1. RECRUITMENT & SELECTION
INTRODUCTION
Tanglewood is a chain of general retail stores featuring items such as clothing,
appliances, electronics, and home decor. The company operates in the moderate price
niche, targeting middle- and upper-income customers. Tanglewood’s strategic
distinction is an “outdoors” theme, with a large camping and outdoor living section in
every store. The store also distinguishes itself by its simple, elegant, and uncluttered
design concepts for the store and their in-house products.
It was founded by two best friends in 1975 by Tanner Emerson and Thurston Wood
and later renamed their store chain to Tanglewood in 1984. Initially it operated as a
single store and as years went by, as the business developed from 1975 to 1984, the
business had grown substantially with a strong base of employee participation,
customer satisfaction, and profitability. The company grew to other parts of
America has today has a total of 243 stores open in the states of Washington, Oregon,
Northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New
Mexico, and Arizona.
The company would like to now consolidate its current management strategy. But
before doing so, there is a need to study Tanglewood’s current operating environment.
There are several area of study and they are:
 Competition and Industry
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2. RECRUITMENT & SELECTION
Tanglewood’s Return on Assets (ROA) is at the second position in which it has
efficiently managed its assets to revenue. Return on Revenue (ROR) shows that
Tanglewood is one of the top after Kohl. An increasing ROR implies that there are
fewer expenses incurred for higher net income. The percentage of proceeds obtained
from selling the investment of interest (ROI) shows a healthy figure. However,
Tanglewood needs to be concerned of direct and close competition of several
companies like KoStoreshl’s, Federated Dept and Target.
Profit ratios
ROR (%) ROA (%) ROI (%)
J.C. Penny 1.1 1.9 5.8
Saks 1.2 1.5 3.1
Dillard’s 1.7 2.0 5.5
WalMart 3.3 9.0 21.6
Sears, Roebuck 3.8 3.3 24.6
Target 3.8 6.3 19.1
Federated Dept. Stores 4.0 4.3 11.3
Tanglewood 4.1 12.7
17.
2
Kohl’s 7.1 11.4 20.4
Table 1: The ROR, ROA and ROI of Tanglewood which indicate corporate profitability
 Competitive Response and Strategy
The company targets middle and upper-income consumers with reasonable prices.
Tanglewood’s provides the same products offered of general merchandise retailers but
with a focus on quality products, providing customer service, and a more designer
appearance than discount stores. This shop also comes with a trademark “look” which
involves an outdoors theme, complete with real wood décor and use of natural colors.
Tanglewood has developed several proprietary brands of merchandise which are
designed to complement its look. While the actual products are made by
subcontractors, Emerson and Wood have personal responsibility for all products that
are produced.
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The company has also incorporated technology into their business. Tanglewood’s web
portal has all the necessary information with a clear guide to merchandise available in
the stores. Their stores serves as a pick-up location for items ordered online. This
allows them to utilize their low-cost shipping arrangements to the benefit of
customers.
 Organization Structure
The organization structure of Tanglewood encourages employees at all levels of the
corporation to make suggestions regarding operations. More than one major
operational change has come from an employee suggestion. Overall, there are 1 store
manager, 3 assistant managers, 17 department managers, approximately 24 shift
leaders, approximately 170 associates and around 215 employees per store. All
employees, full or part time, are treated and considered as members of the core work
force. Tanglewood does not extensively use a flexible workforce, such as temporary
employees. A core workforce is viewed as essential for the organizational values and
culture, described below, that Tanglewood seeks to develop and maintain.
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Diagram 1 : Stores are organized into 12 geographical regions, with approximately 20 stores per region. Each
region has a regional manager who oversees operations of the stores. The store managers report directly to the
regional managers. There is considerable variation between regional managers in how they run their HR
practices. The tendency for some regional managers to encourage human resources practices which are counter
to the Tanglewood philosophy is a major reason that an external consulting firm was brought in to centralize
human resources.
The breakdown of stores and employment by division is as follows:
Division Area Covered Stores PCs PCs/S Employees
1 Eastern Washington 25 3,120,000 124,800 5,400
2 Western Washington 25 3,011,000 120,440 5,400
3 Northern Oregon 18 1,850,000 102,778 3,900
4 Southern Oregon 16 1,710,000 106,875 3,400
5 Northern California 23 3,000,000 130,435 4,900
6 Idaho 17 1,366,000 80,353 3,700
7 Montana and Wyoming 18 1,418,000 78,778 3,900
8 Colorado 23 4,550,000 197,826 4,900
9 Utah 19 2,351,000 123,737 4,100
10 Nevada 19 2,241,000 117,947 4,100
11 New Mexico 18 1,875,000 104,167 3,900
12 Arizona 22 5,580,000 253,636 4,700
Total 243 52,300
Table 2: PCs is the population of the area covered; the abbreviation PC for Tanglewood means
“potential customers.” The PCs/S is the number of potential customers per store. Employee figures are
rounded to the nearest hundred.
