California state university, Northridge
Management of engineering Professionals MSE 608B
7/13/2014
Professor:
Dr. Mark Rajai
Video and Audio Lecture
Summaries
Assignment #1
Prepared By
Anil Kumar Kunchala
ID NUMBER 105942900
Video lecture summary
MSE 608B is online course, this is professional course and very important for engineering
management student, so this video lecture contains “Course over view”, “how to access the course web
site” and “Moodle website”. Course website for information and Moodle website for communication.
First professor started with course over view, course over view contains following topics,
 Introduction to course: - Professor explain course introduction and over view of the course. How
important this course is for engineering management professional.
 Course proposed plan and deadlines: - In this section professor talked about course plan and
assignments deadlines. Professor given weekly plan of this course and assignment deadlines for this
course.
 Course grading: - here professor explain weightage of marks. That is
o 20% Audio & Videos lectures summary.
o 25% Midterm Exam.
o 30%Final Project (5% Presentation, 25% Formal Written Report).
o 25%Fnal Exam (Personal website).
Course web site: - professor showed how to access contains of course website. Course website contains
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Course syllabus: - It contains information about professor, course structure and course plan.
Textbooks: - Required text book for course that is “Custom Business Recourse” by Dr. Rajai.
Lecture notes: - It contains required lecture notes for this course.
Final project guidelines: - contains suggested topics and guidelines (Grading rubric).
Audio Lecture:- professor talked about, there are 4 audio lecture are there student have listen and
make one page summary of each audio lecture and put all of them on file.
Videos lectures: - Professor explain course overview in this lecture. Professor advice to listen 3
times and summaries this video.
Professor’s lecture: - Additional lecture is effective leadership is presented here, this is not to
summaries but may ask in exam.
Other sources: - additional lectures on various topics useful to may ask in exam and useful for
making final project video.
Student Work Samples: - contains student sample in the past (for reference)
Useful links: - contains required software for this course.
Moodle Website: - website for communication. Moodle Contains
o Weekly remainders
o Commination with professor and other students
o Assignments upload
 Audio &video lecture summary
 Midterm exam
 Final Project Report
 Final project presentation
 Final exam
o View grades: - Professor Post student’s grades here to view.
 30 minutes class session: - Professor introduces the course, explain the overall course structure,
talked about grading, showed some previous students work as an example, explained the project and
talked about guidelines and talked about plagiarism.
Audio lecture one introduction to “Hiring”
Hiring is the process for find right individuals from right occupation and includes job advertisements for
interviewing to employ offer law suits for discrimination or privacy invasion. Hiring process contains four
steps those are
 Preliminary Process: - preliminary process is evaluating the job requirements and prerequisites.
Right person can’t be hired if the job requirements are unknown or ambiguous. Here few
assessments for consideration of job requirements.
 Writing a job description and performance assessment criteria.
 Identifying the corporative structure and management style.
 Finding out if training and support is needed.
 Considering the need for urgency in the job.
 Comparing what other companies are paying for that skills and setting a salary range.
 Search procedure: - organizations that gives internal employees an opportunity to apply for a
job opening before searching for an external candidate must considered both equally, making it fair
for both the employees.
Some of the common candidates searching methods are:
 Identifying the internal candidates that can be transferred or other countries that have excess
talent who are willing to transfer.
 Placing job advertisements in local publications and on job boards and attending job fairs.
 Online and in-person applications and resumes must be accepted and evaluated.
 Holding an open house facility, posting announcements on campuses.
 Screening procedure: - Employers have a daunting job of interviewing the short-listed
candidates only as large volume of applicants send in their resumes. It is an employer’s job to find
the right fit. But sometimes there are problems with the resume that complicate the already complex
the procedure by the usage of:
 Spelling and grammar mistakes.
 Incomplete or inaccurate contact information and no descriptive information about employer.
 Meaningless introduction or including pictures, URL links, and unprofessional e-mail
addresses.
 Lack of clear summary, poor font choice or poor formatting.
