Question 1: Discuss how the employee selection methods at Outback Steakhouse help the organization achieve a competitive advantage.
The Selection process within most organizations is the foundation of competitive advantage through people. Upon reading this case, there is one particular aspect that stands out: the people are the main ingredients that make the company successful. Therefore, since the competitive advantage to an organization’s success is it choices of the people that the leaders in charge hired. In a job fit option, the leaders create the job specification that needs satisfying by the employees hired. It is very important to select the right contender for the job based on the needs of each individual business, which fall sole on the premise of employee selection. Outback Steakhouse has integrated a defined selection process for hourly and management workers that will help
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GET BETTER GRADES hire and retain people to successfully run their organization. This selection process helps the organization achieve a competitive advantage because it allows Outback to recruit the applicant, assess their qualifications rigorously, then select the most competent centered on its objective by choosing employees who are willing to adapt to the culture, vision, values and beliefs of Outback Steakhouse. And it does allow them to employ people that appreciate the value of teamwork, accountability, kindness, and individual responsibility. Outback Steakhouse leaders used several types of tests that help them to weed out the people they want on their teams. One of these tests is the validity which dictates how the potential new hires are test against the old setting of Outbackers who have been very successful in the company. This is a strategic technique to discover if a person is a good fit along with all the tests that are given to the new contenders help to keep Outback Steakhouse a step above the average...
Discuss how the employee selection methods at Outback Steakhouse help the organization achieve a competitive advantage.

Outback Steakhouse leaders started out by hiring the right people that would provide a positive atmosphere with experienced employees. The is the key to making Outback a great place to work. A rigorous employee selection process was developed in the early years of the company that is rooted in the Principles and Beliefs. By starting this way turnovers will remain to stay low. One of the Outback Steakhouse which is Korea provided almost a textbook example of a five-point framework for competitive advantage (1) financial resources, (2) physical resources, (3) human resources, (4) organizational knowledge and learning, and (5) general organizational resources (including brand names, relationships with stakeholders, and reputation). Outback has performed outstandingly on the tangible categories of financial resources and physical resources, but the
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GET BETTER GRADES fact is that competitors could observe and duplicate those policies. By contrast, Outback has made effective use of the intangible factors found in the categories of human resources and organizational knowledge to develop a competitive advantage that will be difficult for competitors to duplicate. Outback's challenge for the future is to maintain its advantage by building on its already strong combination of intangible factors. (Entrepreneur - Feb 2009)

Discuss the importance of fit to Outback Steakhouse.
Outback Steakhouse, Inc., is a $3.25 billion company with 65,000 employees and
1,100 restaurants worldwide, which began modestly in the spring of 1988. The company’s Principles and Beliefs give the employees of Outback a sense of who the company is and how it expects its employees to be treated. The winning strategy developed at the first location in Tampa could be difficult to duplicate across many locations since so many people are involved in the process. To address that... Introduction
Outback Steakhouse restaurants have been a successful venture with a large number of branches being opened annually in various areas. The company began its operation in 1988 after opening its first restaurant in Florida. The company has approximately 1100 restaurants and 65000 employees. The company has an estimated value of 3.25$ billion dollars.

The company’s success may be attributed to its principles and beliefs which support the operational framework of the company. The principles and beliefs greatly value the hiring process and believe that hiring the right people not only improves the company’s operations but also lowers turn over, which results creating a workforce that highly experienced and competent (Tom, Chris, David, & Paul, 2004).

1. Discuss how the employee selection methods at Outback Steakhouse help the organization achieve a competitive advantage. The hiring process at Outback Steakhouse is one of the greatest, strategic tools which the company uses to ensure it attains high and positive results in the hospitality industry. The company believes in exercising a rigorous process in employee selection in order to acquire the best employees with good qualities that not only enable them to deliver the best services, but also to stay put and thus increase the company’s retention and reduce the turn over rate. The selection process involves five major steps.

The first step involves offering employees a preview of the responsibilities and duties that they will be charged with as employees and how they will be held accountable. The second step involves sharing with the prospective employees the dimension of performance stipulations, which states the expected behavior of outbackers. The third step involves the completion of an application form. The fourth step involves assessment through various tests on cognition, personality and much more. The fifth and last step involves an oral interview which precedes the final selection. Selections to fill higher posts are mostly done through internal selection from proven performers within the company.