 Organizational Culture and Values
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Store Manager
(about 20 per region)
Assistant Store Manager
for Hardlines
Assistant Store Manager
for Operations and HR
Assistant Store
Manager for Softlines
6 Department Managers
(Sporting goods,
electronics, kitchen, bath,
outdoor, domestics)
12 Shift Leaders
(Two per Dept. Manager)
12 Shift Leaders
(Two per Dept. Manager)
6 Department Managers
(Women’s, men’s, misses,
children and infants, shoes,
perfume and jewellery)
5 Department Managers
(Security, Administration,
Warehouse, Cashiers,
Maintenance)
Operations associates
(About 50 total—10 security,
5 admin, 10 warehouse, 20
cashiers, 5
maintenance/custodial)
Store associates
(About 60 total—10 per
department manager)
Store associates
(About 60 total—10 per
department manager)
Regional Manager
(12 total)

5. RECRUITMENT & SELECTION
Tanglewood has a culture and values that are quite distinct from most of its major
competitors. The company places great values on employee participation. At
orientation, every employee hears the philosophy that Wood and Emerson proclaimed
as their vision for employee relations, “If you tell someone exactly what to do, you’re
only getting half an employee. If you give someone the space to make their own
decisions, you’re getting a whole person.”
Most retail stores have a traditional hierarchical structure with assistant store
managers directing their subordinates and most associates’ primarily follow orders. In
contrary, Tanglewood allow each department manager to formulate distinct methods
for running their departments in coordination with the employees they supervise.
Employees still have well defined job responsibilities, but efforts are made to involve
employees in the decision process when possible.
One of the most unique cultural of Tanglewood is the “straight talk” strategy used in
all areas of the business. There is transparency in its financial performance. The
company provides employees with information on the company’s share price and
overall profitability for each quarter, along with other details about company
activities. Profit-sharing for all employees is part of the company’s push to encourage
employees to think like managers. In addition, there is a mandatory weekly store
meetings (one meeting for each shift) to allow employees the time to voice their
suggestions for in-store improvements. Suggestions that are implemented by
management will receive financial bonuses. Department managers are also given
financial incentives for successfully developing and implementing new policies and
procedures, further reinforcing the participatory management style of the company.
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Each shift emphasizes team spirit. Although the most senior associate is a shift leader,
the other members are also given the space to freely provide ongoing suggestions.
Work is distributed equally among employees. Employees are also expected to help
each as a team. Quarterly performance evaluations include several items specifically
reflecting the associates’ interactions with other team members and initiative to
improve the department.
Since employee suggestions are given importance by the management, Tanglewood’s
upper managers have ample opportunity to observe the leadership and decision
making qualities of their associates. This easily identifies good staff for promotion
and career prospect. New employees without retail experience, even those with
college degrees who are targeted as having management potential, spend a period of
time working in the store as an associate. This is seen as a way of preserving the
company’s unique culture and values over time.
 Human Resources at Tanglewood
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Diagram 2: The various HODs within the Human Resource Division of Tanglewood
The basic structure for human resources at Tanglewood involves both corporate and
store-level components. The Staffing Services Director supervises three managers (for
the areas of retention, recruiting, and selection), plus an Equal Employment
Opportunity Coordinator. The corporate Staffing Services function performs data
analysis and design of staffing policies and programs. Data collected that assist
Tanglewood’s recruiting practices, methods for interviewing, testing and selecting
employees, and employee turnover are sent from the individual store to the corporate
headquarters. These information is used by Tanglewood to form recommendations to
the stores.
The management of each store is responsible for each recruitment, staffing, training
etc based on the recommendations of the corporate staffing service. This includes
staffing in terms of planning, recruitment, initial screening and hiring. Department
managers interview the finalists and the final decision to hire is left to the manager
after discussing with the store assistant. Promotion decisions are also done within that
store department which is the department manager. Regional managers conduct the
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Vice President for Human
Resources
Staffing Services
Director
Employee Relations
Director
Retention Manager
Recruiting Manager
Selection Manager EEO
Coord.
Communications
ManagerLegal
Compliance and EEO
Manager
Benefits Manager
Salary Manager Labor
Market Analyst
Executive Coach
Development
ManagerTraining
Manager
Compensation and
Benefits Director
Training and
Development Director

8. RECRUITMENT & SELECTION
hiring for store managers, and work with each store’s managers to determine
promotions to the assistant store manager.
Problem Statement
Having said all that, there are still some flaws in the system of Tanglewood that
requires rectification. The corporate staffing function has not been strong. The
corporate HR acts only as an advisor to the store-level managers. The company
wishes to expand and there is a need for a central planning body in staffing rather than
two different staffing process taking place. There is the assumption local leadership is
inefficient with the large number of growing stores and centralization will rectify this.
