Caselet 2: Harmony International
Win Ho is a Chinese American who was born in San Francisco, attended UC-Davis for his undergraduate business degree and then earned an MBA at Stanford. Ho is currently the Asian regional sales manager for Harmony International. His sales force is comprised of local hires (salespeople from the country in which they sell). One of Harmony’s reps in Singapore recently left the firm to attend graduate school at the country’s prestigious National University. Ho recently traveled to Singapore to interview the three finalists generated by a Singaporean search firm. The candidates were:
2. C. R. Rao, an Indian Singaporean with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Madras. Rao has two years of newspaper advertising sales experience. However, he answered only 5 of the 10 structured questions satisfactorily and balked at selling a pen to Win Ho. Rao even appeared arrogant and admitted he had several job leads he was considering.
3. Mohammed Asri Ashraf, a Malaysian with Singaporean citizenship. Asri has an MBA from the Malaysian International University in Kuala Lumpur. He provided correct answers to 8 of the 10 structured interview questions and made a solid attempt to sell the pen to sales manager Ho. However, one thing that bothered Ho was Asri’s lack of eye contact and his subservient behavior, exemplified by his answering questions by saying, “Sir, I would . . .” or “Sir, the best way to . . .”
The territory that Harmony is seeking a salesperson for is a mixture of Chinese (85%), Malaysian (10%), and Indian (5%) businesses. Based upon the limited amount of information you have, which candidate do you believe Ho should hire?
Questions
1. How helpful would a job description/qualifications be in this situation?
2. Given that the territory is predominantly Chinese, how should this influence Ho’s decision?
3. Can you identify factors that might disqualify any of the finalists?
4. What explanation might you offer for Asri’s behavior during the interview?
5. What is your recommendation for Ho? Why did you reach this decision?