The key to hiring the right person is by conducting a good interview in a relaxed environment, shortlisting the candidates who have answered effectively and preparing a summary on each candidate for
selection.
 Candidate selection :- This step include This step includes going back to all the previous steps
and short-listing based on the following:
 The one who meets job requirements, description and qualifications.
 The candidate that will be most successful for the position considering job-related criteria
only.
 Mannerisms such as coming on time, greeting with a smile and proper dressing must be
noted.
In this audio lecture professor explain the basic ingredients of hiring process. One of the difficult element in
this process is reducing candidates flow by reviewing candidate’s resumes and selecting few candidates that
will be interviewed, so writing a good resume is very important.
Audio lecture two Introduction to “Firing”
Introduction to Firing: - In present hostile society, numerous bosses are worried that previous workers
may react with lawful movement if terminated. In spite of the fact that there are no leads, a manager can
keep a few rules to abatement his shots of suing.
 Termination reasons / causes : Resignation: - Employee leave the position.
 Dismissal: - Company expel the person from position.
 Other (inability to perform task): - Mandatory, retirement, death, layoff, physical or mental
inabilities.
 Employment relationships are:  Contractual: - termination are done in accordance with the contract terms if one exists.
 At will: - terminations occur without notice or cause but with certain restrictions.
Resignations: - Resignations are terminations initiated by the worker and its reasons could be gathered into:
 Unavoidable: - marriage, maternity, relocation, change of career, etc.
 Avoidable reasons: - dissatisfaction with management, lack of growth opportunities, and
dissatisfaction with the pay or polices.
 If it falls into the avoidable reasons category, managers can avoid the situations by:
 Discussing about the future career growth opportunities or by agreeing to increase the pay.
 Resolving resignation intentions by bringing uniformity in company policies.
 To reduce complications, a resignation procedure must be followed:
 Resignation letter must be requested to avoid litigations.
 A departure date must be set and meanwhile a suitable replacement must be found and
trained.
Dismissals: - Dismissals are terminations started by the superintendent. It must be an imparted choice to
guarantee objectivity and reasonableness as rejection of a worker may prompt litigation's.
Reasons for dismissals: 
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Unsatisfactory performance: - persistent failure to meet minimum standards.
Misconduct: - deliberate violation of the company’s rules.
Change of job requirements: - change in the scope of nature of the job.
Lack of qualification: - Employees inability of meeting define goals and objectives, even though the
employee has a good work attitude.
Dismissals can be prevented by:  Discussing problems with employees before it’s getting too late and setting regular progress report.
 Possibly transferring employees to other suitable positions.
Dismissal procedure to avoid legal issues can be done in an “oral warning, a written warning” if necessary,
and “final written warning” which is a more serious warning prior to the last step which is the termination.
IF the ruminated employee reacts with strong emotions, employer can try to handle them by: 
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Avoiding arguments and ticking to the facts.
In case of tears, employee must be given a good amount of time to recover.
If the employer bawls, firmly state that the meeting will be adjourned meeting until he stops.
Make neutral comments if the employee threatens about a lawsuit.
Security must be called immediately in case of violent behavior or any harm or damage is caused.
Audio lecture three “Introduction to Evaluation”
Performance Management and Performance Appraisal are slightly different from each other. Performance
appraisal is a performance management tool.
 Performance management
 Year long process of setting goals and objectives
 Continual coaching and feedback
 Performance Appraisal
 A performance management tool
 Annual codification of the performance management process
Why to conduct a performance appraisal?
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It’s a good human resources practice providing communication between supervisors and employees.
To give a set of principles to supervisors to measure how the workers' perform.
A manager’s expectations regarding the performance evaluation and management of employees include
“Goal setting, coaching and feedback, observing and documenting, counseling and motivating, planning the
appraisal, conducting the appraisal”.
The basic appraisal methods solely responsible on the managers:
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Global essays and ratings: With no guidelines, manager writes an employee appraisal in essay form.
Peer-ranking: Ranking employees with respect to the performance of other employees.