Staffing Strategy
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Staffing strategy requires making key decision about the acquisition, deploying and
retention of the organization’s workforce. Thirteen such decisions are identified and
discussed below referring to Tanglewood Stores.
Staffing Levels
1. Acquire or Develop Talent
According to the text, if Tanglewood wants to achieve a full acquisition
strategy then Tanglewood is going to have to acquire new talent. This seems to
be the best strategy for Tanglewood because it is already evident judging from
the case that there is an inconsistency in management styles between the
original stores and the newly acquired stores. The argument for acquiring new
talent is that new employees hit the ground running and are at their peak the
moment they arrive. This is the kind of performance Tanglewood needs during
and acquisition period. It assures that the newly acquired stores start on the
right path without resentment or employees, particularly managers who resist.
For existing stores, Tanglewood should take on a talent development
approach. Acquiring from within is always a good way to maintain a
productive workforce. When employees believe that there are opportunities for
advancement they are usually more motivated to achieve the organizational
goal. This approach could be beneficial because Tanglewood wants its
employees to be self sufficient and think like managers.
2. Hire Yourself or Outsource
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This is a unique and tricky decision for any company because it may lead to
advantage or disadvantage of the company process decision for two reasons;
a) By hiring someone to be an outside consultant for Tanglewood will
include the lack of knowledge to the human resource function in reality
and determine their result based off the papers presented by
Tanglewood retailer director to the consultant.
b) The consultant is not fully aware of their strengths or weaknesses of
the internal region director because the consultant is not one of them.
Personally, we will not encourage out source consultants because of their
lacking in the actual experience of that region. However, there are several
advantages for hiring an out source such as giving a new plan or idea, a new
technique and a new opinion to improve certain things at Tanglewood human
resource department.
3. External or Internal Hiring
If we look deeper to Tanglewood culture and values we can find that all
employees are working as one family and we think external hiring will affect
this strategy because people coming from different culture or perspective
value will affect the family atmosphere workplace. We will encourage internal
hiring more because of the people culture and value from each region; this is
due to the similarity between the employee and their society.
For upper level management positions, Tanglewood should hire internally. As
stated in the case, “Organisation feels their absolutely must be a workforce for
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committed, qualified individuals who will help carry Tanglewood philosophy
into the future.” Then for entry level positions they should obviously hire
externally.
4. Core or Flexible Workforce
On page 6 of Tanglewood case book (under “Organisational Overview and
Mission”, paragraph 1) interview with Business Monthly, “Tanglewood really
needs to slow down and take a hard look at our corporate culture. Right now
we need to consolidate and make sure we’re as close to the company’s original
mission as we can be. Our success is due entirely to our strong culture-this
something we need to hold on to”.
In our opinion, Tanglewood should focus on Core Workforce during the
selection of employees. This business is based on a “team” philosophy that
will be easily accomplished through core workforce. It will be difficult to
maintain a cohesive employee and company culture with flexible employees
throughout the year as opposed to full and part time employees working year
around.
5. Hire or Retain
In our opinion, Tanglewood should focus on retaining their employees and
develop their talent and skills instead hiring new ones. If they plan to follow
an internal hiring strategy and maintain a core workforce as per our
suggestion, then they must focus on retaining these employees. It would be
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difficult to maintain a consistent company culture if they have high turnover
rate of employees.
6. National or Global
Tanglewood is a retail store known all over the region and overseas. Each
region enjoys its own culture and values, which distinguishes from others. The
pattern and the processes of Tanglewood has to be similar, however, internal
department method will run depending on the regions culture. On page 12 of
Tanglewood case book (under “Organisational Culture and Value”, paragraph
1) its states that; “If you tell someone exactly what to do, you are only getting
half an employee. If your given someone the space to make their own
decisions, you are getting whole person”. We encourage this philosophy to be
spread and worked with among all the regions.
Tanglewood like other stores has the same tools, clothing, equipment,
electronics and much more. These retailers have to be engage in both overseas
out-sourcing and off-shoring by hiring high tech and talented, sufficient
employees to deal with this globally and locally that will help Tanglewood
reach and exceed competitive levels among others.
7. Attract or Relocate
The main idea that most of the organization is following to be more successful
that is to bring labor to a company rather than taking the company to the labor.
Tanglewood retailers, have to establish locations closer to their distributers,
this is because Tanglewood has 12 geographic regions and 20 stores per
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region. This mean the regional managers have little experience on how human
resource runs throughout the 20 stores. Tanglewood needs external and
internal training for these managers and continuously update them with new
policies and guidelines, to keep Tanglewood with the other competitors.
Another way to attract employees to Tanglewood is there high education
quality that is expected of them when applying. This will lead to our last factor
of quantity exhibit the short or long term focus.
