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One-page Summary – Payoff Table Case I have recorded an analysis of the case using a payoff table to decide which of several candidates to recommend the company hire

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One-page Summary – Payoff Table Case

I have recorded an analysis of the case using a payoff table to decide which of several candidates to recommend the company hire.  I should note that I deliberately ended up recommending a candidate that seems rather unlikely.  Each of you must listen to that recording.  Once you have done that, you must write up your recommendation in a one-page summary.  The paper should be single-spaced with margins no less than one inch all the way around.  The typeface may be no less than 10 point, and you must use a normal typeface (Times New Roman, or something like that).  The summary should be single-spaced.  Grammar and spelling will be graded.  The outline for what you must write follows:

 

Begin with a single sentence, saying simply “I recommend we hire _______.”  You should not include the quotation marks and fill in the “_______” with the name of the candidate you recommend.

 

Start a new paragraph and explain to me why you chose the candidate you recommended.  Focus entirely on the candidate you recommended, not the others.  Be fair – explain both the good points (rewards) and the bad (risks) and make me understand why the good points outweigh the bad.  You probably won’t have room to list all the risks and rewards of your preferred candidate, so make sure you include the most important ones.  DO NOT (caps for emphasis) mention the decision rules at all.  Talk only about the risks and rewards from the payoffs and probabilities.  Essentially, you are giving me enough information so I could take your summary and using just the information in it, make a good argument to someone else about your recommended candidate.  You must include the data in this paragraph

 

Start another paragraph, and this time briefly compare your preferred candidate to the others.  You will have even less room for this paragraph, so rather than doing a risk-to-risk or reward-to-reward comparison, talk about the candidates in an overall sense.  You might include some of the data in this paragraph, but you might not.  Again, you need to communicate a good level of understanding as to why you think your recommendation is better than the others.

 

Do not show the payoff table at all.  To write a one-page summary, start by writing a two+ page summary, including everything you want to say.  Then go back and start editing and deleting until you get it down to one page.

 

As for grading, as noted, I will take off points for misspellings, misuse of words and poor grammar (noun/verb agreement, undefined pronouns, and misuse of punctuation, to list only a few possibilities).  Think of this as a professional document, one you are handing to your boss.  I do not read rough drafts, but I will answer questions if you have them.

 

If there is any part of this that is not clear to you, let me know.

 

Ken MacLeod

 

Payoff Table Mini-case

 

Ever since graduating you have been working as an analyst trainee for a financial conglomerate.  Every trainee is rotated through four areas; yours were international investing, real estate, personal finance, and health care.  In each area you were teamed with one of the permanently assigned analysts, so you could absorb their specialized knowledge and they could have you do all the boring work.  Having recently completed your training rotations, you are about to receive a permanent assignment of your own.  You have been given one final task, however, you must recommend a recent graduate who will take your place in the training rotation and serve as your junior analyst during the first months of your permanent assignment. 

 

Obviously you want to pick the most qualified candidate (for the company’s sake), but you also want to pick a candidate that will be most helpful to you during those important first months when you have to impress everyone.  The problem is that you haven't been told which of the four areas will be your permanent assignment.  What you have been able to learn from colleagues and staff indicates to you there is a 35% chance you will be placed in International Investing, a 35% possibility of ending up in Personal Finance, a 20% chance of working in Real Estate, and only a 10% possibility of an assignment to Health Care. 

 

You have spent the past month sorting through resumes and first-contact interview reports from the various campuses.  You ultimately invited five people for a second interview and office visit.  During those visits, you used some fairly difficult standard tests provided by Human Resources, as well as your own impressions and comments received from the other interviewers, to evaluate each candidate on five measures: aptitude, analytical training, experience, creativity, and interest.  Not knowing where you will be permanently placed, you had to evaluate each candidate for each of the four possible areas.  The data from these evaluations, scored on a scale of 1 to 7 (a Likert scale), are shown below.  The sum of the individual scores becomes each candidate's overall score for that area, with a higher score being better. 

 

Samantha Lindle from Wake Forest:
	International Investing	Real Estate	Personal Finance	Health Care
Aptitude	7	3	1	5
Analytical Training	2	3	3	2
Experience	1	2	1	3
Creativity	4	5	4	6
Interest	6	1	1	5
Andy Karoly from Duke
	International Investing	Real Estate	Personal Finance	Health Care
Aptitude	6	1	5	2
Analytical Training	7	2	4	3
Experience	5	2	4	1
Creativity	5	3	1	3
Interest	7	1	1	1
Wendy Lee from UNC
	International Investing	Real Estate	Personal Finance	Health Care
Aptitude	2	3	4	5
Analytical Training	3	3	4	3
Experience	1	3	2	5
Creativity	4	3	3	4
Interest	3	7	5	6
Tom Roberts from Virginia
	International Investing	Real Estate	Personal Finance	Health Care
Aptitude	1	5	6	2
Analytical Training	6	1	4	6
Experience	2	3	1	2
Creativity	4	2	4	6
Interest	3	4	3	3
Bill Williams from Clemson
	International Investing	Real Estate	Personal Finance	Health Care
Aptitude	3	2	3	2
Analytical Training	3	2	2	1
Experience	2	3	1	2
Creativity	3	2	4	3
Interest	3	2	3	3

 

 

You should talk over the case analysis with your group, but you take the in-class (or proctored, for on-line students), test in Canvas.  It will be similar to your daily quizzes, with multiple choice questions based on the case data.  You may use your notes when taking the test.  Since the test is NOT about analysis, the questions will primarily deal with the payoff table calculations, decision rules and information from the lecture notes about payoff tables and decision trees.  It is fair, however, to ask questions such as whether a particular value would be considered a risk or reward.

 

Finally, you individually write a one-page summary where you make a recommendation and defend it (working from my recorded analysis).  This IS about analysis, so you will be trading off the risks and reward I identified in my recording rather than using the decision rules.  For that matter, you should not mention the decision rules at all in the one-page summary.  The due date for the one-page summary will be sent out by e-mail and posted in Canvas.