Organizational records: Employees are appraised entirely on hard data such as sales figures.
Trait rating: Employees are rated on each trait focusing on the specific traits values by the company.
Critical incidents: Manager collects positive and negative critical incident data, compares and rates
it.
 Behaviorally based scales and behaviorally anchored rating scales: Based on rigorous job analysis of
each job which is the most elaborate, systematic, scientific, and expensive method.
 Objectives and goal-setting procedures: Manager compares expected performance with the actual.
How to choose the best appraisals method:
It depends on “Salaries, promotions and placement, performance problems, performance improvement,
training needs, career counseling, strategies implementation”.
The Optimal Appraisal Method- Hybrid:
Each company has its own optimal appraisal method depending on their principles and requires support of
high lever management to be effective.
 Preparing for appraisal: Set a mutually convenient date and place.
 Planning for appraisal: Review the job description and revise if needed.
Though there are many potential appraisal pitfalls, the most common pitfalls are:
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Inadequately defined standards of performance: Expectations must be defined for employees.
Over-emphasis on recent performance: Gather data over entire appraisal period.
Reliance on gut feelings: Cannot be relied unless there is sufficient evidence.
Miscomprehension of performance standards by employee: Ideal time to explain standards.
Insufficient or unclear documentation: Documentation on negative and positive is necessary.
Inadequate time allotment for discussion: Discussions on salaries and promotions must be made.
Too much talking by the manager or supervisor: Managers must get the employee involved.
Lack of follow-up: Develop a formal follow-up plan for both employee and manager.
Audio lecture four “Introduction to Conflict”
Conflict is the aftereffect of distinctive values, convictions, and demeanor between included gatherings. There
are a few reason for conflict. Conflict may happen when:
1. A gathering is obliged to take part in a movement that is incongruent with his or her needs or
investment.
2. A gathering holds behavioral inclination, the fulfillment of which is inconsistent with someone else's
usage of his or her inclination.
3. A gathering needs some commonly attractive asset that is in short supply, such that the needs of all
gatherings included may not be fulfilled completely.
4. A gathering has disposition, values, abilities, and objectives that are striking in controlling his or her
conduct however are seen to be restrictive of the mentality, qualities, aptitudes, and objectives held by
the others.
Conflict is classified into four types:
Intrapersonal conflict: conflict alludes to a conflict between two people. This happens commonly because
of how individuals are not quite the same as each other. We have changed identities which normally comes
about to contradictory decisions and opinions. When interpersonal clash gets excessively ruinous, bringing
in an arbiter would help to have it determined.
Intrapersonal conflict: this type of conflict happens inside a single person. The experience happens in the
individual's psyche. Subsequently, it is a sort of clash that is mental including the singular's
contemplations, qualities, standards and feelings. Interpersonal clash may come in distinctive scales, from
the less difficult commonplace ones like choosing whether or not to go natural for lunch to ones that can
influence real choices, for example, picking a profession way.
Intragroup conflict: conflict is a sort of clash that happens among people inside a group. The
incompatibilities and misconceptions among these people lead to an intragroup clash. It is emerges from
interpersonal contradictions
Intergroup conflict happens when a mistaken assumption emerges among diverse groups inside an
organization. For example, the deals division of an association can come in clash with the client help
office. This is because of the shifted sets of objectives and diversions of these distinctive gatherings.
Furthermore, rivalry likewise helps for intergroup clash to emerge.
Five Strategies for conflict Resolution:
 Avoidance, which means there is no winner or loser.
 Collaboration: The process of working through differences will lead to creative solutions that will
satisfy both parties' concerns which means that both parties win.
 Competition: which means that one either win or lose.
 Accommodation: conciliate others by downplaying clash, in this manner securing the relationship.
 Compromise, Both ends are placed against the middle in an attempt to serve the common goal while
ensuring each person can maintain something of their original position which means that one
sometimes wins and one sometimes loses.
We can’t escape from conflict. If we are going to be in conflict, we want it to be about something that is
important, and should occur in a way that brings a positive outcome.