Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

62 Understanding Rational Decision Making

Consumers make staffi ng decisions, without hiring permanent staff, when they choose a

doctor, an attorney, a personal trainer, or other professionals who can provide them with indi-

vidualized services. For example, investors make a staffi ng decision when choosing to subscribe

to one fi nancial analyst’s reports as opposed to another’s. In this instance, investors tend to pre-

fer to use the services of analysts who have higher historical accuracy, work for large brokerage

fi rms, forecast more frequently, and have greater experience.^35 Mental health patients make a

staffi ng decision when they choose a therapist to counsel them. Their top criteria for choosing

a therapist include the therapist’s credentials, their specifi c expertise, as well as their personal

characteristics. Mental health patients tend to give little weight to the therapist’s demographic

characteristics.^36

The following list of questions subsumes many of the decision criteria used to make staffi ng

decisions, especially those used within organizations, and provides a starting point for predicting

a principal’s decision criteria for any particular staffi ng decision. The list can also serve as an out-

line for the documents and presentations agents produce in order to elicit staffi ng decisions from

principals.

• What is the applicant’s or employee’s knowledge of the organization’s objectives?


• What is their knowledge of the requirements for the position or project?


• What is their action plan for meeting the requirements?


• How well do they fit with the organization’s culture?


• What are their qualifications for the job?


• What steps for engagement do they propose?

In addition to agents’ answers to the previous questions, principals may also require benchmark

information about other employees,^37 the ideal applicant,^38 and other current applicants.^39 One

source of benchmark information for staffi ng decisions is the letter of recommendation. Although

employers often request letters of recommendation to help them make staffi ng decisions, research

fi nds a large gap between recommenders’ intentions and the effects their letters have on employers’

perceptions.^40

Table 2.4 displays some of the think-aloud comments of two real-world audience members

as they made staffi ng decisions. The comments in the fi rst column were made by the director

of a fi rm’s human resources (HR) department as she read the cover letter for an MBA’s résumé.

The comments in the second column were made by the director of another fi rm’s management

information systems (MIS) department as he read an 18-page project proposal sent to Pacifi c

Bell from a consulting fi rm. Each expert was asked to make a decision based on the information

provided. The comments displayed refl ect the decision criteria for making staffi ng decisions

and illustrate how important it is that professionals address them fully. All of the comments

are numbered in the order they were made. Repetitive comments or those that did not directly

refl ect the experts’ decision criteria, such as comprehension-related comments, are not included

here.

Notice that both expert audience members complained that the potential hires lacked knowl-

edge of their fi rms and their fi rms’ requirements. Both experts questioned the qualifi cations of

the potential hires as well as their fi t with the fi rm’s culture. In addition, the MIS director com-

plained about the lack of specifi city in the action plan of the consulting fi rm’s proposal. And

the HR director suggested that the MBA was wrong to expect the employer to suggest steps

for engagement. Because so few criteria for staffi ng decisions were addressed, the fi rst expert

decided against interviewing the job applicant and the second was not interested in retaining the

consulting fi rm.