8. Overstaff or Understaff
In our opinion, Tanglewood Company is overstaffed. Eventhough,
Tanglewood managers are more cooperative with all its employees’
suggestions regarding the company’s operations but still it needs to decrease.
We really think that by decreasing the number of employees and increasing
the responsibility staffing, training in each department will make the work
atmosphere stronger and job performance will be done in a shorter time and
also saving money for the company.
9. Short or Long-Term Focus
Setting a goal is easy for a company, however, balancing and how to achieve
that goal is challenging. Tanglewood’s goal is to expand their company further
and attract more clients. The human resource functions for Tanglewood
among the regions has less experience because they are not connecting with
each other very well. The short focus plan has to improve the human resource
function and develop and increase the knowledge of their department.
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This will lead to the long term focus that will help them understand how to
reach their long term focus. Most talent management program is focusing on a
long term focus and this is the only way human resource can be successful in
Tanglewood. Expanding and well staffed will be the result of the human
resource doing a good job.
On the four staffing quality after Tanglewood human resource managers and
employees have been trained well, need to start excepting new applicants that fit in
the right correct position. Any successful staffing design has to start with the job
attraction from its employee to perform the job successfully. With the large staffing in
Tanglewood human resource has to put a plan to distinguish the good from the bad
employees.
Staffing Quality
1. Person/Job or Person/Organization Match
Diagram 3: Person Job or Person / Organization Match
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Work preferences
Personality
Demography
Task requirements
Rewards for this job
Authority for this job
Group
Job
Culture and values
Reward systems
Authority/decision making
Organization

15. RECRUITMENT & SELECTION
Diagram 3 that there are three kinds of job match for a person and they are by
job, group and organization. A person is matched with a job during
recruitment and selection if the particular task requires specific knowledge to
do it, will rewards and authority attached to it. Person is matched with a team
(group) when the preference of the job demands a person to fit the group
perhaps in terms of personality, demography, target market etc. Lastly a
person is matched with needs of an organization when the company is looking
for people who can jive with their culture and values. People choose the
organizations when there are rewards attached to the organization. The job
also offers leadership and authority to the person when attached to the
organization.
Diagram 4 : An overall view of how the organization recruits a person who fit the job
and the impact on human resources division.
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Organization
Values
New Job
Duties
Multiple
Jobs
Future
Jobs
Job
Requirements
Rewards
Person
KSAOs
Motivation
Match Impact
Attraction
Performance
Retention
Attendance
Satisfaction
Other
Attraction
Performance
Retention
Attendance
Satisfaction
Other
HR
Outcomes

16. RECRUITMENT & SELECTION
Having explained the above diagram 3 and 4, we can conclude that for
Tanglewood, we would recommend the organization matches the person with
the organization. This is because specific or expert knowledge is not required to
do the task. Graduates are also placed in stores as associates to learn up the
skills and experience needed. Plus Tanglewood employs the method of
employee participation which is more like working together as a family. So
finding for a staff that fits the organization is suitable for this company.
Matching a person to job would be more preferred for a higher position but
nevertheless, employees working at Tanglewood are going up the ladder with
training and promotion.
2. Specific or General KSAOs
We would go for the second choice more than the first. Staff that have a
variety of knowledge and experience will serve best at this company.
Tanglewood needs someone who can adapt to the agile requirement of the
company and changing business world. As the company expands, many
changes will take place. Someone who can fit both now and future will be
perfect if the candidate has a general KSAOs.
3. Exceptional or Acceptable Workforce Quality
The first is the best choice for the organization. The employees are an asset for
Tanglewood. The company cannot settle for cheap labour or average staff
which could threaten the success of the company built over the years. Plus
Tanglewood does not believe so much in a flexible workforce like temporary
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workers. Staff turnover is not so healthy for a company. Tanglewood should
continue its culture of valuing its employees and ensuring core good
workforce is always maintained over the years.
4. Active or Passive Diversity
A diverse workforce is good for today however the question is whether the
workforce understands the local need of the place, the demand patterns,
customer expectations and culture to name a few. We would recommend a
passive workforce for Tanglewood to maintain the close relationship shared
among employees.
In Chapter 5 there is a case on Tanglewood for not being active enough its in
diversity. Employment in US follows EEU of America. Have to check that before
writing the above our lecturer said.
Recommendation and Conclusion:
Since the aim of Tanglewood is now to expand, their management must understand
KSAOs and motivation to its employees, how to attract, retain, perform and satisfy
customers. Though we have given the explanation based on the information from Mr
Penchiala and Ancheley, both must be careful and prudent while implementing
changes to the policy and processes. It is important to retain a strong workforce with
skills, qualifications, education and knowledge, which will surely lead Tanglewood to
have the competitive advantage to stay ahead of its competitors and be a price /
product leader.
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