Jake Cittadino
Professor Coursey English 1102 C
4 March 2013
Recruiting, Hiring, and Maintaining: Mandatory for Business Along with many others, a highly mandatory aspect of running any type of business is a workforce. Recruiting, hiring, and maintaining this workforce is a process that requires a plethora of work and time. To be successful in business, all three of the aspects have to be done efficiently and effectively; like a well-oiled machine. If one of the three parts breaks down and is no longer productive, the whole system breaks down. Although the novel The Magicians does not directly involve a business, it does show some aspects of recruiting and hiring skilled labor to go to Brakebills, a specialized college that only allows magical prodigies to attend. In the novel, Quentin is recruited to go to the magical college by a recruiter disguised as an EMT. This certain EMT gives Quentin and his friend an ultimatum that results in Quentin arriving in Brakebills. Once Quentin and the other recruits are at the college, a process similar to a business hiring an employee is performed by way of an entrance exam. This entrance exam is a way to wean out incompetent candidates to ensure that the college only contains the finest quality students, or “employees” for business’s sake. Once the examinations or interviews are performed, the next step in running a business is to be able to keep the employees working for as long as possible. At Brakebills, there is a mysterious problem with the fourth year students disappearing. The mystery is eventually solved because Quentin and his classmates are turned into animals and sent to Brakebills South in Antarctica. This journey proves to be too much for many students to handle and is the reason for the missing fifth year students. If a similar incident were to happen in a business, that business would ultimately fail