owner of the factory, because Wonka did not allow him to bring his family along. This showing failure in addresses applicant’s needs.
Thus, the Fit paradigm is the most suitable one to use in context of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” film, because it shows two ways in which Wonka perform selection and recruitment processes.

Practice in the service industry
Tepeci (2010) suggest that employees play a major role in the service industry. This shows the importance of the proper selection employees for the performance of job. Most important attributes for the people in service industry are: people orientation, valuing customers, attention to details and physical abilities.
From the movie we can see that in selecting the best child Wonka used very unusual approach, because none of the candidates know about their roles. Moreover, Wonka treated each child by different test in different locations. In this case, using psychometric paradigm to assess applicant’s skills, knowledge and abilities in real organization will be effective to reveal a true nature of each applicant. However, there are many issues that can arise by using this practice, such as complaint from applicants, because such treatment might be offensive for them and high costs of performing testing. Thus most appropriate practice shown in the film is interviewing and gathering information of the applicants. As Wonka had some prior knowledge about the children from the interview he conducted individual assessment for each child. Nevertheless, when interviewing people, employer needs to know some information about the applicant to structure the questions and assess skills, which are necessary to use in service industry.
Apart of that, social paradigm shown in the movie can be a good example of the failure to engage in the environment. In the service industry having a good skills, knowledge and abilities is necessary to perform a tasks, however if the employee is not able to understand the value and culture inside the organization he will not be able to show whole organization idea to the customers. Thus, it is necessary to check whether applicant favors and undertsands the environment in which he will work.