These processes of selection ensure the company gets the right kind of employees with a will to work and stay at Outback Steakhouse. The resultant high retention ensures that a high quality staff is maintained. A low turn over also means that employees are able to stay long enough at Outback Steakhouse, to gain enough experience which improves their work delivery. Additionally, a low turn over rate means that the company spends less on frequent hiring occasions. Internal selection during promotions also ensures that the company gets experienced employees that require less training to further their skills.

Maintaining a high quality staff with a low turn over rate enables the company to be competitive in the hospitality industry because of retaining a staff that is highly experienced and thus able to offer good services which keep customer happy and coming back. Additionally, this helps reduce extra expenses attributed to regular hiring.

2. Discuss the importance of fit to Outback Steakhouse. The meaning of “fit” in an organization simply defines the ability of a new hired employee or prospective employee to adapt to the organization’s culture, rules, regulations and required work behavior. Outback Steakhouse greatly values “fit” and that is why they insist on selecting the best possible employees that can fit in to the organization and work harmoniously. Fit is important to Outback steakhouse because it ensures high retention and a low employee turn over. Steakhouse employees with a high fitting capacity so as to have low turn over and avoid the need for conducting regular hiring (Jackson & Mathis, 2005).

3. Evaluate Outback’s selection process including the order of selection methods such that applicants first complete an application, then complete tests, and then participate in interviews. The selection process at Steakhouse is a progressive step-by-step process which enables shedding off of unsuitable candidates. The selection process involves five major steps. The first step involves offering employees a preview of the responsibilities and duties that they will be charged with as employees and how they will be held accountable.

The second step involves sharing with the prospective employees the dimension of performance stipulations, which states the expected behavior of outbackers. The third step involves the completion of an application form. The fourth step involves assessment through various tests on cognition, personality and much more. The fifth and last step involves an oral interview which precedes the final selection. Selections to fill higher posts are mostly done through internal selection from proven performers within the company.

The first step is beneficial because it lets the candidates understand the responsibilities that they will be charged with and thus enabling the candidates to assess these against their abilities to determine whether they fit the job positions. The second step allows them to assess whether they can be able to work within Outback’s environment, and this phase allows those that cannot comply with the stipulations of the company to back out. The third step is a formality and the fourth enables the company to assess a person’s knowledge and ability. The final step allows the managers to probe further and identify a person’s ability (Tom et al. 2004).

4. Evaluate whether or not these selection methods are valid. These methods of selection are totally valid because there are no discriminatory elements in the selection process that could lock out anyone with appropriate qualifications (Allison, 1996). Additionally, the method followed offers the right pre-employment screening model. Conclusively, it is a valid good procedure.

References
Allison, K. L. (1996),. Employee Selection: A Legal Perspective, Society for Human Resource Management
Jackson, H. J. and Mathis, L. R. (2005),. Human resource management, 11th edition, Thomson Business and Professional Publishing <selecting human resources: chapter 8 http://www.scribd.com/doc/10325435/Selection-Process> Tom, D., Chris, S. David, H. and Paul, A. (2004),. How outback steakhouse created a great place to work, have fun, and make money. Journal of Organizational Excellence, Volume number 23, Issue number 4; p. 23

I. For the following reasons, the employee selection methods at Outback Steakhouse help the organization achieve a competitive advantage:
a. This examination of the competitive advantage built by Outback Steakhouse employee is based on a five-category framework. On all five points, Outback employees has performed excellently, melding the resources in the following categories to build its advantage: (1) financial resources, (2) physical resources, (3) human resources, (4) organizational knowledge and learning, and (5) general organizational resources including brand names, relationships with stakeholders, and reputation.
b. Outback Steakhouse employees has clearly developed a competitive advantage that allows Outback to perform a service, manufacture a product, or offer a bundle of benefits that competitors cannot match. While it is extremely difficult to sustain a competitive advantage, especially in the restaurant industry, Outback Steakhouse works to create advantages through differential development of resources and capabilities. Superior resources or capabilities are those that have value in the market, are possessed by only a small number of restaurants, and are not easy to substitute. If a particular resource is also costly or impossible to imitate, then the competitive advantage may be sustainable. Successful companies, like Outback Steakhouse, pay careful attention to developing and applying their resources and capabilities to build sustainable competitive advantage.
c. Outback Steakhouse can gain competitive advantage through possessing hourly and management Outbackers in the following five categories: (1) financial resources, including all of the monetary resources from which a firm can draw; (2) physical resources, such as land, buildings, equipment, locations, and access to raw...
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